Staging Stalinism: The search for Soviet opera in the 1930s

Cambridge Opera Journal

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 83-108

  Bullock, Philip Ross ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 43249162344     PISSN: 09545867     EISSN: 14740621     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0954586706002114     Document Type: Review

References (134)

1. N. Kulikovich, Sovetskaia opera na sluzhbe partii i pravitel'stva (Munich, 1955), 114
2. See, for instance, Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, 3rd edn (Bloomington, 2000)
3. Evgeny Dobrenko, The Making of the State Reader: Social and Aesthetic Contexts of the Reception of Soviet Literature, trans. Jesse M. Savage (Stanford, 1997)
4. and Matthew Cullerne Bown, Socialist Realist Painting (New Haven, 1998)
5. However, the following works do contain useful material: V. M. Bodganov-Berezovskii, Sovetskaia opera (Leningrad and Moscow, 1940)
6. M. Ginzburg and N. Poliakova, eds., Sovetskaia opera: sbornik kriticheskikh statei (Moscow, 1953)
7. A. Gozenpud, Russkii sovetskii opernyi teatr (1917-1941): Ocherk istorii (Leningrad, 1963)
8. Michel Maximovitch, L'opéra russe 1731-1935 (Lausanne, 1987), 274-366
9. and Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1917-1981, enlarged edn (Bloomington, 1983), especially 63-73 and 141-50
10. Also of interest is Kulikovich's Sovetskaia opera, which, despite its Cold War rhetoric, contains a wealth of interesting material
11. For a recent case study of opera culture in Soviet Ukraine, see Serhy Yekelchyk, 'Diktat and Dialogue in Stalinist Culture: Staging Patriotic Historical Opera in Soviet Ukraine, 1936-1954', Slavic Review, 59/3 (2000), 597-642
12. Leonid Maksimenkov, Sumbur vmesto muzyki: Stalinskaia kul'turnaia revoliutsiia 1936-1938 (Moscow, 1997)
13. On 'cultured behaviour' in the Stalinist period, see Vera S. Dunham, In Stalin's Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction (Cambridge, 1976; Durham, 1990)
14. Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, 1992), especially 'Becoming Cultured: Socialist Realism and the Representation of Privilege and Taste', 216-37
15. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York, 1999)
16. Catriona Kelly, Refining Russia: Advice Literature, Polite Culture, and Gender from Catherine to Yeltsin (Oxford, 2001), 230-311
17. Vadim Volkov, 'The Concept of kul'turnost': Notes on the Stalinist Civilizing Process', in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (New York, 2000), 210-30
18. and David L. Hoffman, Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917-1941 (Ithaca, 2003)
19. Schwarz claims that Stalin himself intervened in the matter: 'Stalin also had his own ideas on contemporary Soviet opera. He listed its desirable basic attributes - a libretto with a Socialist topic, a realistic musical language with stress on a national idiom, and a positive hero typifying the new Socialist era. These criteria were submitted to a group of opera specialists at a meeting on 17 January 1936'; Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 123
20. Neil Edmunds, The Soviet Proletarian Music Movement (Oxford, 2000), 126-8
21. Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 12
22. Schwarz, 27
23. Schwarz, 63
24. 'O zadachakh zhurnala "Sovetskaia muzyka"', Sovetskaia muzyka, 1/1 (January-February 1933), 1-5, here 5
25. also cited in Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays (Princeton, 1997), 517
26. M. Iordanskii, P. Kozlov and V. Taranushchenko, 'O probleme sovetskoi opery (Opernoe tvorchestvo sovetskikh kompozitorov za 15 let)', Sovetskaia muzyka, 1/1 (January-February 1933), 19-50, here 19
27. For a pithy contextualisation of Leningrad innovation on the opera front, see Katerina Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 224-41
28. For in-house accounts of the theatre's development, see G. Ia. Tarasenko, ed., Leningradskii Gosudarstvennyi ordena Lenina Akademicheskii Malyi opernyi teatr (Leningrad, 1940)
29. and I. V. Golubovskii, ed., Leningradskii gosudarstvennyi ordena Lenina akademicheskii malyi opernyi teatr (Leningrad, 1961)
30. Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford, 2000), 53-6
31. The Malyi could not take sole credit for this last opera, as another production opened two days later at Moscow's Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre under the alternative title of Katerina Izmailova
32. Fay, Shostakovich, 55
33. See Fay, 77
34. M. Kiselev, 'Gosudarstvennyi akademicheskii Bol'shoi teatr SSSR (Sezon 1933/34g.)', Sovetskaia muzyka, 1/6 (November-December 1933), 117-18
35. Iv. Remezov, 'Massovaia rabota s rabochim zritelem v Bol'shom teatre', Sovetskaia muzyka, 2/4 (April 1934), 94-6
36. 'Diskussiia o sovetskoi opere (po materialam stenogramm)', Sovetskaia muzyka, 3/7-8 (July-August 1935), 38-55
37. This theme was subsequently taken up in Iv. Shishov, 'O repertuare nashikh opernykh teatrov', Sovetskaia muzyka, 3/9 (September 1935), 64-5
38. The Bol'shoi's 1933-4 season was to include the following operas: Borodin's Prince Igor, Chaikovskii's Mazeppa, Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots and Verdi's Il trovatore. The only work by a contemporary Soviet composer was Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth, which eventually opened on 30 November 1935, arguably more in response to the opera's huge popularity than out of any real commitment to developing new repertory. See Kiselev, 'Gosudarstvennyi akademicheskii Bol'shoi teatr SSSR', 117
39. For a review of this tour, the operas performed, and their significance for the further development of Soviet opera, see A. Shaverdian, 'Put' sovetskogo opernogo teatra', Sovetskaia muzyka, 4/3 (March 1936), 61-9
40. M. Glukh, 'Kamarinskii muzhik - opera V. Zhelobinskogo', Sovetskaia muzyka, 2/8 (August 1934), 3-14
41. M. Druskin, 'V. Zhelobinskii i ego opera Imeniny', Sovetskaia muzyka, 3/5 (May 1935), 46-58
42. Kh. Sharafutdinova, 'Gastroli teatra i vystupleniia na ego stsene deiatelei muzykal'nogo iskusstva', in Leningradskii gosudarstvennyi ordena Lenina akademicheskii malyi opernyi teatr, ed. Golubovskii, 120-5
43. 'The opera's libretto is ragged and consists of fragments of the novel linked together in a scenario with little regard for the elementary laws of the stage and dramaturgy. In many respects this situation is "saved" by the proximity of the material to the modern opera-goer. The music reflects the undoubted talent of the author and his gift for melody is a sign of originality. Unfortunately the author's technique is of a very low order. His creative devices are monotonous and there are many "hollow" moments. The instrumentation is primitive. All of this lends the work the stamp of monotony. Still, individual fragments do give the impression of some talent'; cited in Gozenpud, Russkii sovetskii opernyi teatr, 298
44. and in Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 143
45. See Clark, The Soviet Novel, 15-24
46. Asaf'ev's original essay 'Opera v raboche-krest'ianskom teatre' is reproduced in B. Asaf'ev, Ob opere: Izbrannye stat'i (Leningrad, 1985), 24-8
47. Cited in Maksimenkov, Sumbur vmesto muzyki, 77
48. Maksimenkov, 78
49. Maksimenkov, 117
50. Maksimenkov, 113
51. Clark, Petersburg, 6
52. Vladimir Paperny, Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture Two, trans. John Hill and Roann Barris in collaboration with the author (Cambridge, 2002), xxiii
53. Paperny, xxiv
54. Paperny, 77
55. Paperny, 79
56. Paperny, 48
57. A. Lepin, 'Opera o pogranichnikakh', Sovetskaia muzyka, 6/2 (February 1938), 31-8
58. The most significant of such events was the signing of the Stalin Constitution on 5 December 1936; see 'Delegaty S"ezda Sovetov v Bol'shom teatre', Pravda, 6 December 1936, 6
59. For an overview of the development of Moscow in the late 1930s, see 'Moskva', in Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, ed. O. Iu. Shmidt et al., 65 vols (Moscow, 1926-47), XL, 294-404, here 368-404
60. Timothy J. Coulton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 249-356
61. and Vladimir Paperny, 'Moscow in the 1930s and the Emergence of a New City', in The Culture of the Stalin Period, ed. Hans Günther (London, 1990), 229-39
62. See Marina Frolova-Walker, '"National in Form, Socialist in Content": Musical Nation-building in the Soviet Republics', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 51 (1998), 331-71
63. For instance, in 1937 Quiet Flows the Don was performed in both Sverdlovsk and Brno (Czechoslovakia)
64. see B. Shteinpress, 'Tikhii Don v sverdlovskoi opere', Sovetskaia muzyka, 5/1 (January 1937), 98-9
65. and I. Urban, 'Tikhii Don I. Dzerzhinskogo v Brno', Sovetskaia muzyka, 5/4 (April 1937), 100-1
66. These were Ukraine and Kazakhstan (11-21 March and 17-25 May 1936); Georgia and Uzbekistan (5-15 January and 21-30 May 1937); Azerbaijan (5-15 April 1938); Kyrgyzstan and Armenia (26 May-4 June and 20-29 October 1939); Belarus and Buriat-Mongolia (5-15 June and 20-27 October 1940); and Tajikistan (12-20 April 1941); see Frolova-Walker, '"National in Form, Socialist in Content"', 337-8
67. and Michael Rouland, 'A Nation on Stage: Music and the 1936 Festival of Kazak Arts', in Soviet Music and Society under Lenin and Stalin: The Baton and the Sickle, ed. Neil Edmunds (London and New York, 2004), 181-208
68. Taking stock of recent trends, one critic suggested that composers had been successful in finding 'several characteristic and typical features of a new style, that of Soviet national music drama'
69. see G. Khubov, 'Sovetskaia opera', Sovetskaia muzyka, 6/1 (January 1938), 11-17, here 11
70. As Richard Taruskin notes, 'when Musorgsky subtitled Khovanshchina a narodnaia muzïkal'naia drama, he did not necessarily mean a "musical folk drama" as most sources now translate it. It is more likely that he meant, simply, a "national drama," or better, a "drama of the national history"'; Taruskin, Musorgsky: Eight Essays and an Epilogue (Princeton, 1993), 323
71. On Wagner's afterlife in Soviet culture, see Rosamund Bartlett, Wagner and Russia (Cambridge, 1995), 219-86
72. and Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, 'Wagner and Wagnerian Ideas in Russia', in Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics, ed. David C. Large and William Weber (Ithaca, 1984), 198-245, here 236-45
73. Rosenthal, 199
74. An edition of Sovetskaia muzyka was devoted to Wagner in 1933, fifty years after the composer's death. It opened with an important article by Lunacharskii defending Wagner against Tolstoi and arguing that Wagner's attacks on bourgeois theatre were an important model for the development of Soviet opera
75. A. Lunacharskii, 'R. Vagner', Sovetskaia muzyka, 1/3 (May-June 1933), 1-6
76. Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond, trans. Charles Rougle (Princeton, 1992)
77. James von Geldern, 'Nietzschean Leaders and Followers in Soviet Mass Theatre, 1917-27', in Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary, ed. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Cambridge, 1994), 127-48
78. Alexander Zholkovsky, 'Eisenstein's Poetics: Dialogical or Totalitarian?' in Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian Avant-Garde and Cultural Experiment, ed. John E. Bowlt and Olga Matich (Stanford, 1996), 245-56, here 251
79. M. A. Grinberg, 'Rabotat' nad sovetskoi operoi', Sovetskaia muzyka, 7/2 (February 1939), 53-9
80. Many of Grinberg's observations were repeated and developed at a conference held that May in Moscow; see Ia. Solodukho, 'Konferentsiia o sovetskoi opere', Sovetskaia muzyka, 7/7 (July 1939), 55-9
81. Yet another conference was held in 1940; for details, see A. Shaverdian, 'Sovetskaia opera', Sovetskaia muzyka, 9/3 (March 1941), 3-20
82. Other operas derived from Soviet novels at this time include Starokadamskii's The River Sot (Sot')(after Leonov)
83. Khodzhi-Einatov's The Rebellion (Miatezh) (after Furmanov)
84. Khrennikov's Into the Storm (V buriu) (after Virta's Loneliness [Odinochestvo])
85. Makarov-Rakitin's Son of the Working People (Syn trudovogo naroda) (after Kataev)
86. Prokof'ev's Semen Kotko (also after Kataev's Son of the Working People )
87. and Mokrousov's Chapaev (Chapaev) (after Furmanov)
88. A curiosity is Chishko's Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potemkin), which, whilst based on historical events, makes clear if unacknowledged reference to Eizenshtein's film of the same name
89. For a useful list of Soviet operas in the 1930s, see Kulikovich, Sovetskaia opera na sluzhbe partii i pravitel'stva, 47-59
90. Caryl Emerson, Boris Godunov: Transpositions of a Russian Theme (Bloomington, 1986)
91. In the field of opera studies, see Caryl Emerson, 'Back to the Future: Shostakovich's Revision of Leskov's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District', this journal, 1 (1989), 59-78
92. and 'Leo Tolstoy and the Rights of Music under Stalin (Another Look at Prokofiev's Party-minded Masterpiece, War and Peace)', Tolstoy Studies Journal, 14 (2002), 1-14
93. Two notable contributions to this question in the field of visual culture and film studies are Stephen Hutchings, Russian Literature in the Camera Age: The Word as Image (London, 2004)
94. and Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitski, eds., Film Adaptations of Literature in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1900-2001: Screening the Word (London, 2005)
95. Emerson, Boris Godunov, 3-4
96. A position famously advocated by Tolstoi when he claimed that 'there is not one single work of [Russian] prose at all rising above the level of mediocrity that has quite fitted into the form of a novel, narrative poem or story'; see Tolstoi, 'Neskol'ko slov po povodu knigi "Voina i mir"', in his Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 91 vols. (Moscow, 1928-64), XVI, 7-16, here 7
97. The most comprehensive study of the production is V. E. Meierkhol'd, 'Pikovaia dama'. Zamysel. Voploshchenie. Sud'ba: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, ed. G. V. Kopytova (St Petersburg, 1994)
98. Most scholars seem happy to take Meierkhol'd at his word when considering his 're-Pushkinisation' of The Queen of Spades
99. however, for a refreshingly sceptical account of the production, see I. Glikman, Meierkhol'd i muzykal'nyi teatr (Leningrad, 1989), 275-308
100. V. E. Meierkhol'd, 'Doklad V. E. Meierkhol'da o predstoiashchei postanovke Pikovoi damy', in Meierkhol'd, 'Pikovaia dama', 50-72, here 58
101. A. Shtein, 'Pushkin, Chaikovskii, Meierkhol'd: Pikovaia dama v Malom opernom teatre', in Meierkhol'd, 'Pikovaia dama', 261-5, here 262
102. Pikovaia dama, opera v 4 deistviiakh. Muzyka P. I. Chaikovskogo. Sbornik statei i materialov k postanovke opery 'Pikovaia dama' narodnym artistom Respubliki Vs. E. Meierkhol'dom v Gosudarstvennom akademicheskom malom opernom teatre (Leningrad, 1935)
103. V. E. Meierkhol'd, 'Pushkin i Chaikovskii', in Meierkhol'd, 'Pikovaia dama', 122-32, here 132
104. A. S. Pushkin, 'Pikovaia dama', in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 17 vols. (Moscow, 1937-49), VIII/1, 225-52, here 252
105. For a consideration of the issues faced by Petr and Modest Chaikovskii (with cursory comments about Meierkhol'd's production), see Simon Morrison, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2002), 45-114
106. 'Zasedanie v Gosudarstvennoi akademii iskusstvoznaniia, posviashchennoe obsuzhdeniiu postanovki opery Pikovaia dama. 30 ianvaria 1935 goda', in Meierkhol'd, 'Pikovaia dama', 200-56, here 248
107. Meierkhol'd was not the only one to feel that Chaikovskii's opera had a peculiar contemporary resonance. As early as 1933, it was the subject of a booklet designed to make opera-going more accessible to a working-class audience (S. Tsvetaev, Pikovaia dama [Leningrad, 1933]). Leningrad's principal house, the former Mariinskii Theatre, strove to uphold its role in the opera's history in the face of the Malyi Opera Theatre's presumptuous originality. The opera was also a staple of the provincial repertory, with important productions running in at least three major cities mid-1930s, Gor'kii, Perm' and Saratov. The opera's popularity is unsurprising: in the years leading up to the centenary of the composer's death in 1940, Chaikovskii had increasingly come to be recognised as a national hero by the Soviet authorities; and his Pushkinian operas were the ideal way for theatres to mark the centenary of the poet's death in 1937
108. M. Sholokhov, 'Ob opere I. Dzerzhinskogo', Sovetskaia muzyka, 5/10-11 (October-November 1937), 54
109. B. Zagurskii, 'Opery i balety sovetskikh kompozitorov na stsene Malogo opernogo teatra', in Leningradskii gosudarstvennyi ordena Lenina akademicheskii malyi opernyi teatr, ed. Golubovskii, 63-121, here 68
110. 'Diskussiia o sovetskoi opere', 46
111. Jan Plamper, 'Abolishing Ambiguity: Soviet Censorship Practices in the 1930s', Russian Review, 60/4 (2001), 526-44, here 543
112. Cited in Brian Murphy, 'Introduction', in Mikhail Sholokhov, Quiet Flows the Don, trans. Robert Daglish and ed. Brian Murphy (London, 1996), xix-xxxvi, here xxi
113. Plamper, 'Abolishing Ambiguity', 527
114. Plamper, 544
115. Brian Murphy, 'Quiet Flows the Don', in Reference Guide to Russian Literature, ed. Neil Cornwell (London and Chicago, 1998), 733
116. On the socialist realist 'master plot', see Clark, The Soviet Novel, particularly 159-76 and 255-60
117. Inna Solovyova, 'The Theatre and Socialist Realism, 1929-1953', in A History of Russian Theatre, ed. Robert Leach and Victor Borovsky (Cambridge, 1999), 325-57, here 338
118. A. Budiakovskii, 'Tikhii Don I. Dzerzhinskogo', Sovetskaia muzyka, 3/11 (November 1935), 38-46, here 38
119. 80 Grinberg, 'Rabotat' nad sovetskoi operoi', 53
120. Hutchings, Russian Literary Culture in the Camera Age, 78
121. This is the singing translation by L. Moën, G. Shneerson and A. Steiger from the vocal score of the opera published in 1937; see Ivan Dzerzhinskii, Tikhii Don: Opera v 4 aktakh, 6 kartinakh (Moscow, 1937), 239-41
122. Amy Nelson, Music for the Revolution: Music and Power in Early Soviet Russia (University Park, PA, 2004), 14
123. 'O prisuzhdenii Stalinskikh premii za vydaiushchiesia raboty v oblasti iskusstva i literatury', Sovetskaia muzyka, 9/4 (April 1941), 3-11
124. 'Opera Khrennikova i ee kritiki', Sovetskaia muzyka, 7/11 (November 1939), 53-4, here 53
125. G. Neigauz, 'Pervaia krupnaia udacha', Sovetskaia muzyka, 8/10 (October 1940), 25
126. I. Nest'ev, 'Semen Kotko S. Prokof'eva', Sovetskaia muzyka, 8/9 (September 1940), 7-26, here 9
127. A. Shaverdian, 'Zametki o sovetskoi opere', Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 2 June 1938, 3
128. S. Gorodetskii, 'Libretto sovetskoi opery', Sovetskaia muzyka, 8/2 (February 1940), 16-21, here 19
129. Maksimenkov, Sumbur vmesto muzyki, 23-32
130. Maksimenkov, 27-8
131. According to Thomas Epstein, 'some theorists of Russian postmodernism have argued in favor of identifying socialist realism as the first manifestation of the postmodern spirit in Soviet culture'; Thomas Epstein, 'Introduction', in Mikhail Epstein, Alexander Genis and Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover, Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture, trans. and ed. Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover (New York, 1999), vii-xii, here viii
132. Mikhail Epstein has claimed that 'what is called postmodernism in contemporary Russia is not only a response to its Western counterpart but also represents a new developmental stage of the same artistic mentality that generated socialist realism'; Mikhail N. Epstein, After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture, trans. Anesa Miller-Pogacar (Amherst, 1995), 189
133. In particular see Sheila Fitzpatrick, Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (New York and Oxford, 1994)
134. and Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley ald Los Angeles, 1995)