Contemporary proof of the immense success ofThe Miller(Melnik-Koldoun) is not wanting. The Dramatic Dictionary for 1787 informs us that it was played twenty-seven nights running and that the theatre was always full. Not only were the Russians pleased with it, but it interested the foreigners at Court. The most obvious proof of its popularity may be found in the numerous inferior imitations which followed in its wake.
The libretto ofThe Miller, like that ofAniouta, was tinged by a cautious liberalism. Here it is not a peasant, but a peasant proprietor, who “tills and toils and from the peasants collects the rent” who plays the principal rôle. The part of the Miller was admirably acted by Kroutitsky (1754-83), who, after the first performance, was called to the Empress’s box and presented with a gold watch. But undoubtedly Fomin’s music helped the success of the opera. The work has been reissued with an interesting preface by P. Karatagyn (Jurgenson, Moscow), so that it is easily accessible to those who are interested in the early history of Russian opera. The music is somewhat amateurish and lacking in technical resource.Fomin does not venture upon a chorus, although there are occasionally couplets with choral refrains; lyric follows lyric, and the duets are really alternating solos with a few phrases in thirds at the close of the verses. But the public in Russia in the eighteenth century was not very critical, and took delight in the novel sensation of hearing folk-songs on the stage. In the second act the heroine Aniouta sings a pretty melody based on a familiar folk-tune which awakened great enthusiasm among the audience. The songs and their words stand so close to the original folk-tunes that no doubt they carried away all the occupants of the pit and the cheap places; while, for the more exacting portion of the audience, the rôle of the Miller was written in the conventional style of theopera buffa. This judicious combination pleased all tastes.
We find far greater evidences of technical capacity in Fomin’s operaThe Americans, composed some thirteen years later. In the second act there is a fairly developed love-duet between Gusman and Zimara; the quartets and choruses, though brief, are freer and more expressive; there is greater variety of modulation, and altogether the work shows some reflection of Mozart’s influence, and faintly foreshadows a more modern school to come. The libretto is extremely naïve, the Americansbeing in reality the indigenous inhabitants, the Red Indians; but there is nothing in the music allotted to them which differentiates them from the Spanish characters in the opera. The advance, however, in the music as compared with that of his earlier operas proves that Fomin must have possessed real and vital talent. Yet it is byThe Millerthat he will live in the memory of the Russian people, thanks to his use of the folk-tunes. To quote from Karatagyn’s preface to this work: “Fomin has indisputably the right to be called our first national composer. Before the production ofThe Miller, opera in Russia had been entirely in the hands of travelling Italianmaestri. Galuppi, Sarti, Paisiello, Cimarosa, Salieri, Martini, and others ruled despotically over the Court orchestra and singers. Only Italian music was allowed to have an existence and Russian composers could not make their way at all except under the patronage of the Italians.” This sometimes led to tragic results, as in the case of Berezovsky, whose efforts to free himself from the tutelage of Sarti cost him the patronage of the great Potemkin and drove him to a pitch of despair which ended in suicide. Too much weight, however, must not be attached to this resentment against the Italian influence, so loudly expressed in Russia and elsewhere. The Italians only reigned supreme in the landsof their musical conquest so long as there existed no national composer strong enough to compete with them. Fomin’s success clearly proves that as soon as a native musician appeared upon the scene who could give the people of their own, in a style that was not too elevated for their immature tastes, he had not to complain of any lack of enthusiasm.
It is to be regretted that none of his contemporaries thought it worth while to write his biography, but at that time Russian literature was purely aristocratic, and Fomin, though somewhat of a hero, was of the people—a serf.
Contemporary history is equally silent as regards Michael Matinsky, who died in the second decade of the nineteenth century. He, too, was a serf, born on the estate of Count Yagjinsky and sent by his master to study music in Italy. He composed several operas, the most successful of which wasThe Gostinny Dvor in St. Petersburg, a work that eventually travelled to Moscow. In his youth Matinsky is said to have played in Count Razoumovsky’s private band. In addition to his musical activity he held the post of professor of geometry in the Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg.
Vassily Paskievich was chamber-musician to the Empress Catherine II. In 1763 he was engaged, first as violinist, and then ascomposer, at the theatres in St. Petersburg; he also conducted the orchestra at the state balls. Some of his songs, which are sentimental, but pleasingly national in colour, are still popular in Russia. He is said to have written seven operas in all. The first of these,Love brings Trouble, was produced at the Hermitage Theatre in 1772. Some years later he was commissioned to set to music a libretto written by the Empress Catherine herself. The subject of this opera is taken from the tale ofTsarevich Feveï, a panegyric upon the good son of a Siberian king who was patriotic and brave—in fact possessed of all the virtues. In her choice of subject the Empress seems to have been influenced by her indulgent affection for her favourite grandchild, the future Alexander I. Prince Feveï does nothing to distinguish himself, but most of the characters in the opera go into ecstasies over his charms and qualities, and it is obvious that in this libretto Catherine wished to pay a flattering compliment to her grandson. There are moments in the music which must have appealed to the Russian public, especially an aria “Ah, thou, my little father,” sung in the style of an old village dame. Other numbers in the opera have the same rather sickly-sweet flavour that prevails in Paskievich’s songs. The redeeming feature of the opera was probably its Kalmuc element, which must have imparteda certain humour and oriental character to both words and music. In one place the text runs something like this: “Among the Kalmuc folk we eat kaimak, souliak, tourmak, smoke tabac(co) and drink koumiss,” and the ring of these unfamiliar words may have afforded some diversion to the audiences of those days.[7]
A CHURCH SERVICE, PROCESSION OF BOYARDS From 16th century contemporary prints, attributed to Jost Amman.A CHURCH SERVICE, PROCESSION OF BOYARDS From 16th century contemporary prints, attributed to Jost Amman.A CHURCH SERVICE, PROCESSION OF BOYARDSFrom 16th century contemporary prints, attributed to Jost Amman.
But however dull the subject ofFeveïmay appear to modern opera-goers, that of Paskievich’s third opera,Fedoul and Her Children, must surely take the prize for ineptitude even among Russian operas of the eighteenth century. Fedoul, a widow, announces to her fifteen grown-up children her intention of getting married again to a young widower; at first the family not unnaturally grumble at the prospect of a step-father, but having been scandalised by the marriage with the prince in the first act, they solemnly sing his praises in the finale of the last.
In co-operation with Sarti and Canobbio, Paskievich composed the music to another book by the Empress Catherine, entitledThe Early Reign of Oleg, produced at the Hermitage Theatre, St. Petersburg, September, 1794. Paskievich’s share of this work seems to have been the choruses, which give a touch of national sentiment to the opera. Here he uses themes that have now become familiar to us in the worksof later Russian musicians, such as theSlavsiain honour of the Tsar, and the Little Russian theme “The Crane” (Jouravel), which Tchaikovsky employed in his Second Symphony. The orchestral accompaniments sometimes consist of variations upon the theme, a form much favoured by Russian musicians of a more modern school. Other operas by Paskievich areThe Two Antons(1804) andThe Miser(1811). Paskievich had not as strong a talent as Fomin, but we must give him credit, if not for originating, at least for carrying still further the use of the folksong in Russian opera.
In a book which is intended to give a general survey of the history of Russian opera to English readers, it is hardly necessary to enter into details about such composers as Vanjour, Bulant, Briks, A. Plestcheiev, Nicholas Pomorsky, the German, Hermann Raupach, Canobbio, Kerzelli, Troinni, Staubinger, and other musicians, Russian and foreign, who played more or less useful minor parts in the musical life of St. Petersburg and Moscow during the second half of the eighteenth century.
Three Italians and two Russians, however, besides those already mentioned, stand out more prominently from the ranks and deserve to be mentioned here.
Vincente Martin (Martin y Solar), of Spanish descent, born about 1754, migrated in hisboyhood to Italy, where he was known aslo Spagnulo. He wrote an opera,Iphigenia in Aulis, for the carnival in Florence in 1781, and having won some reputation as a composer in Italy, went to Vienna in 1785. Here his success was immense, so much so that his operaUna Cosa Rarawas a serious rival to Mozart’s “Nozze di Figaro.” A year later Mozart paid Martin the compliment of introducing a fragment ofUna Cosa Rarainto the finale of the second act of “Don Juan.” Martin went to St. Petersburg in 1788, at the invitation of the Italian opera company. During his stay in Russia eight of his operas were given in the vernacular, includingDianino, anopera d’occasion, the text by Catherine the Great;La Cosa Rara, translated by Dmitrievsky;Fedoul and her Children, in which he co-operated with the native composer Paskievich;A Village Festival, the libretto by V. Maikov, and a comic opera in one act,Good Luke, or Here’s my day, the words by Kobyakov. The fact that he wrote so frequently to Russian texts entitles him to a place in the history of Russian opera. Martin was held in great honour in the capital, and the Emperor Paul I. made him a Privy Councillor. This did not prevent him, however, from suffering from the fickleness of fashion, for in 1808 the Italians were replaced by a French opera company and Martin lost his occupation. Hecontinued, however, to live in Russia, teaching at the Smolny monastery and in the aristocratic families of St. Petersburg, where he died in May, 1810.
Among the foreigners who visited Russia in the time of Catherine the Great, none was more distinguished than Guiseppe Sarti. Born at Faenza in December, 1729, celebrated as a composer of opera by the time he was twenty-four, he was appointed in 1753 Director of the Italian opera, and Court Capellmeister to Frederick V. of Denmark. He lived in Copenhagen, with one interval of three years, until the summer of 1775, when he returned to Italy and subsequently became Maestro di Capella of the cathedral of Milan. Here he spent nine years of extraordinary activity composing fifteen operas, besides cantatas, masses and motets. In 1784 Catherine the Great tempted him to visit St. Petersburg, and constituted him her Court-composer. His operaArmidawas received with great enthusiasm in the Russian capital in 1786. It was sung in Italian, for it was not until 1790 that Sarti took part in the composition of an opera written to a Russian libretto. This was theEarly Rule of Oleg, the book from the pen of the Empress herself, in which he co-operated with Paskievich. He also composed aTe Deumin celebration of the fall of Ochakov before the army of Potemkin;this was for double chorus, its triumphal effect being enhanced by drums and salvos of artillery; a procedure which no doubt set a precedent for Tchaikovsky when he came to write his occasional Overture “1812.” Many honours fell to Sarti’s lot during the eighteen years he lived in Russia, among others the membership of the Academy of Science. The intrigues of the Italian singer Todi obliged him to retire for a time to a country estate belonging to Potemkin in the Ukraine; but he was eventually reinstated in Catherine’s good graces. After the Empress’s death he determined to return to Italy, but stayed for a time in Berlin, where he died in 1802.
Giovanni Paesiello (1741-1816) was another famous Italian whom Catherine invited to St. Petersburg in 1776, where he remained as “Inspector of the Italian operas both serious and buffa” until 1784. Not one of the series of operas which he wrote during his sojourn in St. Petersburg was composed to a Russian libretto or sung in the Russian tongue. HisBarber of Seville, written during the time when he was living in St. Petersburg, afterwards became so popular with the Italians that when Rossini ventured to make use of the same subject the public regarded it as a kind of sacrilege. Paesiello’s influence on Russian opera was practically nil.
The generous offers of Catherine the Great drew Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785) to St. Petersburg in 1765. One can but admire the spirit of these eighteenth-century Italian musicians—many of them being well advanced in years—who were willing to leave the sunny skies of Italy for the “Boreal clime” of St. Petersburg. Galuppi acted as the Director of the Imperial Court Chapel for three years, and was the first foreigner to compose music to a text in the ecclesiastical Slavonic, and to introduce the motet (the Russian name for which is “concert”) into the service of the Orthodox Church. His operas,Il Ré Pastore,Didone, andIphigenia in Taurida, the last named being composed expressly for the St. Petersburg opera, were all given during his sojourn in the capital, but there is no record to prove that any one of these works was sung in Russian.
Maxim Sozontovich Berezovsky[8](1745-1777) studied at the School of Divinity at Kiev, whence, having a remarkably fine voice, he passed into the Imperial Court Chapel. In 1765 he was sent at the Government expense to study under the famous Padre Martini at Bologna. His studies were brilliant, and he returned to St. Petersburgfull of hope and ambition, only to find himself unequal to coping with the intrigues of the Italian musicians at Court. Discouraged and disappointed, his mind gave way, and he committed suicide at the age of thirty-two. He left a few sacred compositions (a capella) which showed the highest promise. While in Italy he composed an opera to an Italian libretto entitledDemofontiwhich was performed with success at Bologna and Livorno.
Dmitri Stepanovich Bortniansky, born in 1751, also began his career as a chorister in the Court Choir, where he attracted the attention of Galuppi, who considered his talents well worth cultivation. When Galuppi returned to Italy in 1768, Bortniansky was permitted to join him the following year in Venice, where he remained until 1779. He was then recalled to Russia and filled various important posts connected with the Imperial Court Choir. He is now best known as a composer of sacred music, some of his compositions being still used in the services of the Orthodox Church. Although somewhat mellifluous and decidedly Italianised in feeling, his church music is not lacking in beauty. He wrote four operas, two to Italian and two to French texts. The titles of the Italian operas are as follows:Alcide, Azioni teatrale postea in musica da Demetrio Bortnianski, 1778, in Venezia; andQuinto Fabio,drama per musica rappresentata nel ducal teatro di Modena, il carnavale dell’anno 1779. The French comic operaLe Fauconwas composed for the entertainment of the Tsarevich Paul Petrovich and his Court at Gatchina (1786); whileLe Fils Rivalwas produced at the private theatre at Pavlovsk in 1787, also for the Tsarevich Paul and his wife Maria Feodorovna.
Throughout the preceding chapters I have used the word “opera” as a convenient general term for the works reviewed in them; but although a few such works composed by Italians, or under strong Italian influences, might be accurately described as melodic opera, the nearer they approach to this type the less they contain of the Russian national style. For the most part, however, these productions of the eighteenth century were in the nature of vaudevilles: plays with couplets and other incidental music inserted, in which, as Cheshikin points out, the verses were often rather spoken than sung; consequently the form was more declamatory than melodic. Serov, in a sweeping criticism of the music of this period, says that it was for the most part commissioned from the pack of needy Italians who hung about the Court in the various capacities ofmaîtres d’hôtel, wig-makers, costumiers, and confectioners. This, as we have seen, is somewhat exaggerated, since Italy sent some of her bestmen to the Court of Catherine II. But even admitting that a large proportion of the musicians who visited Russia were less than second-rate, yet beneath this tawdry and superficial foreign disguise the pulse of national music beat faintly and irregularly. If some purely Italian tunes joined to Russian words made their way into various spheres of society, and came to be accepted by the unobservant as genuine national melodies, on the other hand some true folk-songs found their way into semi-Italian operas and awoke the popular enthusiasm, as we have witnessed in the works of Fomin and Paskievich. In one respect the attitude of the Russian public in the eighteenth century towards imported opera differed from our own. All that was most successful in Western Europe was brought in course of time to St. Petersburg, but a far larger proportion of the foreign operas were translated into the vernacular than was the case in this country.
With regard to the location of opera, the first “opera house” was erected by the Empress Anne in St. Petersburg, but was not used exclusively for opera, French plays and other forms of entertainment being also given there. The building was burnt down in 1749, and the theatrical performances were continued temporarily in the Empress’s state apartment. A new, stone-built opera house was opened in St.Petersburg in 1750, after the accession of the Empress Elizabeth. It was situated near the Anichkov Palace. Catherine the Great added another stone theatre to the capital in 1774, which was known as “The Great Theatre.” After damage from fire it was reconstructed and reopened in 1836.[9]Rebuilt again in 1880, it became the home of the Conservatoire and the office of the Imperial Musical Society. Besides these buildings, the Hermitage Theatre, within the walls of the Winter Palace, was often used in the time of Catherine the Great.
In Moscow the ItalianentrepreneurLocatelli began to solicit the privilege of building a new theatre in 1750. Six years later he was accorded the necessary permission, and the building was opened in January, 1759. But Locatelli was not very successful, and his tenure only lasted three years. Titov managed the Moscow theatre from 1766 to the death of Catherine in 1796. After this the direction passed into the hands of Prince Ouroussov, who in association with a Jew named Medoks[10]proceeded to build a new and luxurious theatre in Petrovsky Street. Prince Ouroussov soon retired, leaving Medoks sole manager. The season began with comic operas such asThe Millerby Fomin. In 1805the Petrovsky theatre shared the fate of so many Russian buildings and was destroyed by fire.
Alexander I. succeeded the unfortunate Paul Petrovich, done to death in the Mikhaïlovsky Palace during the night of March 23rd, 1801. With his advent, social sentiment in Russia began to undergo a complete revolution. The Napoleonic wars in Western Europe, in which the Russian troops took part, culminating in the French invasion of 1812, awoke all the latent patriotism of the nation. The craze for everything foreign, so marked under the rule of Catherine II., now gave place to ultra-patriotic enthusiasm. This reaction, strongly reflected in the literature of the time, was not without its influence on musical taste. In Russia, music and literature have always been closely allied, and the works of the great poet Poushkin, of the fabulist Krylov, and the patriotic historian Karamzin, gave a strong impulse and a new tone to the art. At the same time a wave of romanticism passed over Russia. This was partly the echo of Byron’s popularity, then at its height in England and abroad; and partly the outcome of the annexation of the old kingdom of Georgia, in 1801, which turned the attention of Young Russia to the magic beauty and glamour of the Caucasus.
There was now much discussion about nationalmusic, and a great deal was done to encourage its progress; but during the first quarter of the nineteenth century composers had but a superficial idea of the meaning of a national school, and were satisfied that a Russian subject and a selection of popular tunes constituted the only formula necessary for the production of a native opera.
During his short reign the Emperor Paul had not contributed to the advancement of music, but in spite of somewhat unfavourable conditions, an Italian opera company under the management of Astarito[11]visited St. Petersburg in 1797. Among their number was a talented young Italian, Catterino Cavos, whose name is inseparably connected with the musical history of Russia. Born at Venice in 1776, the son of the musical director of the celebrated “Fenice” Theatre, it is said that at fourteen Cavos was the chosen candidate for the post of organist of St. Mark’s Cathedral, but relinquished his chance in favour of a poor musician. The story is in accordance with what we read of his magnanimity in later life. His gifts were remarkable, and in 1799 he was appointed Court Capellmeister. In 1803 he became conductor of the Italian, Russian and French opera companies. Part of his duties consisted in composing for all three institutions.Light opera and ballet, given by the French company, was then all the fashion in St. Petersburg. Cavos quickly realised the direction and scope of the public taste, and soon began to write operas to romantic and legendary subjects borrowed from Russian history and folk-lore, and endeavoured to give his music a decided touch of national colour. In May, 1804, he made an immense success with hisRoussalka of the Dneiper, in which he had the co-operation of Davidov. The following year he dispensed with all assistance and produced a four-act opera to a Russian text calledThe Invisible Prince, which found great favour with the public. Henceforth, through over thirty years of unresting creative activity, Cavos continued to work this popular vein. His operas have practically all sunk into oblivion, but the catalogue of their titles is still of some interest to students of Russian opera, because several of his subjects have since been treated and re-vitalised by a more recent generation of native composers. His chief works, given chronologically, are as follows:Ilya the Hero, the libretto by Krilov (1806);The Three Hunchback Brothers(1808);The Cossack Poet(1812);The Peasants, or the Unexpected Meeting(1814);Ivan Sousanin(1815);The Ruins of Babylon(1818);Dobrinya Nikitich(1810); andThe Bird of Fire(1822)—the last two in co-operation with Antonolini;Svietlana, text by Joukovsky (1822);The Youth of Joan III.(1822);The Mountains of Piedmont, or The Devil’s Bridge(1825);Miroslava, or the Funeral Pyre(1827).
The foregoing list does not include any works which Cavos wrote to French or Italian texts, amounting to nearly thirty in all. InIlya the HeroCavos made his first attempt to produce a national epic opera. Founded on the Legend of Ilya Mouromets, from the Cycle of Kiev, the opera is not lacking in spirit, and evoked great enthusiasm in its day, especially one martial aria, “Victory, victory, Russian hero!” Cavos was fortunate in having secured as librettist a very capable writer, Prince Shakovsky, who also supplied the text forIvan Sousanin, the most successful of all Cavos’s national operas; although we shall see in the next chapter how completely it was supplanted in the popular favour by Glinka’s work dealing with the same subject.
In the spring of 1840 Cavos’s health began to fail, and he received leave of absence from his many arduous but lucrative official posts. He became, however, rapidly much worse and had to abandon the idea of a journey. He died in St. Petersburg on April 28th (O.S.). His loss was deeply felt by the Russian artists, to whom, unlike many of his Italian predecessors, he had always shown generous sympathy;they paid him a last tribute of respect by singing Cherubini’sRequiemat his funeral.
The Russian musician Youry Arnold, who was well acquainted with Cavos in the later years of his life, describes him at sixty as a robust and energetic man, who was at his piano by 9 a.m., rehearsing the soloists till 1 p.m., when he took the orchestral rehearsals. If by any chance these ended a little sooner than he expected, he would occupy himself again with the soloists. At 5 p.m. he made his report to the Director of the Imperial Theatres, and then went home to dine. But he never failed to appear at the Opera House punctually at 7 o’clock. On evenings when there was no performance he devoted extra time to his soloists. He worked thus conscientiously and indefatigably year after year. He was not, however, indifferent to the pleasures of the table and was something of agourmet. Even in the far-distant north he managed to obtain consignments of his favourite “vino nero.” “He told me more than once,” said Arnold, “that except with tea, he had never in the whole course of his life swallowed a mouthful of water: ‘Perchè cosa snaturalle, insoffribile e nocevole!’”
Cavos was an admirable and painstaking conductor, and his longrégimemust have greatly contributed to the discipline and good organisationof the opera, both as regards orchestra and singers. His own works, as might be expected from a musician whose whole life was spent in studying the scores of other composers, were not highly original. He wrote well, and with knowledge, for the voice, and his orchestration was adequate for that period, but his music lacks homogeneity, and reminiscences of Mozart, Cherubini and Méhul mingle with echoes of the Russian folk-songs in the pages of his operas. But the public of his day were on the whole well satisfied with Russian travesties of Italian and Viennese vaudevilles. It is true that new sentiments were beginning to rouse the social conscience, but the public was still a long way from desiring idealistic truth, let alone realism, in its music and literature. In spite of the one electrical thrill which Glinka administered to the public inA Life for the Tsar, opera was destined to be regarded for many years to come as a pleasing and not too exacting form of recreation. The libretto of Cavos’sIvan Sousaninshows what society demanded from opera even as late as 1815; for here this tragedy of unquestioning loyalty to an ideal is made to end quite happily. At the moment when the Poles were about to slay him in the forest, Sousanin is rescued by a Russian boyard and his followers, and the hero, robust and jovial, lives to moralise over the footlights in thefollowing couplets, in which he takes leave of the audience:
Now let the cruel foe beware,And tremble all his days;But let each loyal Russian heartRejoice in songs of praise.
Now let the cruel foe beware,And tremble all his days;But let each loyal Russian heartRejoice in songs of praise.
Now let the cruel foe beware,And tremble all his days;But let each loyal Russian heartRejoice in songs of praise.
At the same time it must be admitted that in this opera Cavos sometimes gives an echo of the genuine national spirit. The types of Sousanin and his young son Alexis, and of Masha and her husband, Matthew, are so clearly outlined, says Cheshikin, that Glinka had only to give them more relief and finish. The well-constructed overture, the duet between Masha and Alexis, and the folk-chorus “Oh, do not rave wild storm-wind” are all far in advance of anything to be found in the Russian operas of the eighteenth century.
Among those who were carried along by the tide of national feeling which rose steadily in Russia from 1812 onward was the gifted amateur Alexis Nicholaevich Verstovsky. Born in 1799, near Tambov, the son of a country gentleman, Verstovsky was educated at the Institute of Engineers, St. Petersburg, where he took pianoforte lessons from John Field, and later on from Steibelt. He also learnt some theory from Brandt and Steiner; singing from an operatic artist named Tarquini; and violin from Böhm and Maurer. Verstovsky composed his firstvaudeville at nineteen and its success encouraged him to continue on the same lines. In 1823 he was appointed Director of the Moscow Opera, where he produced a whole series of operettas and vaudevilles, many of which were settings of texts translated from the French. After a time he became ambitious of writing a serious opera, and in May 1828, he produced hisPan Tvardovsky, the libretto by Zagoskin and Aksakov, well known literary men of the day. The book is founded on an old Polish or Malo-Russian legend, the hero being a kind of Slavonic Faust. The music was influenced by Méhul and Weber, but Verstovsky introduced a gipsy chorus which in itself won immediate popularity for the opera. Its success, though brilliant, was short-lived.
Pan Tvardovskywas followed byVadim, or the Twenty Sleeping Maidens, based on a poem by Joukovsky, but the work is more of the nature of incidental music to a play than pure opera.
Askold’s Tomb, Verstovsky’s third opera, by which he attained his greatest fame, will be discussed separately.
Homesickness(Toska po rodine), the scene laid in Spain, was a poor work produced for the benefit night of the famous Russian bass O. A. Petrov, the precursor of Shaliapin.
The Boundary Hills, or the Waking Dream,stands nearest in order of merit toAskold’s Tomb. The scene is laid in mythical times, and the characters are supernatural beings, such as Domovoi (the House Spirit), Vodyanoi (the Water Sprite) and Liessnoi (the Wood Spirit). The music breathes something of the spirit of Russian folk-song, and a Slumber Song, a Triumphal March, and a very effectively mounted Russian Dance, which the composer subsequently added to the score, were the favourite numbers in this opera.
Verstovsky’s last operaGromoboiwas based upon the first part of Joukovsky’s poem “The Twenty Sleeping Maidens.” An oriental dance (Valakhsky Tanets) from this work was played at one of the concerts of the Imperial Russian Musical Society, and Serov speaks of it as being quite Eastern in colour, original and attractive as regards melody but poorly harmonised and orchestrated as compared with theLezginkafrom Glinka’sRusslan and Liudmilla, the lively character of the dance being very similar.
A few of the composers mentioned in the previous chapter were still working in Russia at the same time as Verstovsky. Of those whose compositions belong more particularly to the first forty years of the nineteenth century, the following are most worthy of notice:
Joseph Antonovich Kozlovsky (1757-1831), of Polish birth, began life as a soldier in PrincePotemsky’s army. The prince’s attention having been called to the young man’s musical talents, he appointed him director of his private band in St. Petersburg. Kozlovsky afterwards entered the orchestra of the Imperial Opera. He wrote music to Oserov’s tragedyŒdipus in Athens(1804); toFingal(1805),Deborah, libretto by Shakovsky (1810),Œdipus Rex(1811), and to Kapnist’s translation of Racine’sEsther(1816).
Ludwig Maurer (1789-1878), a famous German violinist, played in the orchestra at Riga in his early days, and after touring abroad and in Russia settled in St. Petersburg about 1820, where he was appointed leader of the orchestra at the French theatre in 1835. Ten years later he returned to Germany and gave many concerts in Western Europe; but in 1851 he went back to St. Petersburg as Inspector-General of all the State theatrical orchestras. Maurer is best known by his instrumental compositions, especially his Concertos for four violins and orchestra, but he wrote music for several popular vaudevilles with Russian text, and co-operated occasionally with Verstovsky and Alabiev.
The brothers Alexis and Sergius Titov were types of the distinguished amateurs who played such an important part in the musical life of Russia during the first half of the lastcentury. Alexis (d. 1827) was the father of that Nicholas Titov often called “the ancestor of Russian song.” He served in the Cavalry Guards and rose to the rank of Major-General. An admirable violinist, he was also a voluminous composer. Stassov gives a list of at least fourteen operas, melodramas, and other musical works for the stage, many of which were written to French words. His younger brother Sergius (b. 1770) is supposed to have supplied music toThe Forced Marriage, text by Plestcheiev (1789),La Veillée des Paysans(1809),Credulity(1812), and, in co-operation with Bluhm,Christmas Festivals of Old(1813). It is probable that he had a hand in the long list of works attributed to his brother Alexis, and most of the Russian musical historians seem puzzled to decide how to apportion to each of the brothers his due share of creative activity.
A composer belonging to this period is known by name even beyond the Russian frontiers, owing to the great popularity of one of his songs, “The Nightingale.” Alexander Alexandrovich Alabiev was born at Moscow, August 4th, 1787[12](O.S.). He entered the military service and, becoming acquainted with Verstovsky, co-operatedin several of his vaudevilles. For some breach of discipline Alabiev was exiled for a time to Tobolsk. Inspired by the success of Cavos’s semi-national operas, Alabiev attempted a Russian fairy opera entitledA Moonlight Night or the Domovoï. The opera was produced in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but did not long hold a place in the repertory of either theatre. He next attempted music to scenes from Poushkin’s poemThe Prisoner in the Caucasus, a naïve work in which the influence of Bellini obscures the faint national and Eastern colour which the atmosphere of the work imperatively demands. Alabiev, after his return from Siberia, settled in Moscow, where he died February 22nd, 1851 (O.S.).
MICHAEL IVANOVICH GLINKA From a portrait by RepinMICHAEL IVANOVICH GLINKAFrom a portrait by Repin
INthe preceding chapters I have shown how long and persistently Russian society groped its way towards an ideal expression of nationalism in music. Gifted foreigners, such as Cavos, had tried to catch some faint echo of the folk-song and reproduce it disguised in Italian accents; talented, but poorly equipped, Russian musicians had exploited the music of the people with a certain measure of success, but without sufficient conviction or genius to form the solid basis of a national school. Yet all these strivings and aspirations, these mistaken enthusiasms and immature presentiments, were not wasted. Possibly the sacrifice of many talents is needed before the manifestation of one genius can be fulfilled. When the yearning after a musical Messiah had acquired sufficient force, the right man appeared in the person of Michael Ivanovich Glinka. With his advent we reach the first great climax in the history of Russian music.
It is in accordance with the latent mysticism and the ardour smouldering under the semi-oriental indolence of the Russian temperament that so many of their great men—especially their musicians—seem to have arrived at the consciousness of their vocation through a kind of process of conversion. Moussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov, to mention but one or two examples, all awoke suddenly from a condition of mental sloth or frivolity to the conviction of their artistic mission; and some of them were prepared to sacrifice social position and an assured livelihood for the sake of a new, ideal career. Glinka was no exception. He, too, heard his divine call and followed it. Lounging in the theatres and concert rooms of Italy, listening to Italian singers and fancying himself “deeply moved” by Bellini’s operas, suddenly it flashed upon Glinka, a cultivated amateur, that this was not what he needed to stimulate his inspiration. This race, this art, were alien to him and could never take the place of his own people. This swift sense of remoteness, this sudden change of thought and ideal, constituted the psychological moment in the history of Russian music. Glinka’s first impulse was merely to write a better Russian opera than his predecessors; but this impulse held the germ of the whole evolution of the new Russian School as we know it to-day.
It is rather remarkable that outside the Russian language so little has been written about this germinal genius, who summed up the ardent desires of many generations and begat a great school of national music. The following details of his childhood and early youth are taken from his Autobiographical Notes and now appear for the first time in an English translation.
“I was born on June 2nd (May 20th, O.S.), 1804, in the glow of the summer dawn at the village of Novospasskoï, which belonged to my father, Ivan Nicolaevich Glinka, a retired army captain.... Shortly after my birth, my mother, Eugenia Andreievna (néeGlinka), was obliged to leave my early bringing up to my grandmother who, having taken possession of me, had me transferred to her own room. Here in company with her, a foster mother, and my nurse, I spent the first three or four years of my life, rarely seeing anything of my parents. I was a child of delicate constitution and of nervous tendencies. My grandmother was in her declining years, and almost always ailing, consequently the temperature of her room in which I lived was never less than 20 Réaumur.... In spite of this, I was not allowed to take off my pelisse, and night and day I was given tea with cream and quantities of sugar in it, and also cracknels and fancy bread of all kinds. I seldom went into the fresh air, and then onlyin hot weather. There is no doubt that this early upbringing had a great influence on my physical development and explains my unconquerable affection for warm climates....
“My grandmother spoilt me to an incredible degree and never denied me anything I wanted. In spite of this I was a gentle and well-behaved child, and only indulged in passing fits of peevishness—as indeed I still do when disturbed at one of my favourite occupations. One of my chief amusements was to lie flat on the floor and draw churches and trees with a bit of chalk. I was piously inclined, and church ceremonies, especially at the great festivals, filled me heart and soul with the liveliest poetic enthusiasm. Having learnt to read at a remarkably early age, I often moved my grandmother and her elderly friends to tears by reading the Scriptures aloud to them. My musical proclivities showed themselves at that time in a perfect passion for the sound of bells; I drank in these harsh sounds, and soon learnt how to imitate them rather cleverly by means of two copper bowls. When I was ill they used to give me a little hand-bell to keep me amused.
“On the death of my grandmother, my way of living underwent some changes. My mother spoilt me rather less, and tried to accustom me to the fresh air; but her efforts in this directionwere not very successful.... My musical sense still remained undeveloped and crude. In my eighth year (1812), when we were delivered from the French invasion, I listened with all my old delight to the ringing of the bells, distinguishing the peals of the different churches, and imitating them on my copper bowls.
“Being entirely surrounded by women, and having for playmates only my sister, who was a year younger than myself, and my nurse’s little daughter, I was never like other boys of my age; moreover the passion for study, especially of geography and drawing—and in the latter I had begun to make sensible progress—drew me away from childish pastimes, and I was, from the first, of a quiet and gentle disposition.
“At my father’s house we often received many relatives and guests; this was usually the case on his name-day, or when someone came to stay whom he wished to entertain with special honours. On these occasions he would send for the musicians belonging to my maternal uncle, who lived eight versts away. They often remained with us for several days, and when the dances were over and the guests departed, they used to play all sorts of pieces. I remember once (it was in 1814, or 1815, when I was about ten) they played a quartet by Cruselli; this music produced in me an inconceivably new and rapturous effect; after hearing it I remainedall day long in a state of feverish excitement, lost in inexplicably sweet dreamy emotions, and the next day at my drawing lesson I was quite absent-minded. My distracted condition increased as the lesson proceeded, and my teacher, remarking that I was drawing very carelessly, scolded me repeatedly, until finally guessing what was the matter with me, said that I now thought of nothing but music. ‘What’s to be done?’ I answered: ‘music is the soul of me!’
“In truth at that time I loved music passionately. My uncle’s orchestra was the source of the liveliest delight to me. When they played dances, such as écossaises, quadrilles and valses, I used to snatch up a violin or piccolo and join in with them, simply alternating between tonic and dominant. My father was often annoyed with me because I did not dance, and deserted our guests; but at the first opportunity I slipped back again among the musicians. During supper they generally played Russian folk-songs arranged for two flutes, two clarinets, two horns, and two bassoons; this poignantly tender, but for me perfectly satisfactory, combination delighted me (I could hardly endure shrill sounds, even the lower notes of the horn when they were not played loud), and perhaps these songs, heard in my childhood, were the first cause of my preference in later years forRussian folk-melodies. About this time we had a governess from St. Petersburg called Barbara Klemmer. She was a girl about twenty, very tall, strict and exacting. She taught us Russian, French, German, geography and music.... Although our music lessons, which included reading from notes and the rudiments of the piano, were rather mechanical, yet I made rapid progress with her, and shortly after she came one of the first violins from my uncle’s band was employed to teach me the fiddle. Unfortunately he himself did not play quite in tune and held his bow very stiffly, a bad habit which he passed on to me.
“Although I loved music almost unconsciously, yet I remember that at that time I preferred those pieces which were most accessible to my immature musical intelligence. I enjoyed the orchestra most of all, and next to the Russian songs, my favourite items in their repertory were: the Overtures to ‘Ma Tante Aurore,’ by Boieldieu, to ‘Lodoïska,’ by Rodolph Kreutzer, and to ‘Les Deux Aveugles,’ by Méhul. The last two I liked playing on the piano, as well as some of Steibelt’s sonatas, especially ‘The Storm,’ which I played rather neatly.”
I have quotedverbatimfrom Glinka’s record of his childish impressions, because they undoubtedly influenced his whole after career, andthe nature of his genius was conditioned by them. Like most of the leading representatives of Russian music, Glinka was born and spent the early years of his life in the country, where he assimilated subconsciously the purer elements of the national music which had already begun to be vulgarized, if not completely obliterated, in the great cities. Saved from the multitudinous distractions of town life, the love of the folk-music took root in his heart and grew undisturbed. Had he been brought up in one of the capitals, taken early, as Russian children often were, and still are, to the opera and to concerts, his outlook would have been widened at the expense of his individuality. Later on, as we shall see, he was led away from the tracks of nationality by his enthusiasm for Italian opera; but the strong affections of his childhood guided him back instinctively to that way of art in which he could best turn his gifts to account. It has been said that Glinka remained always somewhat narrow in his ideas and activities; but it was precisely this exclusiveness and concentration that could best serve Russia at the time when he appeared. In his letters and Autobiographical Notes, he often adopts the tone of a genius misunderstood, and hints that an unkind Providence enjoyed putting obstacles in his path. It is true that in later life, after the production of his second opera,Russlan and Liudmilla, he had some grounds for complaining of the fickleness and mental indolence of the Russian public. But his murmurings against destiny must be discounted by the fact that Glinka, the spoilt and delicate child, grew up into Glinka, the idolised and hypochondriacal man. On the whole his life was certainly favourable to his artistic development.
Stassov, in his fine monograph upon the composer, lays stress on this view of Glinka’s career. The history of art, he argues, contains only too many instances of perverted talent; even strongly gifted natures have succumbed to the ill-judged advice of friends, or to the mistaken promptings of their own nature, so that they have wasted valuable years in the manufacture of works which reached to a certain standard of academic excellence, and even beauty, before they realised their true individual vocation and their supreme powers. Glinka was fortunate in his parents, who never actually opposed his inclinations; and perhaps he was equally lucky in his teachers, for if they were not of the very highest class they did not at any rate interfere with his natural tendencies, nor impose upon him severe restrictions of routine and method. Another happy circumstance in his early life, so Stassov thinks, was his almost wholly feminine environment.Glinka’s temperament was dual; on the one hand he possessed a rich imagination, both receptive and creative, and was capable of passionate feeling; in the other side of his nature we find an element of excessive sensibility, a something rather passive and morbidly sentimental. Women had power to soothe and at the same time to stimulate his temperament. Somewhere in his memoirs, Glinka, speaking of his early manhood, says: “At that time I did not care for the society of my own sex, preferring that of women and girls who appreciated my musical gifts.” Stassov considers that these words might be applied to the whole of Glinka’s life, for he always seemed most at ease in the company of ladies.
In the autumn of 1817, being then thirteen, he was sent to the newly opened school for the sons of the aristocracy, where he remained until 1822. His schooldays appear to have been happy and profitable. He was industrious and popular alike with the masters and pupils. In the drawing class the laborious copying from the flat, with its tedious cross-hatching and stippling then in vogue, soon disgusted him. Mathematics did not greatly interest him. Dancing and fencing were accomplishments in which he never shone. But he acquired languages with a wonderful ease, taking up Latin, French, German, English and Persian.In after years he dropped to some extent Persian and English, but became proficient in Italian and Spanish. Geography and zoology both attracted him. That he loved and observed nature is evident from all his writings; and the one thing in which he resembled other boys was in his affection for birds, rabbits, and other pets. While travelling in the Caucasus in 1823 he tamed and kept wild goats, and sometimes had as many as sixteen caged birds in his room at once, which he would excite to song by playing the violin.
Glinka’s parents spared nothing to give their son a good general education, but the idea that they were dealing with a budding musical genius never occurred to them. As he had shown some aptitude for the piano and violin in childhood, he was allowed to continue both these studies while at school in St. Petersburg. He started lessons with the famous Irish composer and pianist John Field, who, being on the eve of his departure for Moscow, was obliged to hand Glinka over to his pupil Obmana. Afterwards he received some instruction from Zeuner, and eventually worked with Carl Meyer, an excellent pianist and teacher, with whom he made rapid progress. At the school concert in 1822, Glinka was the show pupil and played Hummel’s A minor Concerto, Meyer accompanying him on a second piano. With the violinhe made less progress, although he took lessons from Bohm, a distinguished master and virtuoso who had not, however, so Glinka declared, the gift of imparting his own knowledge to others. Bohm would sigh over his pupil’s faulty bowing and remark: “Messieu Klinka, fous ne chouerez chamais du fiolon.”
Glinka’s repertory at nineteen contained nothing more profound than the virtuoso music of Steibelt, Herz, Hummel and Kalkbrenner. Although Beethoven had already endowed the world with his entire series of sonatas, and was then at the zenith of his fame, his music only began to make headway in Russia some ten years later. As time went on, Glinka heard and met most of the great pianists of his day, and his criticisms of their various styles are unconventional and interesting, but would lead us far away from the subject of Russian opera.
Imperfect as his mastery of the violin appears to have been, it was of more importance to his subsequent career than his fluency as a pianist, because during the vacations at home he was now able to take part in earnest in his uncle’s small orchestra. The band generally visited the Glinkas’ estate once a fortnight, and sometimes stayed a whole week. Before the general rehearsal, the son of the house would take each member of the orchestra through his part—with the exception of the leaders—and see thatthey were all note perfect and played in tune. In this way he learnt a good deal about instrumentation and something about the technique of conducting. Their repertory included overtures by Cherubini, Méhul, and Mozart; and three symphonies, Haydn in B, Mozart in G minor, and Beethoven’s second symphony, in D major, the last named being Glinka’s special favourite.
In St. Petersburg he began to frequent the opera, which was not then so exclusively given over to Italian music as it was a few years later. Méhul’s “Joseph,” Cherubini’s “Water-Carriers,” Isouard’s “Gioconda” and Boieldieu’s “Le Bonnet Rouge” were among the works which he heard and admired in the early ’twenties.
In 1824 Glinka entered the Government service as a clerk in the Ministry of Ways and Communications. Here he found several amateurs as enthusiastic as himself, and was soon launched in a social circle where his musical gifts were greatly appreciated and he ran the risk of degenerating into a spoilt dilettante. From the beginning to the end of his career Glinka remained an amateur in that higher sense of the word which implies that he merely wrote what he liked and was exempt from the necessity of composing to order for the sake of a livelihood.
He himself has related the circumstances ofhis first creative impulse. In the spring of 1822, when he was about nineteen, he made the acquaintance of a young lady “of fascinating appearance, who played the harp and had also a beautiful voice. This voice was not to be compared to any musical instrument; it was just a resonant silvery soprano, and she sang naturally and with extraordinary charm. Her attractive qualities and her kindness to me (she called me her nephew and I called her aunt) stirred my heart and my imagination.” We see the rest of the picture: a Petersburg drawing room with its semi-French decoration, an amiable grandpapa reposing in his armchair, while Glinka played by the hour and the young lady joined in with her silvery soprano. So the first compositions were written—“to do her a service and laid at her feet”—variations upon her favourite theme from Weigel’s “Swiss Family,” an opera then all the vogue, variations for harp and piano on a theme by Mozart and an original Valse in F for piano. Of these only the variations for harp survive.
At twenty Glinka took singing lessons from the Italian Belloli. This led to his first essays in song writing, and after one hopeless failure he succeeded in setting some words by Baratynsky, “Do not needlessly torment me.”
Henceforth Glinka began to be conscious of his powers, and between 1825 and 1830 he wasconstantly composing. Although the best of relations existed between himself and his father, he does not seem to have shown him anything of his deeper artistic nature, and Glinka’s family accepted his music merely as an agreeable addition to his social qualities. Meanwhile he wrote many of the songs of his first period, and a few isolated dramatic scenas with orchestral accompaniment, including the Chorus on the Death of a Hero, in C minor, and an Aria for baritone, a part of which he used in the finale of the second act of his operaRusslan and Liudmilla. He also learnt Italian and received some instruction in theory from Zamboni. In 1829 he published an album containing most of his early compositions.
From time to time Glinka was incapacitated by an affection of the eyes, and his general health was far from satisfactory. He was possessed of a craving to travel in Spain or Italy, and his father’s refusal to let him go abroad “hurt me,” he says, “to the point of tears.” However, a famous doctor having examined him, reported to his father that the young man had “a whole quadrille of ailments” and ought to be sent to a warm climate for at least three years. Glinka left Russia for Italy in 1830, and remained abroad until the spring of 1834.
During his visit to Italy, Glinka wrote regularly and fully to his family, but unfortunately thecorrespondence was not deemed worthy of preservation, and the letters were destroyed shortly after his return. If we may judge by the communications to his friends sent later in life from Spain, France and Germany, the destruction of these records of his early impressions is a real loss to musical biography.
The two chief objects of Glinka’s journey abroad were to improve his physical condition and to perfect his musical studies. As regards his health, he was benefited perhaps but not cured. “All his life,” says Stassov, “Glinka was a martyr to doctors and remedies,” and his autobiography is full of details concerning his fainting fits and nervous depression, and his bodily sufferings in general. He had, however, sufficient physical and moral strength to work at times with immense energy.
As regards his musical education, Glinka had now begun to realise that his technical equipment did not keep pace with his creative impulse. He felt the need of that theoretical knowledge which Kirnberg says is to the composer what wings are to a bird. He was by no means so completely ignorant of the theory of his art as many of his critics have insinuated. He had already composed music which was quite on a level with much that was popular in his day, and had won some flattering attentions from musical society in St. Petersburg. We mustrespect the self-criticism which prompted him to put himself to school again at six-and-twenty. But Italy could not give him that deeper and sounder musical culture of which he was in search. In Milan he began to work under Basili, the Director of the Milan Conservatoire, distinguished for having refused a scholarship to Verdi because he showed no aptitude for music. Basili does not seem to have hadla main heureusewith budding genius; Glinka found his methods so dry and pedantic that he soon abandoned his lessons as a waste of time. Nevertheless Italy, then and now the Mecca of all aspiring art students, had much to give to the young Russian. He was deeply impressed by the beauty of his surroundings, but, from the practical side, it was in the art of singing and writing for the voice that Glinka made real progress during his sojourn in the South. He had arrived in Italy in company with Ivanov, who became later on the most famous Russian operatic tenor. Glinka’s father had persuaded the tenor to accompany his son abroad and had succeeded in getting him two years leave of absence from the Imperial Chapel. The opera season 1830-1831 was unusually brilliant at Milan, and the two friends heard Grisi, Pasta, Rubini, Galli and Orlandi. Their greatest experience came at the end of the season, when Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” was mounted for the firsttime, “Pasta and Rubini singing their very best in order to uphold their favouritemaestro.” “We, in our box,” continues Glinka, “shed torrents of tears—tears of emotion and enthusiasm.” But still more important to his appreciation of vocal music was his acquaintance in Naples with Nozzari and Fodor-Mainville. Ivanov studied with both masters, and Glinka was permitted to be present at his lessons. Nozzari had already retired from the stage, but his voice was still in its fullest beauty. His compass was two octaves, from B to B, and his scale so perfect that Glinka says it could only be compared to Field’s scale upon the piano. Under the influence of Italian music, he wrote at this time a few piano pieces and two songs to Russian words. His setting of Koslov’s “Venetian Night” was merely an echo of his surroundings; “The Victor,” music to Joukovsky’s words, showed more promise of originality, and here we find for the first time the use of the plagal cadence which he employed so effectively inA Life for the Tsar.
During the third year of his visit, he felt a conviction that he was moving on the wrong track, and that there was a certain insincerity in all that he was attempting. “It cost me some pains to counterfeit the Italiansentimento brilliante,” he says. “I, a dweller in the North, felt quite differently (from the children ofthe sunny South); with us, things either make no impression at all, or they sink deep into the soul; it is either a frenzy of joy or bitter tears.” These reflections, joined to an acute fit of homesickness, led to his decision to return to Russia. After a few pleasant days spent in Vienna, he travelled direct to Berlin, where he hoped to make up some of the deficiencies of his Italian visit with the assistance of the well-known theorist Siegfried Dehn.
Dehn saw at once that his pupil was gifted with genius, but impatient of drudgery. He gave himself the trouble to devise a short cut to the essentials of musical theory. In five months he succeeded in giving Glinka a bird’s-eye view of harmony and counterpoint, fugue and instrumentation; the whole course being concentrated into four small exercise books. “There is no doubt,” writes Glinka, “that I owe more to Dehn than to any of my masters. He not only put my musical knowledge into order but also my ideas on art in general, and after his lessons I no longer groped my way along, but worked with the full consciousness of what I was doing.”
While studying with Dehn, he still found time for composition, and it is noticeable that what he wrote at this time is by no means Germanised music. Two songs, “The Rustling Oak,” words by Joukovsky, and Delvig’s poem, “Say notthat love has fled,” the Variations for piano on Alabiev’s “Nightingale,” and outlines of the melody for the Orphan’s Song “When they slew my mother,” afterwards used in aLife for the Tsar, besides a sketch for one of the chief themes in the overture of the opera, all tend to prove that he was now deeply preoccupied with the expression of national sentiment in music.
In April 1834 his profitable studies with Dehn were cut short by the death of his father, which necessitated his immediate return to Russia. Stassov sums up the results of this period abroad in the words: “Glinka left us adilettanteand returned amaestro.”
THEidea of composing a national opera now began to take definite shape in Glinka’s mind. In the winter of 1834-1835, the poet Joukovsky was living in the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg as tutor to the young Tsarevich, afterwards Alexander II. The weekly gatherings which he held there were frequented by Poushkin, Gogol, Odoievsky, Prince Vyazemsky—in short, by all the higherintelligentsiaof the capital. Here Glinka, the fame of whose songs sufficed to procure him the entrée to this select society, was always welcome. When he confided to Joukovsky his wish to create a purely Russian opera, the poet took up the idea with ardour and suggested the subject of Ivan Sousanin, which, as we have seen, had already been treated by Cavos. At first Joukovsky offered to write the text of the work and actually supplied verses for the famous trio in the last act: “Not to me, unhappy one, the storm wind brought his last sign.” But his many occupations made itimpossible for him to keep pace with Glinka’s creative activity once his imagination had been fired. Consequently the libretto had to be handed over to Baron Rozen, a Russianised German, secretary to the young Tzarevich. Rozen could hardly have been a whole-hearted patriot; certainly he was no poet. The words of the opera leave much to be desired, but we must make allowances for the fact that Glinka, in his impatience, sometimes expected the librettist to supply words to ready-made music. The opera was first calledIvan Sousanin. Among Glinka’s papers was found the original plan for the work: “Ivan Sousanin, a native tragi-heroic opera, in five acts or sections. Actors: Ivan Sousanin (Bass), the chief character; Antonida, his daughter (Soprano), tender and graceful; Alexis (afterwards Bogdan) Sobinin, her affianced husband (tenor), a brave man; Andrew (afterwards Vanya), an orphan boy of thirteen or fourteen (alto), a simple-hearted character.”
While at work upon the opera in 1835, Glinka married. This, the fulfilment of a long-cherished wish, brought him great happiness. Soon after his marriage he wrote to his mother, “my heart is once more hopeful, I can feel and pray, rejoice and weep—my music is re-awakened; I cannot find words to express my gratitude to Providence for this bliss.” In this beatificstate of mind he threw himself into the completion of his task. During the summer he took the two acts of the libretto which were then ready into the country with him. While travelling by carriage he composed the chorus in 5-4 measure: “Spring waters flow o’er the fields,” the idea of which had suddenly occurred to him. Although a nervous man, he seems to have been able to work without having recourse to the strictly guarded padded-room kind of isolation necessary to so many creative geniuses. “Every morning,” he says in his autobiography, “I sat at a table in the big sitting-room of our house at Novospasskoï, which was our favourite apartment; my mother, my sister and my wife—in fact the whole family—were busy there, and the more they laughed and talked and bustled about, the quicker my work went.” All through the winter, which was spent in St. Petersburg, he was busy with the opera. “The scene where Sousanin leads the Poles astray in the forest, I read aloud while composing, and entered so completely into the situation of my hero that I used to feel my hair standing on end and cold shivers down my back.” During Lent, 1836, a trial rehearsal of the first act was given at the house of Prince Youssipov, with the assistance of his private orchestra. Glinka, satisfied with the results, then made some efforts to get his opera put on the stage, but at first he met withblank refusals from the Direction of the Imperial Theatres. His cause was helped by the generous spirit of Cavos, who refused to see in Glinka a rival in the sphere of patriotic opera, and was ready to accept his work. Even then the Director of the Opera, Gedeonov, demanded from Glinka a written undertaking not to claim any fee for the rights of public performance. Glinka, who was not dependent upon music for a livelihood, submitted to this injustice. The rehearsals were then begun under the supervision of Cavos. The Emperor Nicholas I. attended one of the rehearsals at the great Opera House and expressed his satisfaction, and also his willingness to accept the dedication of the opera. It was then that it received the title by which it has since become famous, Glinka having previously changed the name ofIvan Sousaninto that ofDeath for the Tsar.
The first performance took place on November 27th (O.S.), 1836, in the presence of the Emperor and the Court. “The first act was well received,” wrote Glinka, “the trio being loudly and heartily applauded. The first scene in which the Poles appear (a ballroom in Warsaw) was passed over in complete silence, and I went on the stage deeply wounded by the attitude of the public.” It seems, however, that the silence of the audience proceeded from a certaintimidity as to how they ought to receive the appearance of these magnificent, swaggering Poles in the presence of the Emperor, the Polish insurrection of 1830-1831 being still painfully fresh in the public memory. The rest of the opera was performed amid a scene of unparalleled enthusiasm. The acting of the Russian chorus seems to have been even more realistic in those days than it is now. “In the fourth act,” to quote the composer himself, “the representatives of the Polish soldiers in the scene in the forest, fell upon Petrov (the famous bass who created the part of Sousanin) with such fury that they broke his arm, and he was obliged to defend himself from their attacks in good earnest.” After the performance, Glinka was summoned to the Emperor’s box to receive his compliments, and soon afterwards he was presented with a ring, worth 4,000 roubles, and offered the post of Capellmeister to the Imperial Chapel.
Some account of the story ofA Life for the Tsarwill be of interest to those who have not yet seen the opera, for the passionate idealism of the subject still appeals to every patriotic Russian. The action takes place at one of the most stirring periods of Russian history, the Russo-Polish war of 1633, just after the boy-king Michael Feodorovich—first of the present Romanov line—had been elected to the throne.Glinka himself sketched out the plot, which runs as follows: The Poles, who have been supporting the claims of their own candidate for the Russian throne, form a conspiracy against the life of the young Romanov. A Polish army corps is despatched to Moscow, ostensibly on a peaceful embassy, but in reality to carry out this sinister design. On the march, they enter the hut of a loyal peasant, Ivan Sousanin, and compel his services as a guide. Sousanin, who suspects their treachery, forms a heroic resolve. He secretly sends his adopted son, the orphan Vanya, to warn the Tsar of his danger; while, in order to gain time, he misleads the Poles in the depths of the forest and falls a victim to their vengeance when they discover the trick which has been played upon them.
Whether the story be true or not—and modern historians deny its authenticity[13]—Ivan Sousanin will always remain the typical embodiment of the loyalty of the Russian peasant to his Tsar, a sentiment which has hitherto resisted most of the agitations which have affected the upper and middle classes of Russian society.
The music ofA Life for the Tsarwas animmense advance on anything that had been previously attempted by a Russian composer. Already the overture—though not one of Glinka’s best symphonic efforts—shows many novel orchestral effects, which grew out of the fundamental material of his music, the folk-songs of Great Russia. Generally speaking, his tendency is to keep his orchestra within modest limits. Although he knew something of the orchestration of Berlioz, it is Beethoven rather than the French musician that Glinka takes as his model. “I do not care,” he says, “to make use of every luxury.” Under this category he places trombones, double bassoons, bass drum, English horn, piccolo and even the harp. To the wind instruments he applies the term “orchestral colour,” while he speaks of the strings as “orchestral motion.” With regard to the strings, he thought that “the more these instruments interlace their parts, the nearer they approach to their natural character and the better they fulfil their part in the orchestra.” It is remarkable that Glinka usually gives free play to the various individual groups of instruments, and that his orchestration is far less conventional and limited than that of most operatic composers of his time. The thematic material ofA Life for the Tsaris partly drawn from national sources, not so much directly, as modelled on the folk-songpattern. The crude folk-stuff is treated in a very different way to that which prevailed in the early national operas. Glinka does not interpolate a whole popular song—often harmonised in a very ordinary manner—into his opera, in the naïve style of Fomin in hisAnioutaorThe Miller. With Glinka the material passes through the melting pot of his genius, and flows out again in the form of a plastic national idiom with which, as he himself expresses it, “his fellow-countrymen could not fail to feel completely at home.” Here are one or two instances in which the folk-song element is recognisable inA Life for the Tsar. In the first act, where Sousanin in his recitative says it is no time to be dreaming of marriage feasts, occurs a phrase which Glinka overheard sung by a cab-driver[14]; the familiar folk-song “Down by Mother Volga,” disguised in binary rhythm, serves as accompaniment to Sousanin’s words in the forest scene “I give ye answer,” and “Thither have I led ye,” where its gloomy character is in keeping with the situation; the recitative sung by Sobinin in the first act, “Greeting, Mother Moscow,” is also based upon a folk-tune. But Glinka has also melodies ofhis own invention which are profoundly national in character. As Alfred Bruneau remarks: “By means of a harmony or a simple orchestral touch he can give to an air which is apparently as Italian as possible a penetrating perfume of Russian nationality.” An example of this is to be found in Antonida’s aria “I gaze upon the empty fields” (Act I). The treatment of his themes is also in accordance with national tradition; thus in the patriotic chorus in the first Act, “In the storm and threatening tempest,” we have an introduction for male chorus, led by a precentor (Zapievets), a special feature of the folk-singing of Great Russia. Another chorus has a pizzicato accompaniment in imitation of the national instrument, the Balalaika, to the tone of which we have grown fairly familiar in England during the last few years. Many of Glinka’s themes are built upon the mediæval church modes which lie at the foundation of the majority of the national songs.