Overture : Russia's imperial prima donnas -- Russian Minervas staging empire -- The play of possibilities : serfs enacting aristocrats, countesses playing peasants -- Catherine the Empress(ario) : making tales into princely operas -- Oleg at the roots of Russian historical opera -- Interlude : to patria and nation -- Ruslan and Liudmila : the princess, the witch, and the dwarf -- Rusalka : water, power, and women -- Mlada and the spellbinding female circle -- Sadko : he is the hero! -- The inescapable Queen.

An aesthetic, historical, and theoretical study of four scores, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement is a groundbreaking and imaginative treatment of the important yet neglected topic of Russian opera in the Silver Age. Spanning the gap between the supernatural Russian music of the nineteenth century and the compositions of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, this exceptionally insightful and well-researched book explores how Russian symbolist poets interpreted opera and prompted operatic innovation. Simon Morrison shows how these works, though stylistically and technically different, reveal the extent to which the operatic representation of the miraculous can be translated into its enactment. Morrison treats these largely unstudied pieces by canonical composers: Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, Rimsky-Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya, Scriabin's unfinished Mysterium, and Prokofiev's Fiery Angel. The chapters, revisionist studies of these composers and scores, address separate aspects of Symbolist poetics, discussing such topics as literary and musical decadence, pagan-Christian syncretism, theurgy, and life creation, or the portrayal of art in life. The appendix offers the first complete English-language translation of Scriabin's libretto for the Preparatory Act. Providing valuable insight into both the Symbolist enterprise and Russian musicology, this book casts new light on opera's evolving, ambiguous place in fin de siècle culture.

In view of the extended interest now felt in Russian opera, drama and ballet, it has been thought worthwhile to offer to the public this outline of the development of a genuine national opera, from the history of which we have much to learn in this country, both as regards the things to be attempted and those to be shunned. Too much technical analysis has been intentionally avoided in this volume. The musician can supply this deficiency by the study of the scores mentioned in the book, which, dating from Glinka's time, have nearly all been published and are therefore accessible to the student; the average opera-goer will be glad to gain a general view of the subject, unencumbered by the monotonous terminology of musical analysis.

In this eagerly anticipated book, Boris Gasparov gazes through the lens of music to find an unusual perspective on Russian cultural and literary history. He discusses six major works of Russian music from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, showing the interplay of musical texts with their literary and historical sources within the ideological and cultural contexts of their times. Each musical work becomes a tableau representing a moment in Russian history, and together the works form a coherent story of ideological and aesthetic trends as they evolved in Russia from the time of Pushkin to the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s. Gasparov discusses Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmilla (1842), Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov (1871) and Khovanshchina (1881), Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (1878) and The Queen of Spades (1890), and Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony (1934). Offering new interpretations to enhance our understanding and appreciation of these important works, Gasparov also demonstrates how Russian music and cultural history illuminate one another.

This book uses a literary lens to examine the diverse practices, lore, and texts of opera-going in imperial Russia.

Drawing on a wealth of unpublished primary sources, and drawing evidence from art and theater history, as well as musicology, Olga Haldey paints a fascinating portrait of Savva Mamontov, railway tycoon turned artiste, and his pioneering opera company. The boldness of Mamontov's directing experiments, coupled with his desire to acquaint any willing young artist with his methods, irrevocably affected both the aesthetics and the careers of Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold. Russia preeminent stage directors of the early twentieth century. More than this, Haldey argues that the Moscow Private Opera offered an artistic and organizational model for Sergei Diaghilev's iconic Ballets Russes. By guiding young Diaghilev into the world of theater and sharing his ideal of synthesis of the arts and collaborative creativity, Savva Mamontov exerted a profound influence on the world of art in the twentieth century. --Book Jacket.