Russian opera

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Russian opera (

Ancient Greek, Japanese, or the multitude of languages of the nationalities that were part of the Empire and the Soviet Union
.

Russian opera includes the works of such composers as Glinka, Rubinstein, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich.

Searching for its typical and characteristic features, the Russian opera (and Russian music as a whole), has often been under strong foreign influence. Italian, French, and German operas have served as examples, even when composers sought to introduce special, national elements into their work. This dualism, to a greater or lesser degree, has persisted throughout the whole history of Russian opera.[citation needed]

18th century

Opera came to Russia in the 18th century. At first there were Italian language operas presented by

German
examples. But nevertheless, these experiments were important, and paved the way for the great achievements of 19th and 20th centuries.

Italians

Originating in Italy in c1600, opera spread all over Europe and reached Russia in 1731, when the King of

Empress Anna for the celebration of her coronation in Moscow. The first opera shown in Russia was Calandro by Giovanni Alberto Ristori (1692–1753), performed in Moscow in 1731 under the direction of the composer and his father Tommaso, with 13 actors and nine singers including Ludovica Seyfried, Margherita Ermini and Rosalia Fantasia.[1]

Francesco Araja

After that Italian opera troupes were welcomed to Russia for the entertaining of the Empress and her Court. In 1735 a big Italian opera troupe led by a composer Francesco Araja was invited for the first time to work in Saint Petersburg. The first opera given by them was Araja's La forza dell'amore e dell'odio, with a text by Francesco Prata, staged on 8 February [OS 29 January], 1736 as Sila lyubvi i nenavisti (The Power of Love and Hatred).

Araja
spent around 25-year in Russia and wrote at least 14 operas for the Russian Court.

In 1742, in connection with the celebration of the coronation of Empress

Bartolomeo Rastrelli
) that held about a thousand persons.

Valeriani: Sets for the "first Russian opera" Tsefal i Prokris by Araja, 1755

The next

Elizaveta Petrovna
and conclusion of peace with Sweden.

The staging of

Araja’s opera seria Bellerofonte, text by Giuseppe Bonecchi
(9 December 1750 [OS 28 November], Saint Petersburg) was notable for the participation of a Russian singer from "pevchie" of the Court Capella, Mark Poltoratski, who played the role of Ataman, a nobleman of Kingdom of Likia.

The first opera written in Russian was

Araja’s Tsefal i Prokris (Cephalus and Prokris, libretto by Alexander Sumarokov
) that was staged at Saint Petersburg on 7 March, [OS 27 February], 1755.

The second opera set to a Russian text was Alceste, 1758, libretto by Alexander Sumarokov) by German composer Hermann Raupach (1728–1778) also serving to the Russian Court. Raupach spent 18 years in Russia and died in Saint Petersburg in 1778.

In 1757 a private opera enterprise directed by

Il Filosofo di campagna
(The Village Philosopher), and Il mondo alla roversa, ossia Le donne che commandono (The Worlds Upside Down, or Women Command).

In the 1760–80s in Russia there were working in turn Venetian Galuppi, Manfredini from Pistoia, Traetta from Bitonto near Barri, Paisiello from Taranto, Sarti, Cimarosa from Campania, and Spaniard Martin y Soler. Each of them brought an important contribution, producing operas to the Italian as well as Russian libretti. Here are listed some of the operas written and premiered in Russia:

Pavel Petrovich
who later became Emperor of Russia. For the Russian Imperial Court Manfredini wrote five operas including: Semiramide (1760, Saint Petersburg), L'Olimpiade (1762 Moscow) and Carlo Magno (1763 Saint Petersburg).

St Petersburg
).

buffa, he spent in Russia eight years (1776–1783), where he wrote 12 operas including Nitteti (1777 Saint Petersburg), Lucinda e Armidoro (1777 Saint Petersburg), Il barbiere di Siviglia, ovvero La precauzione inutile (1782 Hermitage Theatre), and Il mondo della luna (1782 Kamenny Island Theatre
).

Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre
).

Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre) and La Cleopatra (Cleopatra e Marc Antonio 1789 Hermitage Theatre
)

Vicente Martín y Soler

Catherine II of Russia, 1789 Hermitage Theatre) with overture on three Russian tunes, Pesnolyubie (1790 Hermitage Theatre), and La festa del villagio (1798 Hermitage Theatre
).

Two of his operas premiered in Vienna, but also staged in Russia, Una cosa rara, o sia Bellezza ed onestà (The Rare Thing) and L'arbore di Diana (Diana's Tree) were especially popular. The first of them performed in Russian translation of

Ivan Dmitrievsky
had some elements of the antifeudal directivity. He died in Saint Petersburg in January 1806.

Czech origin), settled in Russia in the 18th century. He is regarded as a composer of a few famous operas: Lyubovnik – koldun (The Lover-Magician 1772 Moscow), Rozana i Lyubim (Rozana und Lyubim 1778, Moscow), Derevenskiy vorozheya (The Village Wizard c. 1777 Moscow) (Overture and songs were printed in Moscow 1778; They were the first opera fragments printed in Russia) and Guljanye ili sadovnik kuskovskoy (Promenade or the Gardener from Kuskovo 1780 or 1781 Kuskovo, Private Theatre of Count Nikolai Sheremetev
).

Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre
, and was played until 1853.

There were also extremely popular the operas by

.

Russians

Two talented young Russians

music composition
.

Demofoonte to the Italian libretto by Pietro Metastasio for the carnival at Livorno
(staged February 1773).

Dmytro Bortniansky

Dmytro Bortniansky (1751–1825), a pupil of Hermann Raupach and Baldassare Galuppi, went to Italy following his teacher Galuppi. In Italy, Bortniansky gained considerable success composing operas: Creonte (1776) and Alcide (1778) in Venice, and Quinto Fabio (1779) at Modena
. Bortniansky returned to the court at Saint Petersburg in 1779 where he composed four more operas (all in French, with
libretti
by Franz-Hermann Lafermière): Le Faucon (1786), Le Fete du Seigneur (1786), Don Carlos (1786), and Le Fils-Rival ou La Moderne Stratonice (1787).

At the same time in Russia, a successful one-act opera

Chinese Theatre, 6 September [OS 26 August], 1772) was created to the text by Mikhail Vasilyevich Popov. Music was a selection of popular songs specified in the libretto. It is a story about a girl called Anyuta, brought up in a peasants’ household, who in fact turned out to be of noble birth, and the story of her love for a nobleman, Victor, eventually ending happily, with wedding bells ringing. The score does not survive and the composer of it is unknown, however, sometimes it was attributed to Vasily Pashkevich or even to Yevstigney Fomin
who that time was just 11 years old.

The music of another successful Russian opera Melnik – koldun, obmanshchik i svat (The Miller who was a Wizard, a Cheat and a Match-maker, text by

Le Devin du village, is attributed to a theatre violin player and conductor Mikhail Matveyevich Sokolovsky (c. 1756–?). Later the music was revised by Yevstigney Fomin
.

Kniper Theatre, The Burden Is Not Heavy if It Is Yours (Svoya nosha ne tyanet, 1794), The Early Reign of Oleg (Nachal'noye upravleniye Olega, libretto by Catherine II, 1790 Saint Petersburg)– together with Giuseppe Sarti and C. Cannobio), Fedul and His Children (Fedul s det'mi, libretto by Catherine II, 1791 Saint Petersburg) – together with Martin y Soler), The Pasha of Tunis (Pasha tunisskiy, 1782 libretto by Mikhail Matinsky
) and You Shall Be Judged As You Lived (Kak pozhivyosh', tak i proslyvyosh, 1792) — rev. of St Petersburg Bazaar.

Yevstigney Fomin

Italian-trained

Mikhail Sokolovsky
), The Americans (Amerikantsy, comic opera, 1800 Saint Petersburg), Chloris and Milo (Klorida i Milon, 1800 Saint Petersburg), and The Golden Apple (Zolotoye yabloko, 1803 Saint Petersburg).

19th century

The 19th century was the golden age of Russian opera. It began with a success of a massive and slowly developing operatic project: the opera Lesta, dneprovskaya rusalka and its three sequels (1803–1807, first in Saint Petersburg) based on the German romantic-comic piece Das Donauweibchen by Ferdinand Kauer (1751–1831) with the Russian text and additional music by Russianized Venetian immigrant Catterino Cavos (1775–1840) and Stepan Davydov (1777–1825).

The next success was a patriotic opera Ivan Susanin (1815) by

Russian history
.

This success was continued with the brilliant operatic career of Alexey Verstovsky (1799–1862), who composed more 30 opera-vaudevilles and 6 grand-operas including Askold's Grave (Askoldova mogila, first performed in 1835) that received about 200 performances in Saint Petersburg and 400 in Moscow only for the first 25 years.

Mikhail Glinka

However the most important events in the history of Russian opera were two great operas by

Ruslan and Lyudmila (based on the tale by Alexander Pushkin
, 1842. These two works inaugurated a new era in Russian music and a burgeoning of Russian national opera.

Alexander Dargomyzhsky

Since these, opera became a leading genre for the most of Russian composers. Glinka was followed by Alexander Dargomyzhsky (1813–1869) with his Rusalka (1856) and revolutionary The Stone Guest (Kamenny gost, completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and premiered in 1872).

Other composers were:

Russian opera reached its apogee with the works by Modest Mussorgsky and his antipode Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

Shostakovich
Edition of 1940, etc.). His other operas were left unfinished:

standard repertoire
. His other operas are:

  • Voyevoda
    (The Voivode), 1867–1868, destroyed by the composer, but posthumously reconstructed
  • Undina (or Undine), 1869, not completed, partly destroyed by the composer
  • The Oprichnik
    , 1870–1872, 1874 Saint Petersburg
  • Vakula the Smith (Kuznets Vakula), 1874, 1876 Saint Petersburg
  • The Maid of Orleans (Orleanskaya deva), 1878–1879, 1881 Saint Petersburg
  • Mazepa 1881–1883, 1884 Moscow
  • Cherevichki (rev. of Vakula the Smith) 1885, 1887 Moscow
  • The Enchantress (also The Sorceress or Charodeyka), 1885–1887, 1887 Saint Petersburg
  • Iolanta
    (Iolanthe), 1891, 1892 Saint Petersburg

Not less important was Aleksandr Borodin’s (1833–1887) Prince Igor – (Knyaz Igor, completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov, 1890).

Prolific Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) completed fifteen operas, the most significant achievements of the art of opera in Russia at the end of the century. The most notable of them are:

The last three of them already belong to the 20th-century Russian opera.

There were built a lot of new opera theatres including Bolshoi Theatre (opened since 1825 Moscow), and Mariinsky Theatre, opened since 1860 Saint Petersburg).

The history of 19th century Russian opera could be observed in the selected list of premieres at the Saint Petersburg theatres:

Feodor Chaliapin as Ivan Susanin in Glinka's A Life for the Tsar

Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre

Mariinsky Theatre (since 1860)

Chaliapin, commissioned designs from Mikhail Vrubel, Konstantin Korovin, Natalia Goncharova and Ivan Bilibin, staged the late operas by Rimsky Korsakov
.

Opera spread to the provincial centres of

Kiev (1867), Odessa (1887) and Kharkiv
(1880).

20th century

The political collisions of the 20th century divided Russian opera composers into those who managed to escape to the West, successfully or not, and those who continued to live in not the particular friendly atmosphere of the Soviet and Post-Soviet regimes. And nevertheless, the process of producing new operas was not diminished, but just the opposite, it was immensely grown.

Zimin Opera established in 1904, Sergei Diaghilev's Saisons Russes began in Paris in 1913.

Vladimir Rebikov (1866–1920) composer of more than 10 operas is best of all known for his opera The Christmas Tree (Yolka, 1894–1902) in which he presented his ideas of "melo-mimics" and "rhythm-declamation" (see melodeclamation).

Sergey Rachmaninoff
(1873–1943) completed three operas:

All three operas were staged at the Bolshoi Theatre. He began but did not finish the fourth

Monna Vanna (1907, 1st act in a vocal score) after Maurice Maeterlinck
who refused to give permission to the composer for use of his text. These operas, written on the border between two centuries, rather belong to the world of the romantic opera of the past. Escaping Russia in 1917 Rachmaninoff never returned to operatic projects again.

Unlike him, Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) had been returning to this genre again and again, full of fresh and innovative ideas. Sometimes it is difficult to qualify these works as pure operas but rather "opera-ballets", "opera-cantatas", or "music theatre". Here is the list:

Sergei Prokofiev’s (1891–1953) operas are full of humour, wit, and novelty. Here is the list of his completed operas:

Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
performed in 1934 with an enormous success was condemned by the authorities even more harshly. This forced him to recompose it much later, in 1962, as Katerina Izmailova in a style more simplified and conventional to meet the requirements of the new rulers of the regime. Shostakovich was involved in many more operatic projects.

There were a lot more of the composers about the same generation, who had managed to create hundreds of operas. Some of them shared the same problems with Shostakovich and Prokofiev who returned to live in Soviet Russia and were deadly embraced by its suffocative regime. Others were on the opposite side, serving the suffocating roles. A serious condemnation and persecution of the Soviet Union's foremost composers, such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich and many others, had emerged in 1948 in connection to the opera by Vano Muradeli (1908–1970), Velikaya druzhba (The Great Friendship); see Zhdanov Doctrine.

Here is just a shortlist of the opera composers of those times:

Also:

Russian opera articles#20th century
).

The next generations who found themselves already in the Post-Stalin epoch had their own specific problems. The ideological and stylistic control and limitation of creative freedom by the authorities and older colleagues-composers in the hierarchical structures of the

Khrennikov Seven
"), who for some reason or other had been played in the West – there were at least 4 opera composers among them.

As a result even quite new phenomena appeared: a "samizdat (underground) opera" (see Nikolai Karetnikov). Some of these operas still never been performed, others luckily received their premieres in the West, and only a few found their place at the operatic stages of the homeland. The collapse of the Soviet Union did not improve this hopeless situation much.

The list of the composers who contributed to the development of Russian opera nearer to the end of the 20th century:

Also:

Russian opera articles#20th century
).

21st century

The Russian opera is continuing its development in the 21st century. It began with the noisy premieres of two comic operas, whose genre could be described as "opera-farce":

The first was Tsar Demyan – a frightful opera performance (a collective project of the five participants: composers

Mariinski Theatre
, Saint Petersburg. Prize "Gold Mask, 2002" and "Gold Soffit, 2002".

Another opera The Children of Rosenthal by Leonid Desyatnikov to the libretto by Vladimir Sorokin, was commissioned by the Bolshoi Theatre and premiered on 23 March 2005.

List of Russian opera theatres

  • "Comedie et opere", (small hall in a wing of
    St Petersburg
    )
  • Theatre of
    St Petersburg
    )
  • Opera House (with 1000 seats, at
    St Petersburg
    )
  • Moscow Theatre (built 1742 for the coronation of
    Elizaveta Petrovna
    , Moscow)
  • Kuskovo Summer Theatre (from 1755, Kuskovo near Moscow)
  • St Petersburg
    )
  • St Petersburg
    )
  • Petrovsky Theatre (with 1000 seats, from 1780 to 1805, Moscow)
  • St Petersburg
    )
  • St Petersburg
    )
  • Ostankino Theatre (from 22 July 1795, Ostankino near Moscow)
  • St Petersburg
    )
  • Petrovka Theatre
    (from 1786 to 1805 Moscow)
  • Bolshoi Theatre (from 1825 Moscow)
  • St Petersburg
    )
  • St Petersburg
    )

See also

References

  1. ^ Charlton, David. "Giovanni Alberto Ristori". Classical Net. Retrieved 19 April 2020.

Bibliography

External links