Russian Opera - 20th Century

20th Century

The political collisions of 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 particular friendly atmosphere of the Soviet and Post-Soviet regimes. And nevertheless, the process of producing of new operas was not diminished, but just opposite, it was immensely grown.

• Vladimir Rebikov

• Sergei Rachmaninov

• Igor Stravinsky

• Sergei Prokofiev

• Dmitri Shostakovich

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).

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) completed three operas:

• Aleko (1892, staged 1893)
• The Miserly Knight (Skupoy Rytsar Op. 24, 1904)
• Franchesca da Rimini (Op. 25, 1904, staged 1906).

All three operas were staged at the Bolshoi Theatre He began and never finished the fourth Monna Vanna (1907, 1st act in a vocal score) after Maurice Maeterlinck who refused to give permission to the composer for using 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 Rachmaninov had never returned to the 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:

• Le rossignol (The Nightingale) (1914)
• Renard, burlesque for 4 pantomimes and Chamber Orchestra (1916) opera-ballet
• Histoire du Soldat for chamber group and three speakers (1918), narration with music
• Mavra (1922)
• Oedipus rex (1927)
• Perséphone for speaker, soloists, chorus and orchestra (1934)
• Babel (1944)
• The Rake's Progress (1951)
• The Flood (1962)

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

• Maddalena, (1911–1913)
• The Gambler (1915–1916, rev. 1927)
• The Love for Three Oranges (1919)
• The Fiery Angel(1919–1927)
• Semyon Kotko (1939)
• Betrothal in a Monastery (1940–1941)
• War and Peace (1941–1952)
• The Story of a Real Man, Op. 117 (1947–1948)

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) was another great opera composer struggling all his life in the clutch of the communist ideology. His satirical opera The Nose, after the completely absurd story by Gogol was criticized in 1929 by RAPM as "formalist". His second opera 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 to the Soviet Russia, and was deadly embraced by its suffocative regime. Others were at 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 short list of the opera composers of that times:

Yuri Shaporin (1887–1966), opera The Decembrists (written during a period of 33 years 1930–1953, staged 1953)

Isaak Dunayevsky (1900–1955), 14 operettas including White Acacia (1955)

Alexander Mossolov (1900–1973), 4 operas including. The Barrage (1929–1930)

Vissarion Shebalin (1902–1936), 3 operas including The Taming of the Shrew (1957)

Dmitri Kabalevsky (1904–1987), 7 operas including Colas Breugnon (1936–1976)

Veniamin Fleishman (1913–1941), opera Rothschild's Violin (1941) completed and orchestrated by Dmitri Shostakovich

Tikhon Khrennikov (1913–2007), 5 operas including "Into the Storm" (1936–1939)

Grigory Frid (1915–2012), 2 chamber mono-operas including The Diary of Anne Frank (1968)

Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–1996), 7 operas including The Portrait (1980) and The Idiot (1985)

Also: Vladimir Shcherbachev, Sergei Vasilenko, Vladimir Fere, Vladimir Vlasov, Kirill Molchanov, Alexander Kholminov, etc. (see: Russian opera articles#20th century).

The next generations who found themselves already in the Post-Stalin epoch had 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 Union of Composers made almost impossible the innovation and experiment in any field of musical art. It was a feeling that old bad times returned again, when in 1979 at the Sixth Congress of the Composers' Union, its leader Tikhon Khrennikov denounced seven composers (thereafter known as the "Khrennikov Seven"), who for some reason or other had been played in the West – there were at least four 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:

Edison Denisov (1929–1996), 3 Operas including L'écume des jours ( The Foam of Days, completed 1981)

Nikolai Karetnikov (1930–1994), 2 operas including Till Eulenspiegel, opera in two acts (1965–1985)

Sergei Slonimsky (born 1932), 3 operas including Mary Stewart (1978–1980)

Rodion Shchedrin (born 1932), 3 operas including Myortvye dushi (Dead Souls 1976)

Alfred Schnittke (1934–1998), 3 operas including Zhizn’ s idiotom (Life with an Idiot, 1990–1991)

Boris Tishchenko (b. 1939 ) 2 operas including Kradenoe solntse (The Stolen Sun, 1968)

Alexander Knaifel (born 1943) 2 operas including Kentervilskoye prividenie (The Canterville Ghost, 1965–1966)

Nikolai Korndorf (1947–2001), chamber opera MR (Marina and Rainer) (1989)

Elena Firsova (born 1950), 2 chamber operas including The Nightingale and the Rose

Also: Nikolai Sidelnikov, Andrei Petrov, Sandor Kallosh, Leonid Hrabovsky, Alexander Vustin, Gleb Sedelnikov, Merab Gagnidze, Alexander Tchaikovsky, Vasily Lobanov, Dmitri N. Smirnov, Leonid Bobylev, Vladimir Tarnopolsky, and so on (see: Russian opera articles#20th century).