Opera in Russia

            According to the Oxford text, Russian courts hosted opera as far back as the innovations of Opera Buffa in the 18^th century.  Domenico Cimerosa composed Il Matrimonio Segreto for a Russian court and was very well received during its lifetime. This was, to be sure, not native opera; in fact, the first libretto in the Russian language was written in 1755 but was also written by an Italian imported composer to the region. Rather, the subjects were set in Italian language as they were in a great deal of Europe during the 1700’s, but it does provide a lineage to the more native styles that would emerge later in the 19^th century with the likes of Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky and later Shostakovich and Prokofiev.  The reasons for non-indigenous opera in the Slovak countries seems a simple enough problem to solve, after all, it was an Italian import into the rest of Europe, but it wasn’t until after the adoption of European culture and style (particularly French and German) under Peter the Great, that Russia began to emerge as a cultural center partially out of assimilation (as in Tchaikovsky) and partly out of Rebellion (Mussorgsky).

            The first opera that was sung continually in Russian was A Life for the Tsar (1836) by Mikhail Glinka. The story is a relatively simple one, essentially it is the tale of a young married couple, the Juvenile is charged with leading invading Poles away from the newly elected Romanoff sovereign. The young man is successful but because of his deception he is killed.  Glinka went on to write another great opera in the piece Ruslan and Lyudmila (1837-1842) which was very Russian in its origins of being adapted from a poem of Pushkin, but bears a great deal of relationship to the fantasy operas of Romantic Germany as it contains wizards, fairies and other sorts of magical characters and prophecy.  While Glinka held fast to many Italian styles of opera including the recitative/aria format, he did generate certain validity for opera in the Russian language on Russian subjects that would be inherited by younger composers.

            The Later developments in Russian opera that unfolded in the 19^th century were linked to Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky.  Rimsky-Korsakov was the most prolific of the three, composing a total of 15 operas, however; his is best known for The Golden Cockerel (1909) which was another fairly tale opera that contains within it the famous “Flight of the Bumblebee.” As far as Tchaikovsky is concerned, he is seen as something sort of backwards from the history of opera in Russia, whereas the beginning of the genre had to do with foreign styles influencing native stories, Tchaikovsky looked elsewhere for settings for his stage-works.  Many of his operas take place outside of Slovak countries and even his most well known work Evgeny Ongen is only partially set in Russia and was successful for its more profound examination of character relationships.  John Tyrrell writes; “In the latter two operas [The Enchantress and Evgeny] the Russian element penetrates no further than Act 1, but where the Enchantress, like so many of Tchaikovsky’s operas, fails, and where Onegin triumphantly succeeds, is in the level of personal engagement.”  Finally the discussion in the Oxford text turns to the issue of realism in Russian opera, the principal figure here is Modest Mussorgsky who believed very strongly in speech-rhythms being represented in song.  Mussorgsky had a terrible time completing operas as he attempted several but was only able to finish one; Boris Godunov (1874) which is notable for its prose settings of text that avoids too much in terms of song-structure in the original, (later in a revised version solo songs and duets were added).

            The 20^th century would see many changes to the Russian landscape, the Soviet Revolution had deposed the royal family of Russia and now a new “dictatorship of the proletariat” was established. Originally under the direction of V.I. Lenin the fledgling nation of the USSR would seek to relegate art to artists and intellectuals, art was also a low priority with the government due to the bloody civil war that was sweeping the nation. It wasn’t until the death of Lenin that the ineptly educated Joseph Stalin ascended to total power over the country. Stalin’s narrow idea of artistic ability lay with only precision in realism and during that period both the visual and performing arts would enter a much prescribed scenario.  The two major composers writing at this time were Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Shostakovich is known best (in terms of opera) for his Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934) musically very successful but mostly infamous for the ban of its performance directed by Stalin after seeing a production of the piece.  Lady Macbeth did challenge conventions on moral grounds as well as the role of women in society (being married to man when she is in love with another) but it is the work’s central place in the history of censorship that makes it so notable from an historical perspective.  Sergey Prokofiev was the composer of a handful of operas including The Fiery Angel, the Gambler and Semyon Kotko. The Oxford text notes; The Love for Three Oranges for the fact that it “unlooses the ostinatos from any psychological purpose, and instead has them spinning the wheels of a comic fantasy.”

            It should be noted that during any discussion of the Soviet Union, there is sometimes a tendency to lump the Lenin/Stalin legacy together when it comes not only to art but also to political policy. According to the biography by Robert Payne, Lenin was willing to leave artistic matters to the artists and rather wanted to focus on overall education, Lenin himself was an avid fan of Beethoven’s music as well as many other classics. This in some ways is to be expected as in his youth, the young Vladimir had a very liberal education and was a practicing lawyer (in-between his revolutionary activities). Stalin, by contrast, did not receive the same kind of liberal education; he was a staunchly conservative man who was notoriously rude. This is not meant to oversimplify the situation in the USSR, this is simply to point out that there was a great difference in the visions of the two men for what the Soviet Union was to become.