Prokofiev's Soviet Operas 110708878X, 9781107088788

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Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas

Prokofiev considered himself to be primarily a composer of opera, and his return to Russia in the mid 1930s was partially motivated by the goal to renew his activity in this genre. His Soviet career coincided with the height of the Stalin era, when official interest and involvement in opera increased, leading to demands for nationalism and heroism to be represented on the stage in order to promote the Soviet Union and the Stalinist regime. Drawing on a wealth of primary source materials and engaging with recent scholarship in Slavonic studies, this book investigates encounters between Prokofiev’s late operas and the aesthetics of socialist realism, contemporary culture (including literature, film, and theatre), political ideology, and the obstacles of bureaucratic interventions and historical events. This contextual approach is interwoven with critical interpretations of the operas in their original versions, providing a new account of their stylistic and formal features and connections to operatic traditions. nathan seinen is Assistant Professor of Musicology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Music Since 1900

general editor

Arnold Whittall

This series – formerly Music in the Twentieth Century – offers a wide perspective on music and musical life since the end of the nineteenth century. Books included range from historical and biographical studies concentrating particularly on the context and circumstances in which composers were writing, to analytical and critical studies concerned with the nature of musical language and questions of compositional process. The importance given to context will also be reflected in studies dealing with, for example, the patronage, publishing, and promotion of new music, and in accounts of the musical life of particular countries. Titles in the series Jonathan Cross The Stravinsky Legacy Michael Nyman Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond Jennifer Doctor The BBC and Ultra Modern Music, 1922 1936 Robert Adlington The Music of Harrison Birtwistle Keith Potter Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass Carlo Caballero Fauré and French Musical Aesthetics Peter Burt The Music of Toru Takemitsu David Clarke The Music and Thought of Michael Tippett: Modern Times and Metaphysics M. J. Grant Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics: Compositional Theory in Post War Europe Philip Rupprecht Britten’s Musical Language Mark Carroll Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe Adrian Thomas Polish Music since Szymanowski J. P. E. Harper-Scott Edward Elgar, Modernist

Yayoi Uno Everett The Music of Louis Andriessen Ethan Haimo Schoenberg’s Transformation of Musical Language Rachel Beckles Willson Ligeti, Kurtág, and Hungarian Music during the Cold War Michael Cherlin Schoenberg’s Musical Imagination Joseph N. Straus Twelve Tone Music in America David Metzer Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty First Century Edward Campbell Boulez, Music and Philosophy Jonathan Goldman The Musical Language of Pierre Boulez: Writings and Compositions Pieter C. van den Toorn and John McGinness Stravinsky and the Russian Period: Sound and Legacy of a Musical Idiom David Beard Harrison Birtwistle’s Operas and Music Theatre Heather Wiebe Britten’s Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction Beate Kutschke and Barley Norton Music and Protest in 1968 Graham Griffiths Stravinsky’s Piano: Genesis of a Musical Language Martin Iddon John Cage and David Tudor: Correspondence on Interpretation and Performance Martin Iddon New Music at Darmstadt: Nono, Stockhausen, Cage, and Boulez Alastair Williams Music in Germany Since 1968 Ben Earle Luigi Dallapiccola and Musical Modernism in Fascist Italy Thomas Schuttenhelm The Orchestral Music of Michael Tippett: Creative Development and the Compositional Process Marilyn Nonken The Spectral Piano: From Liszt, Scriabin, and Debussy to the Digital Age Jack Boss Schoenberg’s Twelve Tone Music: Symmetry and the Musical Idea

Deborah Mawer French Music and Jazz in Conversation: From Debussy to Brubeck Philip Rupprecht British Musical Modernism: The Manchester Group and Their Contemporaries Amy Lynn Wlodarski Musical Witness and Holocaust Representation Carola Nielinger-Vakil Luigi Nono: A Composer in Context Erling E. Guldbrandsen and Julian Johnson Transformations of Musical Modernism David Cline The Graph Music of Morton Feldman Russell Hartenberger Performance and Practice in the Music of Steve Reich Joanna Bullivant Modern Music, Alan Bush, and the Cold War: The Cultural Left in Britain and the Communist Bloc Nicholas Jones Peter Maxwell Davies, Selected Writings J. P. E. Harper-Scott Ideology in Britten’s Operas Jack Boss Schoenberg’s Atonal Music: Musical Idea, Basic Image, and Specters of Tonal Function Nathan Seinen Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas

Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas Nathan Seinen The Chinese University of Hong Kong

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314 321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06 04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107088788 DOI: 10.1017/9781316105214 © Nathan Seinen 2019 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2019 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd, Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Seinen, Nathan, author. Title: Prokofiev’s soviet operas / Nathan Seinen. Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2019. | Series: Music since 1900 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018057049 | ISBN 9781107088788 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Prokofiev, Sergey, 1891 1953. Operas. | Opera Soviet Union. Classification: LCC ML410.P865 S48 2019 | DDC 782.1092 dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057049 ISBN 978 1 107 08878 8 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of Music Examples List of Tables Acknowledgements Note on Terminology and Transliteration

page viii x xi xiii

Introduction

[vii]

1

1

Semyon Kotko and the Melodrama of High Stalinism

20

2

Buffered by Buffa: Betrothal in a Monastery

67

3

Kutuzov’s Victory, Prokofiev’s Defeat: The Revisions of War and Peace

121

4

The Story of a Real Man and Late Stalinist Subjectivity

162

Conclusion

225

Bibliography Index

232 250

Music Examples

1.1a 1.1b 1.2a 1.2b 1.3 1.4a 1.4b 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7a 2.7b 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1

[viii]

Semyon Kotko, Introduction, bars 9–18, Theme 1 page 34 Semyon Kotko, Act I, tableau 1, bars 1–8, Theme 2 34 Semyon Kotko, Act II, conclusion of scene 7, the interruption of the matchmaking ceremony 38 Semyon Kotko, Act II, opening of scene 8, the entrance of the Germans 39 Semyon Kotko, Act II, scene 10, Semyon’s lament 44 Semyon Kotko, Act III, scene 14, Tkachenko’s threat against Sofya 47 Semyon Kotko, Act III, scene 14 (continued) 48 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 2, scene 1, Louisa’s first theme (L1) 76 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 2, scene 1, Louisa’s third theme (L3) 77 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 3, scene 4, Louisa’s fifth theme (L5) 77 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 2, scene 1, Louisa’s second theme (L2) 79 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act III, tableau 5, scene 4, Louisa and Antonio’s second theme (LA2) 80 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 3, scene 3, Clara’s first theme (C1) 81 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act I, tableau 1, scene 3, Ferdinand’s first theme (F1) 82 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act I, tableau 1, scene 2, Ferdinand’s second theme (F2) 83 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 2, scene 1, Duenna’s second theme 85 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act I, tableau 1, scene 1, Mendoza’s first theme 86 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act IV, tableau 9, scene 5, the contredanse finale 89 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 4, scene 3, original ‘Segodnya vecherom’ (manuscript) 117 War and Peace, original version, Act III, tableau 7, peasants at the front 127 War and Peace, original version, Act III, tableau 7, Kutuzov’s arioso 131 War and Peace, final version, Part 2, tableau 10, Kutuzov’s order to retreat 148 War and Peace, original version, Act V, tableau 11, conclusion of the opera 151 The Story of a Real Man, Act I, tableau 2, no. 3, Aleksey’s vision of Olga 184

List of Music Examples

4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8

The Story of a Real Man, Act II, tableau 5, no. 15, ‘Aleksey’s delirium’ The Story of a Real Man, Act II, tableau 5, no. 17, the Commissar’s first appearance The Story of a Real Man, Act II, tableau 5, no. 24, ‘But I am a Soviet man’ The Story of a Real Man, Act IV, tableau 9, no. 30, Aleksey’s first letter to Olga The Story of a Real Man, Act IV, tableau 10, no. 42, Aleksey’s second letter to Olga The Story of a Real Man, Act IV, tableau 10, no. 43, Aleksey and Olga’s duet The Story of a Real Man, Act IV, tableau 10, no. 41, ‘Aleksey’s return’

ix

188 195 197 203 204 206 209

Tables

2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1

[x]

Themes in Betrothal in a Monastery, Act 3, tableau 6 page 93 Themes in Betrothal in a Monastery, Act 1, tableau 1 93 Themes in Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, tableau 2 94 War and Peace, original version (April 1942) 126 Revisions to tableau 11, 1942–52, with thematic reprises 152 Final version of War and Peace, 1952 157 Outline of The Story of a Real Man, with recurring themes and dates of completion of tableaux 177

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I thank Marina Frolova-Walker, who suggested the topic of Prokofiev’s Soviet operas to me and guided my research in its early stages. I have benefited tremendously from her expert advice and from the example of her scholarship. I am grateful to all those who offered critical comments on earlier versions of the chapters of this book: David Fanning, Daniel Grimley, Sarah Hibberd, Robin Holloway, Steven Huebner, Jeffrey Levenberg, Simon Morrison, Roger Parker, and Benjamin Walton. I am particularly grateful to Nanette Nielsen for her unfailing support over many years. My heartfelt thanks to Vladimir Orlov for his hospitality and help with practical matters, and for his thorough reading of a late draft of the manuscript. I am deeply indebted to the staff at several archives: the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, the Glinka Museum, the Russian National Library, and the Serge Prokofiev Archive. Thanks to Vicki Cooper and Kate Brett at Cambridge University Press and to my editor Arnold Whittall for their assistance in preparing this book for publication. Mark Audus and Tobias Fandel provided invaluable help with the music examples. I also wish to express my gratitude to the Prokofiev family for permission to reproduce manuscript materials. Previous versions of two of the chapters have been published as articles: Chapter 1 as ‘Prokofiev’s Semyon Kotko and the melodrama of high Stalinism’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 21/3 (November 2009), 203–36, and Chapter 3 as ‘Kutuzov’s victory, Prokofiev’s defeat: the revisions of War and Peace’, Music & Letters, 90/3 (August 2009), 399–431. I am grateful to Cambridge Journals and to Oxford Journals for permission to reproduce these articles here, and I also thank the editors and anonymous readers of both journals for their comments and suggestions. Short research trips in 2015 to Moscow, St Petersburg, and New York, as well as time off from teaching duties, were made possible by an Early Career Scheme Award from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong. Finally, special thanks to Luiza Duarte Cardoso, whose sense of humour and taste for adventure have enlivened the last phase of research and writing. Our travels together included a ‘late Stalinism’-themed trip to Moscow and St Petersburg, during which she cheerfully endured (in

[xi]

xii

Acknowledgements

addition to the Russian winter) Soviet-era cuisine, overnight trips on the Red Arrow, a revived 1950 production of a gloomy opera by Stalin’s favourite composer, and accommodation in a spacious but spooky apartment at the top of one of the Stalinskiye vïsotki.

Note on Terminology and Transliteration

A note of clarification is required in relation to the terminology used for act divisions. I have translated kartina, usually rendered as ‘scene’, instead as ‘tableau’, and the smaller division, stsena, as ‘scene’. ‘Tableau’ is of course also French for ‘scene’ as it is commonly understood in the musicological literature (especially on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century opera), usually corresponding to the second definition of ‘scene’ given in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera: ‘any part of an opera in a single location’.1 Prokofiev’s use of stsena, meanwhile, tends to follow New Grove’s third definition of ‘scene’: ‘A portion of an act during which the characters on the stage remain unchanged’. These translations should avoid potential ambiguity or confusion, while also providing a more logical match with Prokofiev’s unique structural arrangements, based as they are around rapid stage action. The system of transliteration I have employed is that of Gerald Abraham, as described in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1980), xvi–xvii. The Russian letter ы is rendered as ï, the letter я as ya, and the letter ю as yu. The letter е at the beginning of a word, after vowels, and after hard or soft signs is transliterated as ye, and otherwise as e. Hard and soft signs are retained. Exceptions have been made in the use of the surname suffix -sky (rather than -skiy), common spellings of familiar names (‘Prokofiev’ and ‘Tchaikovsky’ instead of ‘Prokof’yev’ and ‘Chaykovskiy’), and the omission of soft signs from the names of characters in the operas and other dramatic works. In the bibliographic citations, the transliteration is strict. Abbreviations of Archives RGALI (Rossiyskiy gosudarstvennïy arkhiv literaturï i iskusstva) – Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Moscow RNB (Rossiyskaya natsional’naya biblioteka) – Russian National Library, St Petersburg

1

[xiii]

Julian Budden, ‘Scene’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1992).

xiv

Note on Terminology and Transliteration

VMOMKG (Vserossiyskoye muzeynoye ob”yedineniye muzïkal’noy kul’turï imeni M. I. Glinki) – All-Russian Consortium of Museums of Musical Culture, formerly GTsMMK (Gosudarstvennïy tsentral’nïy muzey muzïkal’noy kul’turï imeni M. I. Glinki) – The Central State Glinka Museum of Musical Culture, Moscow

Introduction

Although best known for his music for concert hall, ballet, and film, Sergey Prokofiev considered himself to be a composer of opera above all. Opera occupied him from the time of his first creative activity as a child in rural Ukraine to his final, declining years in Stalin’s Soviet Union. At midcareer in the 1930s, his desire to write for the theatre contributed significantly to his decision to return to Russia. Prokofiev had experienced years of frustration in trying to bring his early operas to the stage, during the period of the genre’s historic decline in interwar Europe. The Stalinist state, meanwhile, was beginning actively to cultivate opera for its own purposes. Of all the perceived creative and material advantages that prompted Prokofiev’s move to the Soviet Union, among the most attractive was the promise of a fully fledged opera career, benefiting from state patronage, an enthusiastic and Russian-speaking audience, and the opportunity to work with distinguished directors. This was combined with the prospect of concentrating on composition, being free of the need to tour as a concert pianist in order to maintain his standard of living. Once resettled, Prokofiev eagerly returned to the genre, and was engaged with work on opera throughout his later career. He considered a wide range of subjects, began a number of new projects, made plans for revisions of his earlier works, and completed four major scores: Semyon Kotko (1939), Betrothal in a Monastery (1940/43), War and Peace (1941–52), and The Story of a Real Man (1947–8). Although his reputation has been slow to develop, Prokofiev undoubtedly stands as one of the leading opera composers of the twentieth century. His four ‘Soviet’ operas are among his greatest works, and are crucial to an understanding of his overall achievement. Moreover, they define his later career, serving to demonstrate both the potentialities and the pitfalls of his years as a Soviet composer. This book is a study of these works in their original contexts during the height of the Stalin era, taking account of the interaction and often conflict between the composer’s approach to opera and state demands for the genre, as well as the historical vicissitudes that affected their creation and reception. Opera has always been closely bound up with political systems, institutions, and ideologies. Soviet opera is one fascinating subsection in its history, involving purposeful development by a propaganda state, in particular during the mid 1930s to the late 1940s, [1]

2

Introduction

from high Stalinism to late Stalinism (with World War II in between), a period of enormous social and political upheavals. Opera had been central in discussions of Soviet music since the 1920s, and held a unique status, being highly valued by the regime as an elevated form that also possessed genuine mass appeal, capable of making a major impact on multiple levels – sensual, communal, ideological. In the early Revolutionary period, Lenin and Lunacharsky had imagined that ‘only theater could replace religion’.1 But it was only in the mid 1930s – and just at the moment of Prokofiev’s return – that opera became an official ‘project’, intended to represent the epitome of the arts and give potent expression to party-state ideals.2 By the end of the decade, the Stalinist authorities were seeking to turn the opera house into an arena for the performance on a monumental scale of heroic myth and nationalist propaganda (as part of a general embrace of pre-Revolutionary culture that Lenin would not have anticipated). The opera project ran until the late 1940s, exactly overlapping with Prokofiev’s work in the genre. This book therefore examines his last four operas in terms of their involvement with contemporary culture, historical events, and political censure during the most significant period for Soviet opera. The general aims and emphases of Stalinist aesthetics required specific applications in the individual arts. While musicians in the Soviet Union enjoyed relative breathing space in comparison with other artists, opera was a special case: Stalin had referred to opera as composers’ greatest task, and it was heavily scrutinized by various levels of government. Because of opera’s combination of content and media, it was situated within a triangulated area governed by guidelines for music, literature, and a broad category of public art (including theatre and film). As a texted genre, each opera was subject to extensive review, since non-musicians felt qualified to make judgements, offering critical comments on librettos, characters, and productions, as well as the music (if not in technical terms). Soviet composers, many of whom had little experience writing for the stage, faced a unique challenge in this sphere. Prokofiev was a central figure in Soviet music and the most active as well as most experienced composer of opera, and while he may potentially have been able to meet the stringent (albeit vague) demands that were the corollary of state support, he also repeatedly set himself up for failure. He had assumed that upon his return he would retain creative autonomy, due in 1

2

Nicolas Rzhevsky, The Modern Russian Theatre: A Literary and Cultural History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2009), p. 84. See Marina Frolova Walker, ‘The Soviet Opera Project: Ivan Dzerzhinsky vs. Ivan Susanin’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 18/2 (2006), 181 216.

Introduction

3

part to his international stature; his reluctance to accept advice from bureaucrats and lesser artists (or even well-meaning peers) led to miscalculations and criticisms of his work throughout his later career. His cosmopolitan background did not work to his advantage – on the contrary, since he could never overcome the stigma of the outsider who had yet to prove himself. He never managed to integrate himself in terms of either his works or his professional conduct, while he also struggled to maintain his independence; the liberties he enjoyed at first were eroded under increasing interference by the cultural bureaucracy. Despite his efforts and enthusiasm, his operas were met in Russia as they had been in the West, with only occasional performance, mixed reception, controversy, and in one case, immediate rejection. That fate is gradually being reversed, as Prokofiev’s operas have become more familiar to international audiences since the 1990s. The same period has also witnessed renewed scholarly interest in the composer, and his Soviet period in particular. Benefiting from the opening of Russian archives, important research has appeared, including Simon Morrison’s authoritative biography covering the composer’s later years, monographs dealing with individual genres, as well as the publication of sources and commentaries by Russian musicologists.3 At the same time there have appeared valuable historical studies of Soviet music and its institutions, again with concentration on the Stalin period.4 Despite these positive developments, however, Prokofiev’s last four operas have yet to receive what is undoubtedly their scholarly due. These are arguably the pivotal works of his later career, and because of the high-profile nature of the genre they were a principal point of contact between the composer and the 3

4

Simon Morrison, The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Simon Morrison (ed.), Sergey Prokofiev and His World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Kevin Bartig, Composing for the Red Screen: Prokofiev and Soviet Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Yekaterina Sergeyevna Vlasova (ed.), S. S. Prokof’yev: K 125 letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya. Pis’ma, dokumentï, stat’i, vospominaniya (Мoscow: Kompozitor, 2016). Leonid Maksimenkov, Sumbur vmesto muzïki: Stalinskaya kul’turnaya revolyutsiya, 1936 1938 (Moscow: Yuridicheskaya kniga, 1997); Amy Nelson, Music for the Revolution: Musicians and Power in Early Soviet Russia (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004); Kiril Tomoff, Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939 1953 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006); Simo Mikkonen, Music and Power in the Soviet 1930s: A History of Composers’ Bureaucracy (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009); Yekaterina Sergeyevna Vlasova, 1948 god v sovetskoy muzïke: Dokumentirovannoye issledovaniye (Moscow: Klassika XXI, 2010); Marina Raku, Muzïkal’naya klassika v mifotvorchestve sovetskoy epokhi (Moscow: Novoye literaturnoye obozreniye, 2014); Marina Frolova Walker, Stalin’s Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016); and Pauline Fairclough, Classics for the Masses: Shaping Soviet Musical Identity under Lenin and Stalin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016).

4

Introduction

Stalinist regime, and are of crucial significance for the history of Soviet music. Notable texts in the literature include Rita McAllister’s doctoral dissertation of 1970 and book-length studies of individual operas by Russian musicologists: Marina Sabinina on Semyon Kotko, Anatoliy Volkov on War and Peace, and (much more recently) Nadezhda Lobachyova on the The Story of a Real Man.5 While these scholars have examined a significant amount of the primary source material, none of them has been inclined to investigate the operas’ ideological contexts, or to place them within the wider frame of Soviet cultural history – indeed, this has become possible only since the opening of the archives and the appearance of a wealth of new research in Slavonic studies. In this book I have sought to combine two angles of approach, critical and contextual, on the one hand proposing new readings of the operas’ musical and dramatic properties, on the other developing insights into their historical connections, drawing on a wide range of archival documents, including the original manuscript scores, drafts, and notebooks. I have enriched my arguments through consultation of Russian and Soviet sources, and engaged with recent research in Slavonic studies, in the fields of history, political science, literary criticism, theatre and film studies, and sociology. I have brought into my discussion some of the main themes that have engaged scholars in these areas, including Stalinist aesthetics, political ideology, practices of consumption, and issues of identity and subjectivity. Broadly my aim is to uncover encounters between Prokofiev’s operas and state policies, while more specifically my approach has been to examine each of the four operas as individual works possessing distinctive stylistic qualities and a particular relationship to contemporary culture.

Stalinist Aesthetics and the Soviet Opera Project All the chapters of this book confront in some way the issue of Stalinist aesthetics and its relationship to opera. The study of Soviet opera can contribute to the understanding of socialist realism, for which it represented an (unattainable) apex. Opera took on a public role of national importance, and attracted the attention of the highest political levels, peaking in the high Stalinist period from the mid 1930s. Recent work in 5

Rita McAllister, ‘The Operas of Sergei Prokofiev’ (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1970); Marina Dmitriyevna Sabinina, ‘Semyon Kotko’ i problemï opernoy dramaturgii Prokof ’yeva (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1963); Anatoliy Isaakovich Volkov, ‘Voyna i mir’ Prokof’yeva: Opït analiza variantov operï (Moscow: Muzïka, 1976); and Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva: 60 let spustya (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2008).

Stalinist Aesthetics and the Soviet Opera Project

5

this area by Marina Frolova-Walker, Philip Ross Bullock, and Yekaterina Vlasova has advanced our understanding of opera under Stalin, and I summarize this history here, along with my own insights and emphases.6 In the post-Revolutionary period, opera had been in danger of being rejected altogether, and the theatres had to be ‘saved’ (by Anatoliy Lunacharsky) amidst plans to have them shut down. Theories of how opera could be used as a Soviet art were circulated in the 1920s, but the time was not yet right for these to be applied. Existing works in the repertory were performed with new librettos (Tosca as In the Struggle for the Commune, Carmen as Carmencita and the Soldier), while contemporary European operas such as Wozzeck and Jonny spielt auf were also programmed during the relaxed conditions of the New Economic Policy. During the first Five-Year Plan and its associated cultural revolution, the arts were under the control of proletarian groups, which were opposed to all Western influence and forms of ‘bourgeois’ art and entertainment. The Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM), however, did not wholly reject opera, and native opera production of works on Soviet subject matter even increased. A significant change in the landscape of Soviet art was the perestroyka brought about by the Central Committee’s resolution of April 1932, in which all non-state organizations were eliminated. This was encouraging to professional artists, not least Prokofiev himself, then still abroad but contemplating his return; after being excluded during the late 1920s, they made their return to policy-making, along with specialists in other fields of industry. But they would now be working exclusively within the domain of the party-state, which asserted its control through new administrative bodies, the Composers’ Union in the case of music.7 Art henceforth operated directly as a function of political aims, and aesthetic categories and concepts became more fully subordinate to ideology. As with other professional experts, the responsibility of artists was to apply tekhnika in the service of politika. The process of centralization was complete with the establishment in December 1935 of the powerful All-Union Committee on Artistic Affairs (KDI); and the first matter the

6

7

See Marina Frolova Walker, ‘The Soviet Opera Project’; Philip Ross Bullock, ‘Staging Stalinism: The Search for Soviet Opera in the 1930s’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 18 (2006), 83 108; Yekaterina Sergeyevna Vlasova, ‘The Stalinist Opera Project’, in Russian Music since 1917: Reappraisal and Rediscovery, ed. Patrick Zuk and Marina Frolova Walker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 164 87. Earlier studies include those by Valerian Bogdanov Berezovskiy and Abram Gozenpud. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).

6

Introduction

KDI undertook to address was the progress of Soviet opera, which had become a priority for the regime.8 Together with this new centralized control over the arts, official aesthetics became systematized, as the new code of socialist realism was formulated in 1934 at the First Congress of Writers in Moscow. After being introduced in literature, the doctrine was applied to other spheres of art, and came to dominate Stalinist artistic practices. Leonid Heller’s summary of the three ‘central concepts’ of socialist realism is particularly clear: translating these as ‘ideological commitment’ (ideynost’), ‘Partymindedness’ (partiynost’), and ‘national/popular spirit’ (narodnost’), he states that ideynost’ was concerned with the ‘idea’, the promotion of content over form, against formalism; partiynost’ involved ‘commenting on real problems of socialist society’, stressing optimism and opposing passivity; and narodnost’ related to the expression of ‘the expectations and the will of the whole people’ and the appeal to a wide audience.9 Apart from such broad precepts, socialist realism was more specific in terms of what should be avoided in Soviet art: ‘[a]s has been repeatedly observed, socialist realism was normative, but only negatively so: it gave practical instructions on what could not be done, but its positive applications and its theorizing . . . remained highly nebulous.’10 A full understanding of the origins, nature, and effects of socialist realism would require, beyond theoretical and historical overviews, examination of its dissemination in the creation of standards for the individual arts, analysis of its application in individual works, and consideration of various levels of reception. One issue that has engaged scholars is the question of the extent to which it was imposed from above by the Party hierarchy or derived from the existing tastes of the masses. It involved a rejection of revolutionary art, which had proved unpopular, replacing this with an eclectic appropriation of longestablished conventions and genres of art, as Evgeny Dobrenko and others have pointed out.11 The Bolsheviks believed that in the post-historical society they had built they could select freely from the history of world

8

9

10 11

According to Laurel Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 89 and Maksimenkov, Sumbur vmesto muzïki, p. 66, the founding of the KDI and the attention to opera were related politically. Leonid Heller, ‘A World of Prettiness: Socialist Realism and Its Aesthetic Categories’, in Socialist Realism without Shores, ed. Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 51 75 (53). Heller, ‘A World of Prettiness’, p. 60. Evgeny Dobrenko, Political Economy of Socialist Realism, trans. Jesse M. Savage (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), xi.

Stalinist Aesthetics and the Soviet Opera Project

7

art,12 and, in practice, formal and narrative properties were usually derived from older existing models. The socialist realist novel, for example, was based on exemplars from the Russian Bildungsroman and classic early Soviet works, while it also harkened back to the medieval parable.13 Models (and national traditions) offered familiarity, but were also chosen on the basis of their adaptability to Stalinist ideology. Archetypes for opera were slower to appear, partly because of the multimedia nature of the art form – the necessity of coordinating official requirements for text, music, and staging, commingling familiar conventions and new socialist content in different dimensions simultaneously. While it would take time to develop more detailed standards, the normative limits for opera were effectively set in place at the very moment the project was launched, when in January 1936 Stalin and his entourage appeared at two performances at the Bolshoy Theatre in Moscow, followed by official approval of Ivan Dzerzhinsky’s ‘song opera’ Tikhiy Don (The Quiet Don) and vitriolic condemnation of Dmitriy Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in the pages of Pravda. This spectacular intervention from the top announced unequivocally that opera was worthy of the regime’s close attention, while the detailed listing of Shostakovich’s supposed failings alongside promotion of Dzerzhinsky and support for the song opera set in motion the next stage for its development. Stalin’s statement to Dzerzhinsky was that ‘classical Soviet opera must be profoundly moving and exciting. In it must be utilized the melodiousness of national song, [and] in its form it must be maximally accessible and intelligible.’14 The Quiet Don is a setting of an epic novel by Mikhail Sholokhov, a Civil War story that was a classic of socialist realism. Its sequence of songs and choruses represented a new and authentically Soviet genre, closely tied to socialist realist literature and its central concepts rather than to operatic traditions, altogether avoiding elements of Western modernism and emphasizing accessibility to the general public. In March 1936 the KDI held its first meetings on opera, and confirmed the points raised by the leadership. Stalin himself addressed the topic of opera again in 1937, in a speech at a conference of composers, musicologists, and opera producers, promoting the essential attributes of socialist subject 12

13

14

Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalin (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), p. 48. See Katerina Clark, ‘Socialist Realism with Shores: The Conventions for the Positive Hero’, in Socialist Realism without Shores, ed. Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 27 50 (28). Ivan Dzerzhinskiy, ‘Sozdadim sovetskuyu klassicheskuyu operu’, Leningradskaya Pravda, 24 January 1936.

8

Introduction

matter and an accessible musical style based in national traditions, and also underlining the importance of heroic content.15 Soviet composers usually enjoyed considerable autonomy as they sought to apply the principles laid down by the party-state, due to the nonreferential nature of their art as well as the specialized expertise they possessed. But opera, as a text-based and theatrical genre, occupied a unique position. The KDI had taken control of the now high-profile project, and while specific demands for music remained outside the scope of the administration’s competence, the cultural bureaucracy could draw on a range of talents from the various fields involved. In addition to committee discussions, practical application of official edicts was initiated through the ‘workshop’ method of collaborative creation: composers would be guided by directors and conductors in the theatre, after the example of The Quiet Don, which had been a team effort at the Leningrad Small Opera Theatre (MALEGOT), with input from Shostakovich and the conductor Samuil Samosud.16 The second half of the 1930s was the period of greatest activity in opera, with many being written in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the October Revolution in 1937; altogether more than twenty operas were composed between 1937 and 1939.17 This abundant quantity increased the likelihood that a work of high quality would result, including by providing the opportunity for artists to learn from each other’s experiences. It remained on one level an experiment, pursued through trial and error, but expectations remained high that the Soviet 15

16

17

Quoted in Marina Frolova Walker, ‘“National in Form, Socialist in Content”: Musical Nation Building in the Soviet Republics’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 51/2 (Summer 1998), 363. For example, the Bolshoy commissioned several works in 1936 as part of a ‘creative workshop’ under the director Vladimir Vladimirov, including Marian Koval”s Yemel’yan Pugachyov, Anatoliy Aleksandrov’s Bela, Sergey Vasilenko’s Suvorov, and Vano Muradeli’s Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Vlasova, ‘The Stalinist Opera Project’, p. 168. Those in the song opera style included Podnyataya tselina (Dzerzhinsky again), Myatezh and Sem’ya (L. A. Khodzhi Einatov), Mat’ (V. V. Zhelobinsky), and Shchors (G. K. Fardi). Works endeavouring a higher quality of music and dramatic development were Pompadurï (A. F. Pashchenko), Aleksandr Nevsky (G. Popov, unfinished), Kola Bryun’on (D. Kabalevsky), Boyevïye druz’ya (V. Shebalin), and Dekabristï (Yu. Shaporin). In the spring of 1939 the KDI organized a conference on opera, at which eight works still in progress were performed, including the last two in the above list (Shebalin and Shaporin). According to Vladimir Surin’s paper presented before the KDI on 24 January 1945, twenty two operas were composed in 1938 9 (‘Stenogramma zasedaniya Komiteta: O tvorcheskoy rabote po sozdaniyu novïkh sovestkikh oper’, RGALI f. 962 (Komitet po delam iskusstv), op. 3, yed. khr. 1379, l. 3), while according to Moisey Grinberg, writing in Sovetskaya muzïka in March 1939, twenty five operas had been composed in the previous three years.

Stalinist Aesthetics and the Soviet Opera Project

9

Union would soon have its own opera, worthy of its new status as a world power and beacon of communism. Official attention was devoted, first of all, to the libretto. Bullock has suggested that the collectively created opera libretto, through the processes of reduction and concentration of the literary source, was able to highlight essentials and remove ambiguities, and thus constituted an ‘act of censorship’ by providing a gloss on a novel’s ideological content.18 This was indeed an important feature of Soviet opera, most notably in the songopera format, which lacked the musical sophistication to elevate its text – or divert attention away from it. At best, it could generate a ‘hit song’, like The Quiet Don’s final chorus (‘Ot kraya do kraya’), but it was not capable of achieving genuine musical drama. To become ‘exciting’ and heroic in operatic terms (according to Stalin’s directives) all elements of the art form would need to be harnessed: the persuasive powers of music and impressive visual effects were to enhance the text in compelling ways that would shape an audience’s response. Music and image would also add further layers of interpretation, thus providing a further means of explication of the literary source. Librettos, to fulfil these aesthetic (as well as ideological) objectives, would also need to be written with such a form of opera in mind. The higher authorities expected opera to be a union of the arts that utilized the expressive potential of music to the utmost, and Soviet opera, in the end, would be held up to the standards of the greatest achievements in the history of the art form. The works that resulted from collaborative efforts often did reach performance (in some cases – such as Yuriy Shaporin’s Dekabristï (Decembrists) – only many years later), but were very limited in their success with critics and the public. The experiment was failing, and works were often ridiculed within the KDI and the Composer’s Union, not least Podnyataya tselina (Virgin Soil Upturned), Dzerzhinsky’s much-hyped follow-up to The Quiet Don (and also based on Sholokhov). Behind the scenes there had been several years of dwindling support for the song opera; it was never powerful enough, nor did it prove popular enough, nor had anyone composed one that attained a satisfactory artistic level. Thus, despite its original endorsement by the regime, it was found to be inadequate as a future model for Soviet opera. The Composer’s Union, which already offered opportunities for professional discussion and advice to its members within the forum, had begun to address the question of opera with a far greater sense of urgency, and to confer on more specific directions for the application of socialist realist

18

Bullock, ‘Staging Stalinism’, 96.

10

Introduction

ideals to operatic music.19 Composers and critics debated the proper balance of high and low, with consensus beginning to form on the necessity of high technical standards alongside the appeal to the existing tastes of the masses. When the politically connected critic Georgiy Khubov summarized Stalin’s 1937 conference speech in Sovetskaya muzïka (the Union’s journal), he added a fourth requirement, ‘the mastery of symphonic development’, associated with the classics of nineteenth-century opera that eventually came to be promoted as models instead. At this time a repertory of masterworks dominated in Soviet theatres, overshadowing new productions. Russian composers of the nineteenth century were celebrated for their inclusion of folk music, but the works of Verdi and Wagner in particular were valued for providing compelling heroic archetypes and examples of overwhelming effects of chorus and orchestra. Wagner’s influence can be traced back to the 1920s and the ideals of Lunacharsky and others (even Lenin was a Wagnerian), as recognized by Frolova-Walker and Bullock, but the importance of Verdi, which continued into the 1940s, has yet to be appreciated.20 As prescriptions for opera developed during these and subsequent years, it was not merely pesennost’ (song-like melody), folk music, or ‘accessibility’ that was the principal mark of the Stalinist ideal for opera, but a much more grand manner, ideally employing heroic solo and choral voices as well as musical-dramatic development to generate engulfing and awe-inspiring effects of music, image, and drama, seizing and directing listeners’ emotional responses. My study of the official and critical reception of Prokofiev’s operas proves that producing such an effect on audiences was indeed held to be the primary aim for the medium, to be achieved by its own uniquely integrated means. This shift in opera aesthetics was also driven by broader changes in the cultural landscape. High Stalinism of the second half of the 1930s – the period during which the project was most actively pursued – was distinguished by an increasing political and social conservatism, including the rise of a leadership cult. This involved a radical shift in the official attitude to the national past, along with exploitation of the art and the iconography of pre-revolutionary imperial Russia. Soviet arts were called on to represent and celebrate not only the achievements of the revolution and socialist construction, but also the earlier history of the Russian state and its

19 20

Frolova Walker, ‘The Soviet Opera Project’, 196. Wagner was rarely performed in the theatre, but remained a favourite in orchestral concerts, as Pauline Fairclough has confirmed. Pauline Fairclough, Classics for the Masses: Shaping Soviet Musical Identity under Lenin and Stalin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), pp. 134 and 213.

Stalinist Aesthetics and the Soviet Opera Project

11

republics. Besides ‘heroes from contemporary life’, real or fictional, or Bolshevik heroes from the Civil War period, legendary figures from Russia’s pre-revolutionary past began to appear. A heroic tone in combination with a monumental style of presentation became typical of Stalinist art.21 Opera was poised to become its ideal embodiment, since as an opulent and ostentatious art form it conformed to the ethos of high Stalinism and had already come to hold immense prestige within the artistic hierarchy. The aspiration was twofold: to draw on opera’s traditional symbolic status in representing a great nation, and to employ music and drama for the purposes of grandiose nationalist propaganda. Composers, despite their limited experience, were called on to attain a grandeur worthy of a nation keen to celebrate a glorious past and inspire an even brighter future. The end of the decade was marked by conferences and debates on opera, as composers, critics, and musicologists sought to respond to the growing expectations. However, the ultimate manifestation of official ideology and aesthetics was not, in the end, a Soviet opera, but rather the original patriotic Russian opera, Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar, which made a triumphant return to the stage in 1939 with a revised libretto and new title, Ivan Susanin, after its legendary self-sacrificing hero. In contrast to the ‘workshop’ method of Soviet opera, the creative process in this case worked in an opposite direction, from completed work to libretto – while attention was lavished on the revised text, the music already existed and exemplified current tastes (in terms of the staging, the Epilogue was overhauled to suggest a contemporary Red Square parade22). Soviet opera was being developed at a time when the various narrative arts frequently shared subject matter, and in the particular conditions of the 1930s and 1940s multiple transpositions often occurred within a very short period, and involved not only literature and opera, but also theatre productions and film. In terms of its potential simultaneously to condense and enhance, opera overlapped with the cinema (according to Lenin, famously, ‘of all the arts, for us the most important is cinema’), and comparisons between the two Soviet arts can be informative. Three of the four chapters in this book – those dealing with heroic subject matter – include consideration of the differences and similarities between 21

22

‘By the end of the First Five Year Plan, the authorities were beginning to demand that art should be more heroic and monumental; by 1937, such demands had become common place.’ Marina Frolova Walker, ‘Stalin and the Art of Boredom’, Twentieth Century Music, 1 (2004), 101 24 (111). Stalin was involved in the final stages of the revision of Susanin, commenting on the first premiere in February 1939, which led to a radically new final scene. Frolova Walker, ‘The Soviet Opera Project’, 206.

12

Introduction

Prokofiev’s operas and contemporary films. Opera shared with film the benefit of belatedness, which offered the possibility of selecting from approved literary source material (or historical subject matter). In general, official attention given first to literature produced an acceptable body of work that could then be revisited in these other media that were rising in importance. For opera, the reliance on national literature had been a feature of the Russian tradition from its inception.23 While a standard option in the 1930s remained the socialist realist novel or play, by the end of the decade a series of operas based on legendary Russian heroes were begun in parallel with (emulation of) numerous film biopics. The relationship between these arts was explicitly recognized in 1937 by the head of the KDI, Kerzhentsev, who stated that opera was second only to the cinema – and far beyond the dramatic theatre – in its ability to create a ‘heroic uplift’.24 This can be seen as the active and inspiring effect that was demanded from these arts, to meet the need for partiynost’, according to Heller’s clarification: if narodnost’ was fulfilled by accessibility and inclusion of folk elements, and ideynost’ by a correct ideological (‘socialist’) message, then we might expand the familiar slogan to something like ‘national in form, socialist in content, mobilizational in effect’. This was in line with the message of Stalin’s 1937 speech, quoted above, and with evidence of his priorities for the arts more generally. The epic images and rousing speeches of Soviet films in the late 1930s were supposed to find their equivalents in mass scenes and heroic arias. Only powerful music as well as grand spectacle could bridge the gap between libretto and ‘heroic uplift’. Beyond this, opera and film had similar advantages and disadvantages as high-profile Soviet arts. Both were slow-moving industries, requiring a lengthy process of production. Years could pass between conception and the final work. This posed a problem, since ideological requirements before, during, and after the war could shift rapidly; the moment at which a project was undertaken and completed could be crucial, since content which was advocated one year might be outlawed the next. Futhermore, Stalin and his close colleagues took a personal interest in both arts; they regularly watched films together and attended operas at the Bolshoy

23

24

A discussion of this feature appears in Boris Gasparov, Five Operas and a Symphony: Words and Music in Russian Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), xvii xxii. Frolova Walker, ‘The Soviet Opera Project’, 198 9. This statement was made at the KDI meeting of 22 November 1937.

Stalinist Aesthetics and the Soviet Opera Project

13

Theatre.25 Vlasova has presented evidence that ‘acknowledges his personal constant control and direct influence on the repertoire and engagement of personnel at the country’s leading theatre’.26 This is not to advance an oldfashioned totalitarian model in which policies were directly determined by Stalin and the Politburo. For one thing, it is also important to recognize that the regime encouraged individual creativity, even as they expected artists to have Soviet priorities in mind.27 Nevertheless, the lack of tolerance of errors and the periodic admonitions from on high were of enormous consequence. As Maria Belodubrovskaya has shown, filmmakers were kept in check by seemingly random interventions by the regime, a manner of supervision which was counterproductive in that it left them facing uncertain prospects and burdened with low morale.28 Opera endured a comparable fate. As with the rejection of Lady Macbeth in 1936, the Central Committee’s Resolution on music of 1948, which reprimanded the nation’s foremost composers, was prompted by the leadership’s disapproval of a Bolshoy opera production, Vano Muradeli’s The Great Friendship.29 Shostakovich, who started out as the nation’s brightest talent in opera, effectively gave it up for good in 1936; others struggled on, with middling results, until opera became even more hazardous in the wake of the Resolution. Prokofiev, however, maintained a unique dedication to opera through the late 1930s and 1940s, even after the Resolution, until the end of his life. He did not participate in collaboration and sought to maximize his independence. Therefore in several ways his career stands outside the common practices of Soviet opera. His compositional approach remained his own, as might have been expected of a mature composer of his stature. He took advantage of the breathing space given to composers, and the regime’s 25

26 27

28

29

Opera was the ‘entertainment of choice for Party leaders, including those sincerely passionate operagoers, Stalin and Voroshilov’. Frolova Walker, Stalin’s Music Prize, p. 203. Vlasova, ‘The Stalinist Opera Project’, p. 165. ‘Stalin’s vision of Soviet culture was always characterized by a duality on the one hand he strove to promote the notion of artists as political servants under party control, while on the other he stressed the importance of artistic freedom and diversity (albeit within limits), and demanded that art should be of the highest quality.’ Sarah Davies and James Harris, Stalin’s World: Dictating the Soviet Order (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 256. Maria Belodubrovskaya, Not According to Plan: Filmmaking under Stalin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017). Filmmakers had more independence, being self administered through their own Committee for Cinema Affairs, 1938 46. In contrast to the workshop method of opera creation, directors did not even have the help of produ cers, and took care of almost everything themselves. As Vlasova writes, ‘the 1948 resolution was directly prompted by Stalin’s dissatisfaction with the Bolshoi’s new operatic production’. Vlasova, ‘The Stalinist Opera Project’, p. 165.

14

Introduction

desire to reap the benefits of creative endeavours, but showed limited willingness to align with party-state ideals for content, style, and the generation of ‘heroic uplift’. Opera was the genre in which the composer’s aims collided most conspicuously with high-Stalinist ideals; while taking ideology head on, and to some extent playing by the rules (as he perceived them), he was fundamentally seeking artistic achievement on his own terms.

Prokofiev’s Late Operas In Prokofiev’s late operas, we observe a leading Soviet composer working on the most high-profile genre of music during its climacteric under Stalin. The first, Semyon Kotko, coincided with Susanin’s premiere and was caught up in the opera debates at their most intense, and the last, The Story of a Real Man, overlapped with the infamous 1948 Resolution and was bound up with the collapse of the opera project. Prokofiev seemed the most likely candidate to contribute to Soviet opera after Shostakovich withdrew; no other composer had nearly as much experience or commitment. He had been adamant in maintaining opera as his ideal, against contemporary dismissals (e.g., by Stravinsky and Diaghilev), and he remained closely connected to the Russian traditions. He was withering in his criticisms of the song opera and was unwilling to participate in the collaborative process of creation, or even review at the level of the Union, insisting on maintaining his independence in constructing librettos and composing music. His cosmopolitanism and elitism contributed to a level of ambivalence towards him that would eventually grow into resentment. In terms of aesthetics, he refused to accept epigonism as a path for Soviet music, and stood against what he considered the outdated conventions of Romantic opera. He held on to his usual objective in opera, to approximate the more life-like sphere of the dramatic theatre, and steadfastly (or stubbornly) adhered to the practice of dialogue opera, setting texts according to the inflections of the spoken language, taking interest in colourful details and the idiosyncrasies of each character, while seeking to capture particular qualities of his source literature, including tone and atmosphere. Prokofiev’s preferences for a more intimate and active form of music theatre and for faithful transposition went directly against the demands for a spectacular and overwhelming manner tied to nineteenth-century models, and he found himself in conflict with socialist realism. In his work in other genres, such as mass songs, cantatas, and film scores, he was clearly willing to compromise and compose more ‘functional’ music; his obstinacy in opera is evidence of the special value that it held for him. While he did

Prokofiev’s Late Operas

15

turn towards lyricism and simplicity in his late operas, combining simple numbers with the action and detail of the dialogue style, he remained reluctant to include large-scale arias or choruses, and more generally rejected the heroic mode in which such numbers and set pieces were essential. Prokofiev’s later operas nevertheless demonstrate clear links to traditions and conventions of opera and the dramatic theatre, which he adapted to complement the form and style of each of his chosen literary works. Setting two socialist realist novels, a nineteenth-century Russian novel, and an eighteenth-century English comedy, he drew from classic melodrama, contemporary film, comic opera, and ballet. At the same time, all four late operas are united by certain musical and dramatic techniques and underlying aesthetic principles, which distinguish them from his previous works in the medium. Prokofiev’s early operas often bore the mark of throughcomposition, in which melodic recitative was set over kaleidoscopically shifting ostinato patterns, with a few leitmotifs providing structural unity. Flexibility increased in the mature operas, as he abandoned his selfimposed restriction against rounded vocal forms, and thus united the ‘radical’ model of Musorgsky with the ‘classical’ model of Tchaikovsky, as Richard Taruskin has observed.30 The issue of the influence that socialist realism or politically minded coercion played in this evolution is one that will be addressed in detail in this book, and considered against other factors. It is worth pointing out at the start that Prokofiev had modified his position many years earlier. In a diary entry from 22 January 1924 (as he was travelling by train from London to Paris) he writes that he ‘pondered the fate and future of opera’, and came to a conclusion about the correct ‘way to compose an opera’ – as usual in this period taking a position in opposition to the ‘fulminating’ Diaghilev and Stravinsky.31 Disagreeing with their view that declamation should be replaced by ‘old forms’, he stressed that the goal of opera should be that ‘the music always enhances the effect on the audience’, that there should be no ‘routinely functional music’. However, arias and ensembles may be included if they are ‘called for by the action on stage’, while ‘the dialogue needs music to make its full effect’. Reflecting on his previous work, he admitted that ‘In The Gambler and in The Fiery Angel I was too dependent on the text. From now on I shall be

30

31

Richard Taruskin, ‘Tone, Style and Form in Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas: Some Preliminary Observations’, in Studies in the History of Music, Volume II: Music and Drama (New York: Broude Brothers, 1988), pp. 215 39. Sergey Prokofiev, Diaries 1924 1933: Prodigal Son, trans. Anthony Phillips (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), p. 13.

16

Introduction

guided exclusively by the idea of the subject and will develop it with much greater freedom.’ Furthermore, in subsequent years, following his experiences of failure with The Fiery Angel and the Second Symphony, Prokofiev would arrive at a creative crossroads, turning towards what he called a ‘new simplicity’: greater transparency of texture and clarity of form, emphasizing clear harmonic functions, lyrical melodies, and balanced phrase structures. He would continue to promote his ‘new simplicity’ through the 1930s as his alternative to a Soviet idea of simplicity, the lowest common denominator of immediate comprehensibility. While Prokofiev’s later style is usually considered to be more conservative than his earlier music, the key is how his idiom is consolidated and enriched, and how he deploys familiar formulae in newly effective ways. He did not, of course, eliminate the dissonances and ostinati of Gambler and Angel from his vocabulary (the third act of Kotko is ample proof); these remain as resources to be drawn on for special effects, made even more striking through their contrast with ‘simplicity’ (this use of contrast is a general feature of his later music, for example in such works as Romeo and Juliet or the Sixth and Seventh Piano Sonatas). In the late operas, harmony ranges from a modal idiom to some of the composer’s most complex sonorities. There is a wider spectrum of rhythms, from gestural motifs to classic dance topoi, with ostinatos usually reserved for moments of tension rather than supplying a continuous churning energy in the orchestra. This allowed rhythm to become even more important a factor in the representation of character and action. Perhaps most of all, there is greater versatility in his writing for the voice, from lyrical singing in short but self-contained number format at one extreme to notated speech at the other. Forms, meanwhile, remain sectional, and musical-dramatic developments are episodic, rather than attaining a ‘symphonic’ sweep. The result is balanced, ‘classical’ or ‘epic’ structures and dramaturgy in all four of the Soviet operas, departing from the ‘steady dramatic crescendo’, weighted towards the end, that was his early criterion. With his qualified acceptance of conventional means and his rejection of an overwrought intensity, however, Prokofiev remained committed to his ideal of a dynamic music theatre; he was determined not to stall the action or sacrifice visual interest, indeed he becomes more inventive in generating stage activity, having realized that this aspect too could be enhanced through ‘greater freedom’ and flexibility. In his 1940 autobiography, Prokofiev described five ‘lines’ that characterized his work. These lines correlate to distinct musical styles, each of which foregrounds particular elements: the ‘classical’ line is based on elements (in some cases as pastiche) of eighteenth-century style, the

Prokofiev’s Late Operas

17

‘innovative’ line relates mainly to dissonant and intensely expressive harmony, the ‘motoric’ to rhythm, and the ‘lyrical’ to melody. According to Prokofiev, the fifth line, the ‘grotesque’, is ‘simply a deviation from the other lines’ in order to produce a satirical effect. It typically features exaggerations of the other lines (e.g., jarring or garishly dissonant harmony, jerky or plodding rhythm, angular melody), often in some combination, and is also a recognizable and characteristic style of its own. In his operas and ballets, it usually serves to suggest ridiculous appearance or awkward movement, and thus presents itself as caricature or farce.32 While the early operas relied primarily on the ‘innovative’, ‘motoric’, and ‘grotesque’ lines, lyrical cantilena and grotesque caricature are brought to the forefront in the later operas. They serve to represent certain types of characters that recur in all four operas regardless of their varying subject matter and settings: caricature is attached to villagers, comic suitors, and the lower classes, while lyricism distinguishes young lovers. The ensemble casts prompted a range of musical styles and thus invited and facilitated a dramatic technique employing contrasts and oppositions. Even in Stalin’s Soviet Union, opera gave Prokofiev the opportunity to exercise his sharp sense of humour, but his usual interest in human foibles and interpersonal conflict was now balanced by a complementary concern with human feelings and solitary contemplation, the traditional stuff of opera. His themes are universal, and all four operas remain primarily love stories; wizards, demons, and manic obsessives are no longer to be found. In relation to this real-world orientation, a crucial feature is that all his portraits remain to some extent grounded in the physical, temporal world, and are brought to life through external qualities and physical action – vocabulary and intonation, gesture and movement. This includes lyrical characters, who interact with the world around them even during moments of self-reflection: for example, in Act III of Kotko Sofya mutters about her nightmare while Semyon continues to sing the (diegetic) Nocturne, Andrey’s arioso in the first tableau of War and Peace shifts in tone as he reacts to Natasha’s appearance at her window, and in both of Aleksey’s solo numbers in Act IV of Real Man he is occupied with writing letters to Olga.

32

This is the original French meaning of ‘grotesque’, to which Prokofiev sought to return, against what he considered the overuse and misinterpretation of the term by critics in reference to his music. ‘In any case, I protest against the very word ‘grotesque’, which is overused here to the point of nausea. The meaning of the French word grotesque is thus perverted to a considerable degree.’ Semyon Isaakovich Shlifshteyn (ed.), S. S. Prokof’yev. Materialï, dokumentï, vospominaniya (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye muzïkal’noye izda tel’stvo, 1956), p. 149.

18

Introduction

These attributes necessarily limited the level of grandiosity that was achievable. While the ‘innovative’ and ‘motoric’ remain in the mix for episodes of tense drama and violence, lyricism and caricature dominate, and neither mode was suitable for monumental heroism and nationalism. Indeed, with all the pressures that were applied to opera composition under Stalin, it is remarkable how ‘un-Soviet’ all four of Prokofiev’s late operas actually are, and how much they reflect an individual and consistent approach to opera. Attention throughout this book is focused on their incompatibility with contemporary aesthetics. My findings in each of the four chapters demonstrate clear points of correlation, but more often of confrontation, between Prokofiev and the regime. I reveal a sharp disparity not only in terms of stylistic preferences, but also in assumptions about the purpose and function of art, the status of the individual in relation to the collective, and the proper role of humour and appropriate tone for solemnity. Indeed, as outlined in the later chapters, it was primarily through Prokofiev’s experience with opera that his independence and status as a Soviet composer eventually disintegrated. Nevertheless, my aim has not been to retell the familiar story of an artist destroyed by the state, but rather to reveal new aspects of these works from both critical and historical perspectives. Chapter 1 offers a new interpretation of Semyon Kotko (1939), based on the claim that the composer drew inspiration from the classic melodrama, due to the involvement of Vsevolod Meyerhold as director. Alongside tragedy and brutal violence, the opera incorporates the tradition of the Little Russian comedy, prompted by the Gogolian content in Valentin Katayev’s novella. As a result of this generic mix, the work bypassed the heroic formula of the Stalinist melodramatic mode, which had become mainstream in the 1930s. This led to an ambivalent reception, which was highlighted when the work became a focus of attention in the major opera debates of the late 1930s. As the work that best represented the ‘professional’ camp, those who championed the values of technical mastery, it was subjected to a direct comparison with a contemporary work that was preferred by those on the ‘populist’ side, Tikhon Khrennikov’s song opera V buryu (Into the Storm), which eventually received official favour. Chapter 2 presents a new reading of Betrothal in a Monastery (1940/43) as an opera–ballet hybrid. I show how Prokofiev drew on his own ballet idiom to update the conventions of classical opera buffa, in particular though a renewal of Mozartian dance topoi and novel formal structures. I go on to examine Betrothal’s supposed retreat in response to the criticisms of Kotko, arguing instead that the opera’s genre and content fit neatly within a particular niche in the arts and society, corresponding with the return

Prokofiev’s Late Operas

19

of classics and comedies in the Soviet theatre, the re-emergence of bourgeois practices and ‘culturedness’, and the growth of an entertainment industry for a new privileged administrative class. My emphasis in Chapter 3, on War and Peace (1941–52), is on the opera’s creation and reception – the two categories overlap since the work was shaped, over several years, with the close involvement of the authorities. I examine a wide range of materials related to the cultural context, and compare the opera’s various versions, in order to demonstrate how the many revisions were directly related to developments in the representation of war and its heroes during different phases of World War II and after. As a result of revisions, the original conception, closely following Tolstoy’s novel, was undermined; the opera lost its rich panoply of individual characters contributing to the narrative of national victory, and gradually acquired an enhancement of the role of Fieldmarshal Kutuzov, thus becoming instead a propaganda vehicle supporting the leader cult in its post-war phase. In Chapter 4, I assess the original version of The Story of a Real Man (1947–48) against the dominant mode of Stalinist subjectivity that its hero represented, the New Soviet Man, in the context of late Stalinism and the regime’s reassertion of authority in the cultural sphere. After earlier disappointments, Prokofiev borrowed from the song opera, in an attempt to adopt the style and structure of what he believed was the socialist realist standard. I contrast the treatment of heroism in Prokofiev’s opera and in parallel media, arguing that the composer’s focus on individual psychology (including trauma) within the frame of a love narrative, rather than a national celebration of victory, proved problematic at a time when mass spectacle was required above all. The composer tied his own fate to Real Man, as his bid to return to favour following the 1948 Resolution. In both his work and his professional behaviour, I suggest, Prokofiev himself proved to have failed as a Soviet subject.

1 Semyon Kotko and the Melodrama of High Stalinism

Prokofiev made his permanent return to Russia just at the time when the official opera project was launched, with new parameters set in place and debates begun in earnest. His first Soviet-period opera, Semyon Kotko (1939), would test these parameters and generate controversy during a crucial period in the project’s history. It must have seemed natural as well as advisable to begin his new career with a Soviet subject, as a way to prove his credentials; he chose a topical, socialist realist work, Valentin Katayev’s novella Ya, sïn trudovogo naroda (I, Son of the Working People, 1937), a Civil War story featuring standard heroes and villains – Bolsheviks fighting foreign and internal enemies – and thus exemplifying the melodramatic mode that was common in Soviet art and public discourse in the late 1930s. Katayev’s writing was of a relatively high standard, and even this most politically correct of his works was distinguished by its picturesque descriptions of nature and enlivened by period colloquialisms and rapid plot development. The Ukrainian village setting prompted allusions to Nikolay Gogol’s early works, including references to folk traditions, some of which involved songs and choruses. Such features might have presumed an opera with a traditional formal scheme and details of local colour, and indeed this was Katayev’s intention, since he recommended that the composer create something like Carmen (then popular on the Soviet stage) – a dramatic score with ‘exotic’ touches and memorable dancebased numbers. But Prokofiev had attempted throughout his career to reproduce faithfully the particular qualities of his literary sources, even approximating aspects of their structure, and he was not going to force the material into some preconceived standard of operatic form. In a public statement, he stated that he chose Katayev’s novella because it ‘combines so many contrasting elements: the love of the young people, the hatred of the representatives of the old world, the heroism of struggle, mourning for the dead and the rich humour characteristic of the Ukrainian people.’1 Katayev’s and Prokofiev’s interest in Ukraine was in line with contemporary themes, directed from the top. The subject had been ‘commissioned’ from Katayev while he was working at Pravda (relevant historical 1

[20]

Semyon Isaakovich Shlifshteyn (ed.), Sergey Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences, trans. Rose Prokofieva (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1964), p. 118.

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21

documents appeared on his desk), at around the same time as the film director Aleksandr Dovzhenko was personally commissioned by Stalin to create a Ukrainian version of the folksy hit Chapayev (1934), which would eventually become Shchors (1939). Stalin also repeatedly advised Dovzhenko to feature Ukrainian folk songs and dances in the film, as Katayev would do in his novella.2 Prokofiev chose not to include quotations of folk music but highlighted the humour and invented his own folklike motifs. His goal was to create an innovative and gripping work of music theatre with vivid surface detail and on-stage activity. Kotko was developed from the start with Prokofiev’s longtime collaborator Vsevolod Meyerhold as director, and I will argue that this had a fundamental influence on the opera’s genre and character. In particular, Meyerhold’s interest in theatricality and his re-establishment of methods from ancient and popular stage traditions, including stylized gesture, led to the adoption of the melodramatic aesthetic as the basis of the work, albeit in its ‘classic’ rather than Stalinist form. This chapter deals in some detail with the opera’s relationship to two familiar genres: the classic stage melodrama, and the operatic tradition of the ‘Little Russian’ comedy that was based entirely on stories from Gogol’s early collection Evenings on a Farm near Dikan’ka (1832). Like Gogol himself, Katayev and Prokofiev had both spent their early years in Ukraine, and their familiarity with the region enabled the creation of a special tinta – the aura of a regional and historical milieu – through vernacular language, folk-like melody, and village humour, typical of the Little Russian comedy. The libretto and score intensified both the tragedy and the comedy of the story, and the intended manner of performance and staging then further exaggerated both sides of the melodramatic mix through a novel use of gesture. Kotko is usually considered to be a typically socialist realist opera, but my claim is that the opera is far removed from that aesthetic model. Additionally, although Kotko has been criticized for dramatic and stylistic incongruities, my reading of the opera as classic melodrama enables an interpretation that accentuates unity, in which the integration of traditions may be understood as coherent and consistent. Kotko’s qualities of concreteness and directness were probably due to Prokofiev’s understanding that Soviet opera needed to appeal to a broad audience, and to match up with then current trends in the theatre and cinema. He had begun to promote – as a description of his own aesthetic 2

Aleksandr Dovzhenko, ‘Sozdadim “Ukrainskogo Chapayeva”’, Literaturnaya gazeta 16, 20 March 1935, 1. It was suggested to Dovzhenko that he should concentrate on ‘the everyday life of the Ukrainian people, its folklore, its songs, dances, and especially the fabulous Ukrainian humour’.

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Semyon Kotko and the Melodrama of High Stalinism

ideal or a prescription for his Soviet peers (or both) – a ‘new simplicity’, rejecting the limits that he perceived had been reached by contemporary modernism in the West (‘experimentalism’ and extremes of dissonance on the one hand, the neoclassical trend of ‘Bach with wrong notes’ on the other), and simultaneously pursuing a polemic against provincialism, epigonism, and deficient levels of technical skill in Soviet composition.3 Meyerhold, too, had promoted simplicity as the highest goal of art, with the caveat that ‘[i]n the search for simplicity the artist must not lose the specificity of his personality’.4 For both, meeting the requirements of accessibility did not entail compromising artistic values; mass art was to be founded on the basis of the standards of high art. Prokofiev’s views placed him in one camp, of elite professionals, who for much of the Stalin era were in a struggle with their opponents, the ‘populists’, for influence over Soviet music: the first group promoted the values of originality and technical mastery, the second advocated comprehensibility for the widest possible audience.5 The dispute began in the 1920s and continued after the dismantling of RAPM in 1932, simmering in the background until the 1940s, when the regime put the populists in positions of power.6 As far as opera was concerned, limits had been set by the attack on Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth and approval of Dzerzhinsky’s The Quiet Don in 1936.7 Despite this apparent setback for the professionals, the arts administration recognized the need for skill and experience as well as political correctness in this now very prominent medium. Years of trial and (mostly) error in opera led in 1939 to a confrontation between prime exhibits of the two categories, when at the height of the opera debates Kotko became embroiled in a direct comparison with Tikhon Khrennikov’s Into the

3

4

5

6

7

Prokofiev’s published statements are collected in Prokof’yev o Prokof’yeve: Stat’i i interv’yu, ed. Viktor Varunts (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1991). See, for example, pp. 87, 89, 90 1, 101, 127 29, and 139. Laurence Senelick and Sergei Ostrovsky (eds.), The Soviet Theater: A Documentary History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 400. Kiril Tomoff has labelled them ‘highbrows’ and ‘populists’. Tomoff emphasises that the two camps ‘were so loosely defined that they should be understood not as competing factions but as vague associations determined by an often temporary convergence of professional opinion regarding a particular issue’. Kiril Tomoff, Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939 1953 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 125. See Levon Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Era: 1917 1991, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge, 2017); Marina Frolova Walker, Stalin’s Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), p. 56; and Tomoff, Creative Union, pp. 125 6. Leonid Maksimenkov, Sumbur vmesto muzïki: Stalinskaya kul’turnaya revolyutsiya 1936 1938 (Moscow: Yuridicheskaya kniga, 1997), p. 67.

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Storm. Collaboration was being promoted for Soviet opera as a way to provide novice composers with artistic and political guidance, as in the case of Into the Storm, which was developed with the eminent director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko at his opera studio. But Prokofiev and Meyerhold were established artists with their own personal styles and agendas, and would rely on their own creative judgements. While attempting to address contemporary demands and address his local audience, Prokofiev continued to write for international performance and for posterity, and intended that Kotko should remain ‘without propaganda, which quickly goes out of style’.8 While the outlines of a socialist realist plot remain in Kotko, Prokofiev’s commitment to what he considered timeless values of music and drama thus led to a failure, in socialist realist terms, to achieve an appropriate amplification of its moral essence. His attitude can be seen clearly in an article he published after choosing Katayev’s novella: ‘I did not want a stilted, static, or trivial plot or, on the contrary, a plot that pointed to too obvious a moral. I wanted live flesh-and -blood human beings with human passions, love, hatred, joy and sorrow arising naturally from the new conditions.’9 His lack of willingness to engage fully with official imperatives led to a controversial reception for his first Soviet opera, setting a pattern for his later career in the theatre. Opera was an art form that non-specialists (including the opera buff Stalin himself) felt qualified to assess, and differing views from many sides led to a lack of consensus, which was problematic in the reception of a work of socialist realism. A ‘strong’ and distinctive work such as Kotko was bound to provoke criticism, and it presented particular problems in a period of emerging norms of ritualized solemnity, when Glinka’s Ivan Susanin had inaugurated a new standard for heroism and nationalism on the operatic stage. While no one could deny that the musical quality of the opera stood well above the Soviet norm, Prokofiev’s tragicomic treatment of the subject matter, combined with the gestural idiom of the music and manner of performance, was seen by many critics to have hindered its elevation to an appropriate register for the historical events it portrayed. Into the Storm, on the other hand, caused less offence in terms of its plot and characters, but its music was found to be lacklustre at best, suffering from staticity, a surfeit of bland lyricism in commonplace strophic forms, and weak writing for the 8

9

Sergey Sergeyevich Prokof’yev and Vera Vladimirovna Alpers, ‘Perepiska’, in Muzïkal’noye nasledstvo: Sborniki po istorii muzïkal’noy kul’turï SSSR, vol. 1, ed. G. B. Bernandt, V. A. Kiselyov, and M. S. Pekelis (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye muzïkal’noye izdatel’stvo, 1962), p. 432. Literaturnaya gazeta, 20 September 1938, in Sergey Prokof’yev: Stat’i i materialï, ed. I. V. Nest’yev and G. Ya. Edel’man, 2nd edn (Moscow: Muzïka, 1965), p. 36.

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Semyon Kotko and the Melodrama of High Stalinism

orchestra. However, even though it was now widely agreed that the song opera should be rejected as a format, it still had the advantage of having once been officially approved; and indeed the Party hierarchy would weigh in again at this time on the side of populism, causing the opera project to hobble along, struggling from constant comparison with the favoured nineteenth-century repertory.

1.1 Meyerhold, Melodrama, and Socialist Realism Prokofiev had been associated with Meyerhold for much of his earlier career in opera. Meyerhold had predicted that his first opera, The Gambler (1915–17/rev. 1927–8) would ‘overturn the entire art of opera’, and he later assisted with its revisions;10 he had suggested the topic for the second, The Love for Three Oranges (1919), which achieved some of his modernist objectives (Prokofiev wrote in his Diary in 1921 that ‘I so badly want Meyerhold to produce Oranges someday’);11 and he made plans (subsequently unrealized) to produce all three early operas, including The Fiery Angel (1919–23/rev. 1926–7), in the Soviet Union. Closer to the time of Kotko, the director had commissioned incidental music from Prokofiev for a production of Pushkin’s Boris Godunov (1937), and even Music for Gymnastic Exercises (1939) for a mass athletic display intended for Red Square and Dynamo stadium.12 They shared a longstanding ambition to bring opera closer to the spoken theatre. Prokofiev sought to maintain continuous stage action and to highlight characteristic dialogue, avoiding static and rhetorical emotional expression. Meyerhold made stylized gesture and movement, among other visual symbols, central in his pioneering work, which was opposed to psychological realism. In terms of opera, he described (in 1925) his ideal of a singer-actor who would be easily audible to the audience without undue vocal exertion, being accompanied by a light and transparent orchestration that favoured the winds over strings and brass (the opposite of the Wagnerian sound).13 This musical conception is very similar to what we encounter in Act I of Kotko.

10

11

12

13

Sergey Prokofiev, Diaries 1915 1923: Behind the Mask, trans. Anthony Phillips (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), p. 141. See Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), vol. IV, p. 499; and Prokofiev, Diaries 1915 1923, p. 638. See Simon Morrison, The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 96 8. Aleksandr Gladkov, Meyerhold Speaks, Meyerhold Rehearses, trans. and ed. Alma Law (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1997), pp. 156 7.

Meyerhold, Melodrama, and Socialist Realism

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For Prokofiev, it must have seemed self-evident to invite Meyerhold to stage his first Soviet opera. But Meyerhold had already by this time endured years of persecution, and ‘Meyerholditis’ had become a term of abuse in the theatre (or ‘Meyerholdianism’, which had been targeted in the Pravda editorial on Lady Macbeth in 1936). The closure of his theatre on 8 January 1938 was preceded by an article by the KDI chairman, Platon Kerzhentsev, ‘An Alien Theatre’ (Pravda, 17 December 1937), which condemned his entire legacy. Konstantin Stanislavsky had been Meyerhold’s old adversary, but there was mutual respect between the two directors, and he graciously invited his disgraced colleague to join him in his studio, against the opposition of both the KDI and his own associates.14 When Stanislavsky died in August 1938, Meyerhold took over the studio, and began working to rebuild his reputation. He saw Kotko as crucial to his political rehabilitation, and became the composer’s guiding light on the project: ‘Meyerhold not only passionately supported the idea of writing an opera on this novella, but gave his agreement to produce it on the stage of the Stanislavsky Theatre and took up active participation in its creation.’15 The first three acts were worked out in close collaboration between them, along with Katayev and the (Ukrainian) set designer Aleksandr Tïshler, in the spring of 1939. Prokofiev wrote the music quickly, playing scenes to his co-creators during frequent meetings at his apartment, when ‘the future work’s content was deepened and its innovative form determined’.16 Meyerhold, however, was arrested on 20 June 1939, before the production could be realized, but just at the time the score was nearing completion (it was finished on 28 June). Meyerhold was drawn to the ancient, foreign, and popular theatres (Greek, Japanese Noh, commedia dell’arte, etc.) that celebrated the artificiality of the stage. The classic stage melodrama – created in France by Pixérécourt, belonging to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and filtering down through the theatre and the cinema to the present day – was among these points of reference. Melodrama is a ‘language of the entire theatre, uniting words, music, spectacle and gesture’, is marked by moral oppositions, and relies on pathos and sensational effects to produce intense reactions and carry forward its (formulaic)

14

15

16

Stanislavsky said ‘he would take full responsibility for the decision, and they too humored the old man’s “whim”’. Gladkov, Meyerhold Speaks, Meyerhold Rehearses, p. 43. Aleksandr Fevral’skiy, ‘Prokof’yev i Meyerkhol’d’, in Sergey Prokof’yev: Stat’i i materialï, ed. I. V. Nest’yev and G. Ya. Edel’man, 2nd edn (Moscow: Muzïka, 1965), p. 118, quoting from Grigoriy Kristi, ‘Stanislavskiy i Meyerkhol’d’, Oktyabr’ (March 1963), 185. Fevral’skiy, ‘Prokof’yev i Meyerkhol’d’, p. 118.

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Semyon Kotko and the Melodrama of High Stalinism

plot.17 I suggest that the features of Katayev’s novella and the influence of Meyerhold combined to prompt the adoption of the classic form of melodrama as the basis for Kotko. Melodrama has attracted scholarly reappraisal in recent decades, following Peter Brooks’s seminal study The Melodramatic Imagination, which analysed its features within nineteenth-century literature.18 The ‘melodramatic aesthetic’ has more recently been used to describe the histrionics, twists of fate, and expressive extremes in any artistic medium, and is readily applicable to opera.19 Kotko presents a striking and atypical example, however, being based not on those elements that had been absorbed into operatic convention during the nineteenth century, but rather on the narrative properties and expressive means of the original theatrical form. Rapid action, flexibility of declamation, and sharply etched caricature – all of which were already characteristic of Prokofiev’s operas – reinforce a plot featuring stock characters within an abstract moral feud and a dramatic structure combining catastrophe with comic relief. This is at some distance from the giant swells of passion that dominate Romantic opera. Prokofievian values of clarity and economy are taken almost to an extreme in Kotko’s pared-down style; its compact formal design and simple musical materials are well suited to an uncomplicated drama built on conflicts between distinct and opposed elements (the ‘contrasting elements’ he perceived in the novella). At the same time, the expansion in this opera to a wider spectrum of vocal techniques, from rhythmically notated speech to song-like melody, fulfils the same purpose of creating variety and contrast. As usual, there are no formal arias and few pauses in the drama; as the composer wrote, ‘my task was to arrange the dramatic construction in such a way that the action on stage does not cease during the vocal passages’.20 17

18

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Ira Hauptman, ‘Defending Melodrama’, in Melodrama, Themes in Drama 14, ed. James Redmond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 281 90 (287). Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess, 2nd edn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); the first edition was published in 1976. The post Brooks interest in melodrama and opera began with Emilio Sala’s L’opera senza canto: Il mélo romantico e l’invenzione della colonna sonora (Venice: Marsilio, 1995). More recent studies include Mary Ann Smart, Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth Century Opera (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004); Jacqueline Waeber, En musique dans le texte: Le mélodrame de Rousseau à Schoenberg (Paris: Van Dieren, 2005); and Sarah Hibberd (ed.), Melodramatic Voices: Understanding Music Drama (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). Prokofiev, ‘O moyey opere v Teatre im. K. S. Stanislavskogo’ (9 March 1940), in Prokof’yev o Prokof’yeve: Stat’i i interv’yu, ed. Viktor Varunts (Moscow: Sovetskiy kom pozitor, 1991), p. 181.

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Kotko’s genre as a classic melodrama lends it particular historical significance for the reason that it collided in the late 1930s with a radically different interpretation. Melodrama had been incorporated into Soviet art in the early years of the Soviet Union, after the rejection of bourgeois naturalism, when it was heavily promoted by such leading cultural theorists as Maksim Gorky, Aleksandr Blok, and Anatoliy Lunacharsky, who recognized the parallel with revolutionary France and considered it ideal for communicating with an audience of peasants and proletarians.21 Also during the 1920s, the Russian formalists were the first to analyse melodrama from a theoretical perspective, in keeping with their concern for the structural properties of narrative forms without prejudice against popular or folk literature. By the 1930s, melodrama had provided the basis for new theatrical genres, and found a powerful outlet in the Soviet cinema. A melodramatic manner of performance was common even in theatrical productions of classic works.22 Most significantly, however, melodrama was assimilated into socialist realism when it was formulated in 1932–4, and thus became inherent in high-Stalinist narratives; in the words of Julie Cassiday, socialist realism ‘canonized the melodramatic mode in all forms of soviet art’.23 By the mid 1930s, in attempting to achieve mass appeal, emphasis was directed away from the social forces and class struggle of Marxist theory to spectacular feats of individual heroism.24 Socialist realist literature borrowed its style from nineteenth-century realist literature and often featured heroes of the Civil War in dramatic, if formulaic, storylines.25 The emphasis on heroism was a Stalinist twist to the narrative of melodrama, which traditionally focused on a victimized protagonist in order to convey its moral perspective. Katerina Clark has described the

21

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24 25

For quotations from Lunacharsky promoting melodrama, see Daniel Gerould and Julia Przybas, ‘Melodrama in the Soviet Theatre 1917 1928: An Annotated Chronology’, in Melodrama, ed. Daniel Gerould (New York: New York Literary Forum, 1980), pp. 78 and 82. ‘Whereas in the postrevolutionary days, a time of millennial fervor, the characteristic theatrical form had been the open air mass spectacle, now a dominant mode was melodrama. Even productions of theatrical classics were colored by it.’ Katerina Clark, Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931 1941 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 226. Julie A. Cassiday, ‘Alcohol is Our Enemy! Soviet Temperance Dramas of the 1920s’, in Imitations of Life: Two Centuries of Melodrama in Russia, ed. Louise McReynolds and Joan Neuberger (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 152 77 (171). Cassiday, ‘Alcohol Is Our Enemy!’, p. 171. Kevin M. F. Platt and David Brandenberger (eds.), Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), pp. 8 9.

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standard ‘master plot’ of the socialist realist novel, which centred on mythical archetypes and involved the redirection of personal drives and development of socialist ‘consciousness’, leading to the accomplishment of a task that benefits the community.26 These narrative conventions remain essentially melodramatic, in line with William Sharp’s account: The possibility of change in society, or of a change in the hero or heroine who lives in that society, is a necessity for melodrama. Unlike comedy or tragedy where society remains the same and we join it or leave it, melodrama at least implies a change in conviction, and a positive change at that, in either the protagonist (our hero) or the antagonist (society).27

In the master plot both the hero and society undergo positive transformations, as an allegory of the creation of socialism. Essentially melodramatic was the stark opposition between positive heroes and evil enemies, which was hardwired into the Bolshevik mindset, involved as they were in a revolutionary struggle against class enemies and capitalists. Having become truly obdurate after fighting the brutal Civil War against anti-revolutionaries and foreign intruders, this outlook reached even greater extremes during Stalin’s subsequent Cultural Revolution, which was intended to destroy the remnants of capital in the countryside at any cost. After Stalin’s consolidation of power in the mid 1930s, the message was projected that communism’s happy ending had arrived, that, as he claimed, ‘the waverers had all been won over’ and ‘the virtuous community had triumphed’.28 It was at this time, in 1935–6, that contemporary real-life Soviet heroes joined their fictional counterparts in an expanding pantheon, as the creative intelligentsia had been able to demonstrate for the first time the popular appeal of polar explorers, pilots, workers, Old Bolsheviks, Red Army commanders, and Komsomol activists, all celebrated for their extraordinary capabilities and achievements.29 But fears were increasing of attacks from foreign powers and spies bent on undermining the Soviet state, and wreckers and saboteurs who were opposing the regime’s radical push towards industrialization and collectivization. The Great Terror of 1936–8 would be the ultimate expression of 26

27

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Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 5. William Sharp, ‘Structure of Melodrama’, in Melodrama, Themes in Drama 14, ed. James Redmond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 269 80 (274). Lars T. Lih, ‘Melodrama and the Myth of the Soviet Union’, in Imitations of Life: Two Centuries of Melodrama in Russia, ed. Louise McReynolds and Joan Neuberger (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 178 207 (190). David Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and Terror under Stalin, 1927 1941 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 228.

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the fear and hatred of enemies, and the purges and show trials were thoroughly melodramatic displays. Narratives in this period often focused on the exposure and elimination of threats from enemies, often portrayed as the dvurushnik (double-dealer), a figure very similar to the villain of classic melodrama. (In Prokofiev’s own oeuvre, there are elements of Stalinist melodrama in, for example, Peter and the Wolf (1936).) Many Soviet heroes (notably Old Bolsheviks and Red Army commanders) were themselves caught up in the Terror, and as a result the pantheon was rapidly depopulated. Their replacement came in the form of illustrious heroes from history and legend – Aleksandr Nevsky, Minin and Pozharsky, Dmitriy Donskoy – as part of the next stage in Stalinist melodrama, which witnessed a process of expropriation of the national past for propaganda purposes, supporting an increasingly hierarchical and russocentric regime.30 If the young socialist state had offered a revolutionary environment comparable to that of melodrama’s origins in eighteenth-century France, by the late 1930s a new autocracy had been established, supported by the pseudo-religion of ideological doctrine, nationalism, and the leader cult. Melodrama nevertheless remained a crucial component in this context, not only in highlighting the conflict between Russia and her enemies, but also in terms of its direct and unambiguous manner of representation, its reliance on non-verbal sign systems, and its characteristics of redundancy and excess. As a part of the Gesamtkunstwerk of socialist realism, public discourse likewise drew on an idiosyncratic interpretation of melodrama in communicating the strict codes of Stalinism.31 In all media – the cinema, textbooks, newspapers, parades – the same messages were endlessly repeated, and images and slogans became preferred to narratives, being more immediately accessible and more easily disseminated. Multimedia art forms such as film and opera became pre-eminent, since they could draw on the most highly affective means (images and music) to broadcast heroic rhetoric and enact a form of ritual on a grand scale. In a similar way to public spectacles such as Red Square marches, the aesthetic aim was to achieve what we might label the socialist realist sublime. The eclectic merging of the popular with the solemn and grandiose, of everyday reality with monumental spectacle, also led to the call for a new image of individual heroism in 30

31

See David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931 1956 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). The reference is to Boris Groys but the idea here is my own. Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond, trans. Charles Rougle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 50.

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Soviet opera. The arts administration encouraged composers to strive for an idiom that would be more powerful, even Wagnerian, in scope and symphonism, while also including arias and choruses that would draw from folk song. Soviet composers would fail to achieve this mix of the simple and the monumental, of popular appeal and weighty Romanticism – essentially grand opera, Stalin-style – and their works would struggle especially in comparison with the Tsarist-era classics, notably Ivan Susanin, which focused on heroic self-sacrifice, faithfulness to the nation and the Tsar, and defence against foreign invasion. It would have been possible, in adapting Katayev’s novel, to attempt a high-Stalinist elevation of its content, but Prokofiev concentrated instead on those aspects of Katayev’s novella he found to be ‘rather lively’, in pursuit of action and drama rather than propaganda.32 Kotko is episodic rather than symphonic, and its treatment of folk melody does not strive for any monumental effect (with one exception, but this is tragic in tone). The opera’s plot, condensed and focused on the central conflict, became more melodramatic than the novella. Prokofiev’s emphasis on stock characters and stylized gesture is striking, and yet this opera is usually labelled a ‘realist’ work.33 Marina Sabinina stresses its ‘psychological’ nature, and connects Prokofiev’s method with ‘the contemporary realistic theatre’ of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko.34 While it is true that by the end of his career Stanislavsky also gave greater attention to physical action, this remained in the service of his ideal of representing emotional and psychological states, which, indeed, is how Sabinina understands the function of gesture in Kotko. At the same time she mentions the prevalence of physical gesture, and compares the opera to the work of Bertolt Brecht: Prokofiev, ‘as a Soviet artist’, must have been inspired by Brecht’s Marxist aesthetics.35 These inconsistent claims should be read in terms of official preferences, since Brecht and Stanislavsky had impeccable socialist credentials. Indeed, Stanislavsky’s approach was ‘canonized’ in 1938, as the search for inner 32 33

34

35

Vernon Duke, Passport to Paris (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1955), p. 385. Robinson calls the characters ‘realistic’, and states that this is in contrast to Meyerhold’s practice. Harlow Robinson, ‘Love for Three Operas: The Collaboration of Vsevolod Meyerhold and Sergei Prokofiev’, The Russian Review, 45/3 (1986), 287 304 (303). Sabinina claims that with this opera there ‘begins a new period of Prokofiev’s operatic work, a period that is characterized by conscious striving towards realism’. Marina Dmitriyevna Sabinina, ‘Semyon Kotko’ i problemï opernoy dramaturgii Prokof’yeva (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1963), p. 284. Sabinina, ‘Semyon Kotko’, pp. 272 4. Meyerhold is mentioned only in passing (p. 270), perhaps because at the time when Sabinina wrote (1960), Meyerhold’s rehabilitation had only recently begun (from 1955).

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truth gained prominence over external indicators of allegiance – the ‘mask’ (analogous to Meyerhold’s techniques), which could, after all, be false.36 There may be a level of realism in Kotko (its historical subject, village setting, and colloquial dialogue), but this is what comedy and melodrama require in order to retain a degree of familiarity, since both are based precisely on an exaggeration of the realistic. This applies also to the stage designs by Tïshler, which brought together realistic and figurative folk motifs. His sketches include, for example, a rural scene surrounded by a ‘basket’ effect: a decorative frame of a drop curtain at the front of the stage forming a ring of straw, with wood along the bottom.37 Recognizing the stylized and performative aspects that are integral to the original concept of Kotko – to the extent that they rule out both ‘realism’ and ‘socialist realism’ – I propose that the work was based on the aesthetics of Meyerhold, the theatricality of the mask. The composer, just like the director, ‘scorned attempts to represent “reality” or the workings of the inner psyche on the stage’.38 Even as they worked in Stanislavsky’s opera studio, and sought to achieve a socialist realist success, both maintained their usual methods. In addition to this, the contribution of Meyerhold in itself clearly tarnished the production, despite the fact that he was not involved beyond the compositional stage. He himself was caught up in the melodrama of the Terror, being arrested in June 1939 as a foreign spy, tortured in order to reveal the ‘inner truth’ of his betrayal of the state (subsequently recanted at his trial), and executed as an enemy of the people in February 1940.

1.2 From Little Russian Comedy to Melodrama By the time Prokofiev selected it as a source, Ya, sïn trudovogo naroda had already been adapted into two theatre productions (a film would follow a year later) and probably seemed a safe choice.39 Set in Ukraine during the Civil War, the novella was part of a defence literature promoting heroic 36 37

38 39

Clark, Moscow, the Fourth Rome, p. 231. For reproductions of sketches for the set designs see Alla Mikhaylova (ed.), Meyerkhol’d i khudozhniki (Moscow: Galart, 1995), pp. 286 7. Clark, Moscow, the Fourth Rome, p. 230. The novella was published in 1937 and the play based on it in February 1938, close to the time when Aleksey Tolstoy recommended it to Prokofiev. The first Moscow performance of the play took place on 25 September 1938 (with incidental music by Tikhon Khrennikov). A second production followed in Leningrad, on 26 December 1938 (titled Shyol soldat s fronta, with incidental music by Oles’ Chishko). In July 1939, a film appeared, Shyol soldat s fronta, directed by Vladimir Legoshin.

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struggle against foreign invaders, in response to the growing threat from Nazi Germany. It also belonged to the contemporaneous reinterpretation of Russian history, in this case by addressing the leadership’s lingering concerns over nationalist elements in Ukraine, where the peasantry had opposed the Bolsheviks in 1918–20 and resisted forced collectivization during the first Five-Year Plan (1928–32). Katayev’s intention was to represent Ukrainian peasants turning away from the old life, fighting with rather than against the Red Army, and forging a bond between Ukraine’s national aspirations and centralized plans for its full participation in the Union. The story’s hero, Semyon Kotko, is the wavering type common to the socialist realist master plot. He is persecuted by Nikanor Vasilyevich Tkachenko, who in a single figure unites the most abhorred types of enemy, as both a kulak (a landowning peasant) and a collaborator with foreign invaders. This concentration on a clash between victim and villain makes the story particularly melodramatic in the classic sense. The story takes place in a rural village during the spring following the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in February 1918, ending with the departure of German troops later in the year. Ukraine had treaty obligations to supply provisions to the German army, since the Central Powers were still at war with the Entente Powers in Western Europe. Young Semyon returns home after four years of fighting in the tsarist army, hoping to resume a normal village life and marry his sweetheart, Sofya. With a new Bolshevik presence in his village, he is assigned property and livestock that had belonged to the former landowning class. But the village is threatened by the incursion of the Germans and their allies in search of supplies. Sofya’s father Tkachenko secretly supports the invaders and opposes the revolutionaries, hoping for a reinstatement of the old regime and aiming to enhance his position within it. He objects to the marriage of his daughter to Semyon, and, once the foreigners invade the village, Semyon is driven out under threat of murder and Sofya is promised to the son of a former landowner. Exiled villagers form a partisan force, and later in the year recapture their village (supported by the Red Army), leading to the execution of Tkachenko and a happy ending for Semyon and Sofya and their friends, who join Semyon’s former battery (now part of the Red Army), having discovered that their personal happiness and the interests of Ukraine coincide with the revolutionary cause. Thus foreign and internal enemies are overcome and Bolshevik power upheld. Before examining the opera’s melodramatic features in more detail, I consider Kotko’s relationship to the tradition of the Little Russian comedy (including its imitations of folk music) and its reliance on gesture: both are essential to its inventive take on the classic melodrama and distinguish it from the sententious appropriation of melodrama in socialist realism.

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In his handling of the Ukrainian language, motifs, and characters, Katayev returned to his usual literary model, Gogol, who, along with other great Russian writers of the Tsarist era, was regaining prominence in the second half of the 1930s. Gogol’s status was confirmed by a new Marxist interpretation in 1936, followed by positive pronouncements by influential figures, including Stalin himself, in 1937; then, in 1938, critics turned Gogol into a realist who had revealed the backwardness and corruption of tsarist Russia.40 Taras Bul’ba, a folk epic tale of pan-Slavic resistance to foreign invasion, was singled out for promotion as the author’s most favoured work. Katayev imitated Taras only superficially, however, and in spirit the novella is closer to Gogol’s other early stories set in Ukraine, the comic and macabre folk tales of Evenings on a Farm near Dikan’ka. Katayev assumed that the opera would feature songs, dances, and choruses based directly on the many references to music that he, like Gogol in Dikan’ka, had included in his text. Instead Prokofiev replicated the blend of folk epic and folk tale through the qualities of immediacy and simplicity, and (as co-librettist) largely rejected plans for verses and conventional numbers.41 Two miniature ‘overtures’ present two themes (Themes 1 and 2, Examples 1.1(a) and 1.1(b)) that function in the opera as complementary markers of joyful and tragic sides of Ukrainian village life (major and minor, ascending and descending, warm full orchestra and sombre low winds and strings). Short scenes then follow the novella’s concise chapters, and continue with Ukrainian local colour. When the curtain rises in scene 1 (fig. 6), Semyon is making his way home at night, accompanied by a G Aeolian tune that a Ukrainian soldier might have played on his dentsivka (a duct flute – Prokofiev uses solo oboe and clarinet), made more folk-like with a drone and 5/4 metre (notated in 4/4). At fig. 7 he begins an innocuous song in B♭, with a text from the novella’s opening sentence (‘A soldier returned from the front’). Similarly to his representation in the novella and folk epics in general, Semyon is treated musically as a ‘collective hero’, lacking distinctive qualities. The folk tale as Gogolian village comedy soon prevails, however, beginning the next morning (tableau 2) with the shenanigans of the villagers as they peer over the fence surrounding Semyon’s hut, competing to catch a glimpse of the returned soldier. In the novella only a few words of

40

41

In 1938 a series of articles in Literaturnïy kritik (no. 4) promoted Gogol’s patriotic work, particularly Taras Bul’ba. See Robert L. Strong, ‘The Soviet Interpretation of Gogol’, American Slavic and East European Review, 14/4 (December 1955), 528 39. See Lyudmila Ivanovna Skorino, Pisatel’ i yego vremya: Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo V. P. Katayeva (Moscow: Sovetskiy pisatel’, 1965), pp. 299 307.

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Semyon Kotko and the Melodrama of High Stalinism

Example 1.1(a) Semyon Kotko, Introduction, bars 9 18, Theme 1

Example 1.1(b) Semyon Kotko, Act I, tableau 1, bars 1 8, Theme 2

greeting pass between the villagers and Semyon, but Prokofiev considerably enhanced such opportunities for local colour, drawing on an obvious connection to the tradition of the ‘Little Russian’ comedies by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Musorgsky that were based on Gogol’s Dikan’ka tales: Cherevichki, May Night, Christmas Eve, and Sorochintsï Fair. Like their literary counterparts Pushkin and Gogol, these composers of the Russian national past were receiving lavish attention from the mid 1930s, and their music was praised especially for the use of folk materials.42 Colloquial language and sharp disputes were always typical of Prokofiev’s depiction of the lower classes, and nosey, busybody women and gruff and grouchy men appear in all four Soviet-period operas. But in Kotko they 42

See for example, in Viktor Tsukkerman, ‘Rimskiy Korsakov i narodnaya muzïka’, Sovetskaya muzïka (October November 1938), 104 27; and Sovetskaya muzïka (April 1939) (Musorgsky edition).

From Little Russian Comedy to Melodrama

35

make up much of the ensemble, and directly recall the Little Russian comedy that was their natural habitat. Appearing at first as a folk hero, Semyon quickly drifts into another stock role, that of Gogolian lover – a village lad, pursuing Sofya just like a Vakula, Levko, or Gritsko in love with Oksana, Hanna, or Parasya.43 The unselfconscious lyricism of Semyon and Sofya, most prominent in their Act I duet, is in a similar vein to May Night, expressing mildly amusing terms of endearment in regional language (‘Yagodka moya krasnaya’ – ‘My little red berry’; ‘moyo tï oblachko’ – ‘you are my little cloud’). Like Rimsky-Korsakov’s lovers they have a teasing, combative aspect to their relationship, and the same is true of Semyon’s younger sister Frosya and her suitor Mikola. A feature of the Gogolian comedy is that all members of the village are involved in the colloquial humour; parallels between couples and characters emphasize their stock status and their membership in a small rural community. Frosya seems a young and lively version of the babï (women) when she attempts to assist Semyon with his romantic affair, or in her argument with her mother at the end of the act. Throughout, there is a gently humorous take on village customs, hierarchy, pretence, and politesse, for example through the exaggerated actions and speech of Remenyuk and Tsaryov as matchmakers in Act II. Numerous suggestions of folk music strengthen the link to Little Russian comedy. There is one direct quotation of a folk melody (the same one that had been used by Tchaikovsky in Cherevichki) in the middle section of Frosya’s song in scene 8.44 Prokofiev also set Ukrainian folk song texts (‘Chto vï, starostï’, ‘I shumit, i gudit’, and ‘Rano, ranen’ko’) to newly composed melodies. More typically, Prokofiev’s music is modelled on folk singing, such as the choruses in Act II during the matchmaking ceremony (in the Mixolydian mode), and the imitations of the bustling rhythms of vesnyanki (spring song-dances) in the series of couplets in quick tempos with strong duple beats that are sung by the women and girls at almost regular intervals throughout Act I (figs. 38, 45–50, 59–60, 73–5, 85). Frosya’s song and the Act II choruses conform to kuchkist practice (appearing as they might in real life), while the fragments of vesnyanki seem to be a variant of the method in Musorgsky’s Sorochintsï Fair, where

43

44

The three young pairs in Cherevichki/Christmas Eve, May Night, and Sorochintsï Fair, respectively. Both composers set new texts. The original ‘Oh, don’t frighten my little heart’ (‘Oy, ne pugay, pugachen’ko’) is from the Rubets collection of Ukrainian folk songs, Dvesti shestnadtsat’ ukrainskikh napevov zapisal i izdal A. I. Rubets (Moscow: P. Jurgenson, 1872).

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Semyon Kotko and the Melodrama of High Stalinism

dialogue is set to folk tunes.45 More generally, Prokofiev evoked the aura of folk music though the use of diatonic modes, especially Aeolian and Dorian (‘Russian’ minor), an emphasis on vocal melody, minimal textures, and a limited palette of tone colours with prominence given to the winds.46 There is also a set of short motifs, the most conspicuous being a descending major second plus descending fourth or fifth, which reappears frequently throughout Act I (in the form 5̂ –4̂ –1̂ , this motif is familiar from many Russian melodies in folk, popular, and art music). It audibly links and unifies the main thematic material, in particular that belonging to the principal protagonists. It is heard most conspicuously in Semyon’s flute melody (fig. 6), Frosya’s entrance theme (fig. 27), Sofya and Semyon’s duet (fig. 62), Tsaryov’s accordion tune (fig. 77), Semyon’s narration (fig. 86), the two matchmaking choruses in Act II (figs. 151 and 162), and the Nocturne at the beginning of Act III (fig. 224). Overall, Act I has a timeless pastoral ambience, with comic action in the foreground. Associations with the Little Russian comedy continue well into Act II, including the familiar change of décor from a public space to the interior of a hut (May Night and Sorochintsï Fair), but a darker atmosphere looms, along with a character who will emerge as the villain. Thus the melodramatic mode begins to materialize. Tkachenko enters to deliver a short monologue, a parallel with Semyon’s opening song: both are selfrevealing statements that recall the signature tune of stage melodrama, in which motivations are set out upon first appearances. Tkachenko’s theme contains a Phrygian inflection that places him at the negative extreme of the opera’s modal/moral spectrum. Like Rimsky-Korsakov’s Village Head, he is fiercely protective of his public image and aspires to wider recognition from the tsarist authorities; he even sings a snippet of the imperial national anthem when referring to the Tsar (Act II, scene 5). While Tsaryov and Remenyuk play their part in the matchmaking ritual with a characteristic degree of buffoonery, Tkachenko from the start is authoritarian and violent in his treatment of his wife, his daughter, and the matchmakers, and he lacks the comic qualities that usually soften the ill-tempered Gogolian father. Tension is alleviated by the two choral songs of the village guests 45

46

On this point and for an authoritative discussion of the Little Russian comedy in general, see Richard Taruskin, ‘Sorochintsï Fair Revisited’, in Musorgsky: Eight Essays and an Epilogue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 328 94. Also useful on this topic is Abram Akimovich Gozenpud, ‘Gogol’ v muzïke’, in Izbrannïye stat’i (Leningrad: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1971), pp. 28 63. ‘Pure’ modes are rare in Prokofiev’s music, but can be heard also in his incidental music and film music to suggest the archaic, exotic, or rustic for example ancient Egypt, medieval Rus, or indeed Ukraine, in the ballet On the Dnieper, Op. 51 (1931 2).

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that, like other such moments of lyrical song, offer temporary repose within the general build-up, but the slowing of pace and relaxation of mood is abruptly punctured in scene 7, when three German soldiers burst in on the homely setting. As the choir sings the final phrase of the second chorus, they are interrupted, just before a return to the tonic A♭, by three forte blasts of a brutal B-minor chord from the low brass and double bass. In the context of the gently flowing motion of the chorus (with strings and winds), this knock of fate is as sharp a contrast as it is an utterly simple one (Example 1.2(a)). The first violins’ and violas’ meek attempt to finish the phrase is stopped by a second knock, and the next scene immediately follows as three Germans enter the hut, introduced by a peremptory chromatic figure (in B minor), the distorted fanfare that is their leitmotif (figs. 168–70, Example 1.2(b)). Throughout the opera, A♭ is related to a pastoral Ukraine, and B minor to the conflict with enemy forces (just as in Alexander Nevsky and War and Peace). The shock of this invasion marks the end of the exposition of the drama, and leads not just to the development but to a shift in the nature of the drama itself. Commentators have tended to focus on how this moment recalls the intrusion of the Poles in Act 3 of Ivan Susanin.47 But the invasion here is unprepared, and far more startling (in Susanin there are many references to the conflict with the Poles in Act I, and the entire second act is devoted to a representation of the Polish court and their preparations for action). Marina Sabinina suggested in effect that the opera is invaded here by another genre: she labels Kotko a ‘double-genre’ incorporating both comedy and ‘heroic struggle’, switching suddenly from one to the other at the point of the German intrusion.48 While this impression is understandable as an immediate reaction to this particularly striking moment, a better explanation is available, one that takes the whole of the work into account. Kotko is not an ad-hoc combination of genres, nor is it constructed on juxtaposed references to Russian operatic models from the nineteenth century. Rather, it conforms to the third possibility after comedy and tragedy that by definition contains elements of both: melodrama. The ‘leap’ from village comedy to disaster drama in the middle of Act II is itself one of those shock effects characteristic of melodrama; this is not 47

48

Richard Taruskin, ‘Tone, Style and Form in Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas: Some Preliminary Observations’, in Studies in the History of Music, Volume II: Music and Drama (New York: Broude Brothers, 1988), pp. 215 39 (224). Sabinina, ‘Semyon Kotko’, pp. 105 6. Her observation relies on a reference to Tsukkerman, who had suggested during the opera’s immediate reception that the work is both tragic and comic. Viktor Tsukkerman, ‘Neskol’ko mïsley o sovetskoy opere’, Sovetskaya muzïka (December 1940), 66 78 (68 9).

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Semyon Kotko and the Melodrama of High Stalinism

Example 1.2(a) Semyon Kotko, Act II, conclusion of scene 7, the interruption of the matchmaking ceremony

Performance: Meyerhold and Gesture

39

Example 1.2(b) Semyon Kotko, Act II, opening of scene 8, the entrance of the Germans

a disruption of one genre by another, therefore, but a confirmation of the opera’s real genre. The Gogolian and Ukrainian folk references may be seen in retrospect to provide the comic(-pastoral) opening that is typical of classic melodrama.49

1.3 Performance: Meyerhold and Gesture A fundamental reliance on physical gesture, specified by the score or implied by it, is the second crucial aspect that establishes the opera as melodrama in a classic, rather than Stalinist, sense. Kotko exploits physicality, movement, and gesture, along with mimetic music that synchronizes with the singers’ movements on stage. Music that is representative of movement can of course be heard in Prokofiev’s other operas, but in Kotko it is pervasive, fundamental to the style, and the actor-singers are explicitly instructed to move and gesture along with it. To give a few examples: the 49

Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, pp. 30 1.

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music at Semyon’s first entry, where he is dressed in his soldier’s uniform, is an amiable march; Frosya’s balletic theme at her first appearance – skipping, bounding – displays a tomboyish exuberance (fig. 27), as do her other entrances in Act I; Sofya’s repeated faux-coy entreaty ‘A s tem dosvidan’ichka’ (‘And with that let’s say goodbye’) suggests a graceful withdrawal, and her ‘Pusti!’ (‘Let go!’) is like a gentle push (figs. 64–7) – both have an iambic stress; Tsaryov strolls in at his first entrance playing a cheerfully swaggering tune on his accordion (fig. 77); and Remenyuk’s beneficence edges towards comic ostentation in his 3/4 marchlike song (fig. 79), the two statements of which end with a grand ‘Vladey!’ (‘Take it, it’s yours!’), matching a flamboyant movement of the arm as he hands Semyon the deeds to land and livestock (the stage direction is ‘He presents a paper’). There are many other examples of the music’s correspondence with gesture, as an accompaniment to movement or as a declamatory outline in the voice (often both together), and also wider applications, from rhythmically notated physical actions that produce actual sounds at a diegetic level, for example when Semyon knocks on his mother’s door or Remenyuk and Tsaryov strike their staffs on Tkachenko’s floor, to a general use of metre to convey attitudes and social spheres, such as 3/4 for a (mock) heroic metre, and 2/4 for the activity of village life. Gesture suits the stock characters and situations, and enhances both humour and disaster, illustrating personalities, revealing subtleties of relationships, and emphasizing the violence perpetrated by evil against good. Meyerhold believed that ‘[m]ovement is the most powerful means of theatrical expression’.50 He was a pioneer in the use of stylized gesture, and had developed a system of training, biomechanics, which provided his actors with the foundation for a physical approach to character. Already by the early 1930s, Meyerhold’s methods had been criticized as the opposite of the ideals promulgated by the Soviet arts administration, and yet, I suggest, Prokofiev sought to adopt them in his opera. This claim is supported not only by the gestural music of the score and numerous stage directions, but also by evidence of his involvement in the production process. In the absence of Meyerhold, following his arrest, and lacking confidence in his replacement (Serafima Birman), Prokofiev attended rehearsals and guided the performers himself, less in the capacity of composer, as it turned out, than in that of stage director. His comments, as recorded in notes held in the archives, focused not on the musical execution but almost exclusively on the actors’ stylized, symbolic gestures, 50

Vsevolod Meyerhold, Meyerhold on Theatre, trans. and ed. Edward Braun (London: Methuen, 1969), p. 147.

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which are matched to short, rhythmically strongly marked musical phrases and motifs in both voice and orchestra.51 For a few examples, some corresponding to those given above: at the first rehearsal of 23 February 1940 Prokofiev asked for ‘a bow or a curtsey’ at Sofya’s line ‘And with that let’s say goodbye’, and at a full rehearsal on 22 March he requested ‘more hints of pretending to leave’; at the first rehearsal he suggested ‘a broader gesture, more impressive’ at Remenyuk’s ‘Vladey!’, and on 22 March stressed that this still needed to be ‘more weighty’. Tsaryov was told to deliver his introduction of Lyubka ‘like a kiss’, Remenyuk’s toast ‘to the health of the bride and groom’ in Act II was to be ‘more theatrical, performative [razïgrïvayet]’, Semyon’s imitation of Tkachenko’s sobbing should be ‘more mocking [boleye peredraznivayet]’, and his entrance at the beginning of Act IV required ‘slower steps, like the music’.52 Further examples will be given in the discussion below. In the absence of a representation of psychological content in the opera, such precise and exaggerated physical movements, together with the phrases and fragments of music that accompany them, serve as the ‘algebraic signs’ of the Meyerholdian theatre, enriching stock characterization and enhancing a melodramatic narrative.53

1.4 Classic Melodrama in Semyon Kotko Generic mixture and the emphasis on gesture belong to the classic form of melodrama that provided the foundation for Kotko. After disaster strikes in Act 2, stage gesture and its simultaneous musical equivalent are highly effective in demonstrating and intensifying the confrontation between good and evil. Other conventional features of the classic melodrama include the following: moral opposition of villains and victims; moments of shock, horror, violence, and threats of death; sorrow, pathos, and comic relief; coincidences, last-minute reversals, revelations, escapes, and rescues; poetic justice; and a happy ending. Of course, all this is common to much nineteenth-century opera, due to the fact it had absorbed many melodramatic effects. Nevertheless, Kotko is more closely connected to the original melodrama by virtue of its rapid pace and the immediacy of its action, as 51

52 53

‘Zamechaniya na repetitsiyakh operï “Semyon Kotko” vo vremya postanovki yeyo v Gosudarstvennom opernom teatre im. K. S. Stanislavskogo. Avtograf. 22 Fevralya 22 Marta 1940’, RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 15. On 23 February, 29 February, and 22 March, respectively. In his own words, ‘For the spectator, every scenic movement, every stage gesture, is an algebraic sign, and he must know why it is made’. Vsevolod Meyerhold, Meyerkhol’d: K istorii tvorcheskogo metoda. Publikatsii, stat’i, ed. N. V. Pesochinskiy and E. A. Kukhta (St Petersburg: Kul’tInformPress, 1998), p. 67.

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well as through the ‘primary colours’ of the music, which defines character, supports dialogue, doubles gesture, and underlines shocks and emotional cruces, reinforcing stock roles and straightforward interpersonal conflicts rather than representing internal states. To understand the opera as melodrama it is necessary to extend our gaze over the work as a whole, picking up where the discussion left off: the end of the exposition in Act II. Progressing through the opera in sequence, I draw attention to three essential components: the clash of moral opposites; extreme violence and visual effects; and the comedy–catastrophe mix. My discussion draws primarily on the detailed descriptions of the structure and salient features of melodrama by Peter Brooks and the Russian formalist writer Sergey Balukhatïy.54 Classic melodrama is based on a polarity between heroes and villains, who represent pure good and evil. Kotko features a similarly unambiguous opposition in musical terms: the modal idiom of Act I finds its blatant contrast in Act II in the chromatic music of the antagonists, replete with diminished and augmented intervals, mechanical ostinatos, and ‘ugly’ tone colours. The fanfare motif at their first appearance in scene 8 (see Example 1.2(b)) returns at points of emphasis throughout Act III. The reading of the list of supplies demanded by the Germans (fig. 176) (to be delivered with ‘a sharp gesture’ at the words ‘Achtung! Vnimaniye!’, according to the composer’s instructions at rehearsal55) is the obverse of Remenyuk’s description of land and livestock in Act I. It concludes with a threat of arrest in the event of non-compliance, by the order of ‘Oberleytnant fon Virkhov’, where two blasts from the brass on a diminished triad with an added minor second – a chord that is the opera’s symbol for ‘horror’, clearly based on the melodramatic cliché of the diminished seventh – called for another menacing gesture, the negative counterpart to Remenyuk’s outstretched arm when he had proffered his list to Semyon (fig. 180).

54

55

According to Louise McReynolds and Joan Neuberger, ‘Peter Brooks’s conceptualization of the genre’s prescriptive functions applies to Russian melodramas of every type and period’. Louise McReynolds and Joan Neuberger, ‘Introduction’, to Imitations of Life: Two Centuries of Melodrama in Russia, ed. Louise McReynolds and Joan Neuberger (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), p. 11. For Daniel Gerould, writing in 1978, ‘Sergei Balukhatyi’s Poetics of Melodrama remains to the present day the most thorough and incisive systematic analysis of the structure and technique of melodrama ever undertaken’. Daniel Gerould, ‘Russian Formalist Theories of Melodrama’, Journal of American Culture, 1/1 (Spring 1978), 152 68 (154). RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 15, 29 February.

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Tsaryov, Remenyuk, and Mikola outsmart the Germans and seize their guns and the list of demands, leading to threats of repercussions as the invaders make their exit. Semyon, however, does not join his more impetuous peers in this display of resistance, even though it is his matchmaking ceremony that has been so abruptly curtailed. The melodramatic plot typically advances through tribulations that are passively endured (rather than actively resisted) by the hero, or more accurately, the victim, in this case Semyon. This is borne out also in his narration of the prehistory of his relationship with Tkachenko in Act I, tableau 2, scene 7, when we learn of his mistreatment and manipulation by Tkachenko, his superior officer during the war. Also, at points of emphasis, for the effect of pathos, the victim reflects on his or her unfortunate fate. At the end of Act II, after the discouraging turn of events, Semyon laments in an impassioned aside (fig. 219, Example 1.3) ‘So much for the wedding! Oh, this life, this life of mine, my soldier’s life!,’ set to the melody of the folk song from Cherevichki (previously sung by Frosya in Act I).56 It is a moment that confirms his identity as simultaneously a stock Gogolian character and the standard victim of melodrama. His expression of despair is different from that of a tragic aria, first in being very short, and second in remaining at a ‘primitive’ level of psychology, as an external sign of an emotion that functions simply to create the effect of pathos and move the plot forward, and not to reveal anything particular about the character.57 Folk song, normally associated with national rather than individual expression, lends his aside an almost impersonal quality (just as at his first entrance). Moral opposition is embodied in the personal conflict between Semyon and Tkachenko. This is subtly evoked already in Act I, when Semyon and Sonya’s duet is interrupted by the sudden appearance in the background of Tkachenko and the mysterious workman. But from Act II it is steadily and very effectively built up, becoming even more intense than the general confrontation between villagers and invading army. Act III is then a rapid escalation, leading to a second and far more deadly invasion and a series of violent episodes, after Germans and Haydamaks arrive in scene 6 (with an ostinato, in their key of B minor) to eliminate the troublesome Bolsheviks.58 Tkachenko’s treachery as collaborator is gradually revealed. He seeks to advance his own status and wealth through the marriage of his 56

57

58

In Tchaikovsky’s opera, Vakula’s words are ‘Who knows, my girl, if your heart can feel my pain, my terrible pain’. See Balukhatïy, quoted in Gerould, ‘Russian Formalist Theories of Melodrama’, 155 7 and 160, and Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, pp. 35 6. Haydamaks, named after eighteenth century peasant rebels, fought under Symon Petlyura, the leader of the Ukrainian National Republic. Jonathan Smele, The ‘Russian’

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Semyon Kotko and the Melodrama of High Stalinism

Example 1.3 Semyon Kotko, Act II, scene 10, Semyon’s lament

daughter into a former landowning family, and therefore supports their plan to regain ownership of the land. The workman turns out to be Klembovsky, the son of the landowner, who is musically and dramatically portrayed as ‘other’ (his theme has an ‘oriental’ colouring). Thus secret intentions and mysterious identity are uncovered, following the melodramatic formula. Overall, the ‘tyrants and oppressors’ in the form of Germans, Haydamaks, and Klembovsky serve to support Tkachenko’s designs, just as the ‘democratic’ village community suffers along with Semyon.59 (Another contrast with Susanin and point of connection with melodrama is that the invaders appear not as a faceless, dehumanized

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Civil Wars, 1916 1926: Ten Years That Shook the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, p. 44.

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group, but as individuals, painted in garish colours and in some cases given their own style of declamation.) And all characters make observations that clarify and reinforce their own and others’ virtues or vices.60 Examples include Semyon’s ‘honour’ theme in Act I, tableau 2, scene 5 (the text is ‘my word cannot be broken’), the villagers’ description of Frosya in scene 2 (‘Well, what a clever one’, ‘She knows everything’), Semyon’s statement at his first sighting of the workman (‘It appears he’s not one of our people’), Sonya’s anxious comments about the workman when relating her dream, Tsaryov’s caustic remarks about Tkachenko (‘We get the same sort down on the Black Sea, you know, sons of bitches like that’), and Klembovsky’s introduction of Tkachenko to the German officer as ‘a faithful servant and friend. He’s one of us.’ Act III concentrates on violence and spectacle. The central shattering event is the capture and hanging of Tsaryov and Ivasenko. Tkachenko participates in this with malicious enthusiasm, and at the end of scene 6 his anticipation of the villagers’ discovery of the bodies (‘The people will awake’) is conveyed by what Prokofiev stated at rehearsal ‘must be a gesticulation’.61 Instrumentation now adjusts rapidly to match action and character (Tkachenko is assigned the lower strings and pounding drums). Act III progresses in a remarkable sweep, in which machine-like ostinatos, long pedals, heavy brass, and percussion display the barbaric nature of the invaders as they crush the peaceful life of the village. In scene 7, the two hangings (offstage) are preceded by a monstrous mutation of a theme from Act II (part of the villagers’ skirmish with the Germans), and followed by a ‘scream of horror’ (description in the score, at figs. 281 and 283) – a graphic representation of terror more extreme than any other in Prokofiev’s dramatic works. Just after the screams, a unit of German soldiers is heard approaching (fig. 284) with a jaunty brass march (they have trumpets in the novella), in a Meyerholdian grotesque juxtaposition (this theme was recycled from Prokofiev’s music for Meyerhold’s Boris Godunov (Op. 70bis, No. 16), where it appears in an Ivesian clash of marches62). Simultaneously with this banal music, Lyubka lets out a cry of distress dwelling on the leading note, and later in scene 10 begins an obsessive mantra of madness as she wanders the stage in despair and confusion – a striking image of the ‘victimized woman’s body’.63 Expressions of sorrow increase in proportion to the terrible events. The trio for 60 62 63

Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, p. 36. 61 RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 15. Boris Godunov, op. 70bis (Melville, NY: Belwin Mills, 1980). Peter Brooks, ‘Body and Voice in Melodrama and Opera’, in Siren Songs: Representations of Gender and Sexuality in Opera, ed. Mary Ann Smart (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 118 34 (120). Daniel Albright singles out Lyubka’s motif as an example of ‘a hieroglyph: an affect icon’. Daniel Albright, Untwisting the Serpent:

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Sofya, Frosya, and Khivrya conveys their fears for the future (scene 13), and in scene 11 Semyon sings a plaintive arioso to mournful Theme 2 (F Aeolian), complaining of having to leave his home and loved ones: ‘Suddenly villains swooped down on us, and stood in the way of our peasant life, driving me away from my happiness.’ Once again, at a crucial moment he is both characterized by a lament and connected to the nation. Semyon is a folk hero and Gogolian lover who has become trapped in a melodrama, as its central victim. Gesture, as one of the most important non-verbal elements in melodrama, serves in Act III to highlight the violence of the assault on the village. In scene 14, Tkachenko, ‘raises his whip’ and threatens Sofya: ‘Ooh! It would be such a pity to spoil your pretty mug with my whip’ (fig. 344, Example 1.4(a)); his phrases are separated by sforzando thwacks of a diminished triad in the low register. Next, over an aggressive dotted rhythmic pattern in the trumpets (which, along with trombones/tuba/bass and then violins/voice, form two more overlapping diminished triads), he warns her that he will kill her if she is disobedient (figs. 344–5, Example 1.4 (b)). Music continues to be used to represent actual sounds in the diegesis, including the ostinato in scene 6 that imitates the ‘clatter of horses’ hooves’, while numerous stage directions connect movement to music: we see Lyubka ‘staggering’ across the stage in scene 8, and the ‘Haydamaks run out (in rhythm)’ to mechanically repeated quavers in scene 13 (horn and trombone on the ‘horror’ chord). The abundance of activity on and off stage is constant and chaotic, building in tempo to reach a peak in an immense conflagration at the conclusion, as the entire village is set ablaze. Although the burning huts have to be imagined offstage – presumably with the aid of glowing lighting effects – this provides the climactic visual scene that is so typical of melodrama. An extended ostinato built on a tritone in the bass (fig. 368) leads to a clamorous final chorus (with percussion and brass). Village men drag water barrels across the stage in a struggle to put out the fire, while Lyubka’s mad theme is taken up by a women’s chorus bewailing the fate of Ukraine, and by Lyubka and Sofya who grieve over their personal losses. The catastrophe is emphasized by obsessive repetitions and the tolling of bells. Overall Act III is remarkably vivid, propulsive, and intense. For these reasons it was Meyerhold’s favourite: in his words it is ‘particularly powerful’ and ‘keeps the listener riveted’.64

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Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other Arts (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2000), pp. 57 62. Vsevolod Meyerhold, ‘“Ya sïn trudovogo naroda.” Novaya opera S. Prokof’yeva’, Vechernyaya Moskva, 3 June 1939.

Classic Melodrama in Semyon Kotko

Example 1.4(a) Semyon Kotko, Act III, scene 14, Tkachenko’s threat against Sofya

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Semyon Kotko and the Melodrama of High Stalinism

Example 1.4(b) Semyon Kotko, Act III, scene 14 (continued)

Acts IV and V exhibit stark contrasts in tone. The first tableau of Act IV is a prolonged reaction to the events of Act III, a marked slowing of momentum and decrease in tension, partly due to the absence of the antagonists. A trudging theme portrays Semyon and Mikola pulling a cart with the bodies of Tsaryov and Ivasenko through a forest gully at night. They are stopped and questioned by Remenyuk before he suddenly recognizes them – a lighter melodramatic touch (which will be repeated when Frosya later arrives at the camp). But anguish erupts as Remenyuk discovers the bodies, a ‘confrontation with a murdered victim’65 that prompts another ‘horror’ chord from the orchestra (with a crash on the cymbal) (fig. 383). After Remenyuk’s expression of sorrow and his call for the partisans to swear revenge three times on the name of Lenin, there follows a funeral chorus based on Theme 2, a setting of Taras Shevchenko’s Zapovit (‘Testament’) sung by a full choir placed in the orchestra pit. Tableau 1 subsequently required a foil, and tableau 2, scene 1 returns to the innocent mood of Act I and its humour, in a typical moment of comic 65

Balukhatïy, quoted in Gerould, ‘Russian Formalist Theories of Melodrama’, 155.

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relief. The partisans take a lesson from Semyon on how to operate a field gun, but are amusingly obtuse and unable to understand his instructions. In the novella this lesson does not include any speech for them, so here again comic dialogue had been added by the librettists. After this brief respite, scene 3 returns again to misfortune, with Frosya describing at length the ongoing suffering in the village. Semyon decides he must rush back to rescue Sofya, a plan immediately thwarted by Remenyuk, who refuses to allow him to take a squadron. He begins to leave on his own, but then in line with his duty-bound nature returns, lamenting that his plans now seem beyond hope: ‘Farewell happiness. Farewell Sonya!’ Circumstances then change miraculously with the delivery of a letter from the division commander (concealed in a watermelon – more light humour), ordering a diversionary attack on the forces occupying the village; Semyon is chosen by Remenyuk for this task, and he rides off with Mikola. Back in the village, Act V begins with a variation on Theme 2, in a final outpouring of the national sorrow that it represents.66 A blind bandura player (kobzar) and Semyon’s mother then sing ‘Oh woe, bitter woe! A black and bitter smoke has descended over our native Ukraine.’ The kobzar is the bard of epic suffering, and together with his instrument is an authentic symbol of Ukraine.67 His music, with the same theme as the funeral chorus, provides a realistic image that complements the chorus’s abstraction, while his bandura adds an element of local colour that is a pathetic parallel to Tsaryov’s accordion and Mikola’s guitar (instruments that nodded towards the Little Russian comedy). Semyon appears but his brief moment of heroic endeavour ends with his capture, and Tkachenko reads the execution orders for him and Mikola to pounding chords. More sudden entrances and reversals of fortune dominate the action of Act V. The central part consists of a final confrontation between Tkachenko and Semyon, with emphasis on the threat of death. The gloating Tkachenko, ‘grunting with satisfaction’, taunts Semyon and pokes him repeatedly in the ribs with his thumb at his words ‘i tsop!’ (‘and pow!’), together with a sharp chord in the orchestra (an action not described in the novella and another example of the reliance on gesture for emphasis). One of Tïshler’s sketches for Act V was of Semyon tied to a telegraph pole, resembling an image of Saint Sebastian (a symbol of martyrdom), as intended by Meyerhold.68 66

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Here the theme directly recalls ‘Russia under the Mongol yoke’ from Nevsky (an obvious historical parallel) in its texture of winds four octaves apart. On the bandura, see Natalie Kononenko, Ukrainian Minstrels and the Blind Shall Sing (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998). See Irina Medvedeva, ‘“Chyornoye leto” 1939 goda’, in Sergey Prokof’yev: K 50 letiyu so dnya smerti. Vospominaniya, pis’ma, stat’i, ed. M. P. Rakhmanova (Moscow: Deka VS,

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As his themes return in sequence, Tkachenko reveals fully his motives and the despicableness of his character, while stressing the class difference he imagines between Semyon and himself (and his daughter) and his hatred of the Bolsheviks. But Semyon and Mikola are suddenly rescued by the timely arrival of the partisans led by Remenyuk, and when asked to decide Tkachenko’s fate they sentence him, somewhat gleefully, to be shot without delay. The main enemy has at last been overcome (while the Germans are in retreat), and he meets an appropriate end at the hands of the virtuous community: an all-important feature of melodrama’s moral foundation is poetic justice. There is not the slightest twinge, not even from Sofya, about her father’s death, which is very different from the ambiguity about oppressive or even villainous fathers in Romantic opera. The happy ending follows, as the virtuous celebrate their deliverance.69 Semyon has one last moment of reflection, this time musing on the irony of his fate as he returns to the front that he had sought to leave behind for a peaceful village life. Then all burst into song (Theme 1) while a Red Army unit marches in the background. What Sabinina correctly describes as the film-like qualities of Act V – compared by Rita McAllister to those of a ‘bad western’70 – are among those that the cinema had absorbed from stage melodrama. Prokofiev certainly drew on cinematic ideas in his last two Soviet operas; if we discern an inspiration from film already here in Kotko, this reinforces the connection to melodrama, via a contemporary and complementary manifestation of the genre and aesthetic.

1.5 Reception: Aesthetic and Political Tensions Prokofiev had praised the opportunities for work in the theatre provided by his new patrons in the Soviet Union and dismissed the relevance of politics, but there was no avoiding politically determined criticism once an opera reached the stage. As a new work by an established yet controversial master, Kotko was put under the microscope at a time when the official opera project, hampered by the song-opera tradition, had lost momentum and was reaching for new, more ambitious standards, with nineteenth-

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2004), pp. 317 66 (321). The sketch for can be seen in Mikhaylova, Meyerkhol’d i khudozhniki, p. 287. Overall there has been ‘an uninterruptedly “unhappy” line of development for the chief character until the denouement with its final “happy” reversal’. Balukhatïy, quoted in Gerould, ‘Russian Formalist Theories of Melodrama’, 155. Rita McAllister, ‘Prokofiev’, in Gerald Abraham (ed.), The New Grove Russian Masters 2: Rimsky Korsakov, Skryabin, Rakhmaninov, Prokofiev, Shostakovich (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 150.

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century Russian (and also Italian) classics held up as exemplars instead. He would also have his first experience of an opera production being affected by historical events. At a meeting on 17 April 1940, just a few days before the planned performance, it was decided that, following the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939, the German characters and text had to be changed. As it was pointed out, ‘Last year it would have been perfectly timely, and now – it’s too late!’71 (The characters became Haydamaks, Ukrainian nationalists.)72 Then, at its premiere on 23 June 1940, the audience gave Kotko a mixed reception, partly due to a poor performance.73 There was both praise (‘The music is wonderful’, ‘This is one of the best operas. The music is Rembrandt-like’) and criticism (‘Too long’, ‘Boring. Where is the music?’, ‘It is a pity that there are no or few Ukrainian folk melodies’), and while many limited their admiration to the matchmaking choruses – set pieces that were nearest to Russian operatic traditions – others found the work a fresh and unique approach to the medium, one that would reward repeated listening.74 In responding to the critical voices at the premiere, Prokofiev made the same point, confidently replying ‘Come back in the autumn, then much will come out that you did not understand the first time’.75 A split audience such as this, engaged and even argumentative, was, ironically, Meyerhold’s proof of a production’s artistic success.76 But it pointed to deeper aesthetic issues that critics, musicologists, composers, and officials were already examining and which lay at the heart of the debates on the future of the genre. The discussion involved two partisan camps, one promoting technical mastery and supporting Kotko,

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‘Vïstupleniye na obsuzhdenii spektaklya Opernogo teatra im. K. S. Stanislavskogo “Semyon Kotko” (stenogramma zasedaniya) i zapisi vïskazïvaniy A. N. Afinogenova, V. I. Muradeli, N. Ya. Myaskovskogo, E. K. Tisse i dr. lits na prem’yere etoy operï. Avtograf i mashinopis”, RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 117, l. 2. The music, as one person pointed out, ‘remains German’, but this ‘was not even a bad thing. Let the music be German. It will be heard as a subtext, and no one would be able to incriminate us.’ RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 117, l. 4. See Morrison, The People’s Artist, pp. 103 4. According to Grigoriy Mikhaylovich Shneyerson, ‘K sozhaleniyu, spektakl’ okazalsya daleko ne na vïsote proizvedeniyem Prokof’yeva’, in Sergey Prokof’yev: Stat’i i materialï, ed. I. V. Nest’yev and G. Ya. Edel’man, 2nd edn (Moscow: Muzïka, 1965), p. 266. ‘Semyon Kotko. Obrïvki razgovorov na prem’yere 23 June 1940 i posle neyo’, RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 117, l. 12 12ob. This document includes Prokofiev’s responses to some of the questions and criticisms put to him by audience members. RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 117, l. 12. This recalls the public statements he made in the late 1930s about the need to maintain musical originality while reaching a mass public, and was perhaps typical of his attitude towards his new Soviet audience. Gladkov, Meyerhold Speaks, Meyerhold Rehearses, p. 165.

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the other defending the political orthodoxy and democratic idiom of Tikhon Khrennikov’s Into the Storm, which continued in the song-opera format. This debate would be the culmination of discussions of opera that had been going on for years, in tandem with the introduction of a crop of new works. Kotko and Into the Storm were among at least twenty operas written in 1938–9.77 Into the Storm was a product of the ‘workshop’ method of opera creation, set up by the KDI to advise and supervise the development of a work within the theatre, drawing on the insights of a range of contributors at each stage. By all accounts the creative team at the Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre, led by the director himself (a grandee of the Soviet theatre), made every effort to ensure a successful production. Soon after its premiere on 10 October 1939, it was discussed at a KDI meeting at which the split between the two camps could be seen clearly (22 October).78 Strongest against was Semyon Shlifshteyn, whose harsh criticism began the meeting and was the point of reference for the others.79 He asked Khrennikov to demonstrate ‘crude’ examples from his opera at the piano, and ridiculed the excessive use of minor keys and preponderance of cheap tunes – ‘gypsy’ melodies and chastushki, ‘urban folklore’. For professionals such as Shlifshteyn, the song opera had sunk after the embarrassing failure of Virgin Soil, which only did more to prove Dzerzhinsky’s technical incompetence. When Into the Storm appeared they went out of their way to disparage it. Acknowledgements of the composer’s youth and inexperience aside, it was difficult to ignore the blandness and tedium of a work that strives for, though fails utterly to achieve, the expressive power of Glinka or Verdi. The music was lyrical throughout, with strophic popular-style romansï connected by clumsy recitatives, and a very limited role for the orchestra. Shlifshteyn was supported by one influential senior administrator, Viktor Gorodinsky, the editor of the newspaper Sovetskoye iskusstvo (and the former head of the music subsection of the Central Committee). But another powerful 77

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‘Stenogramma zasedaniya Komiteta: O tvorcheskoy rabote po sozdaniyu novïkh sovest kikh oper’, RGALI f. 962, op. 3, yed. khr. 1379, l. 3. ‘Stenogramma soveshchaniya u Predsedatelya Komiteta po obsuzhdeniyu operï kompo zitora Khrennikova “V buryu”’, 22 October 1939, RGALI f. 962, op. 3, yed. khr. 602. A summary of the meeting can also be found in Marina Frolova Walker, ‘The Soviet Opera Project: Ivan Dzerzhinsky vs. Ivan Susanin’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 18/2 (2006), 207. His words were not transcribed, but their substance can be gleaned from his article of a few weeks later, Semyon Shlifshteyn, ‘Bol’shiye idei i malen’kiye chuvstva’, Sovetskoye iskusstvo, 14 November 1939.

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voice, the KDI chief Khrapchenko, took the other side. ‘I personally like it very much’, he stated, finding much to admire (including the mother’s aria, the scene in the forest, and the whole of scene 4), and providing a detailed commentary in support of his view. He also spoke in favour of ‘accessibility’, and defended the work against the charge of chastushki, declaring that ‘Shlifshteyn is incorrect’.80 In what may have been a sly reference to Prokofiev, he added that ‘Some composers have the principle that accessibility is a sign of lack of artistry. But we do not have to take this into account.’81 Prokofiev had made his position clear on this publicly, and it is implied for example in one of his statements on Kotko: ‘Although it would obviously have been more advantageous from the standpoint of immediate success to have filled the opera with melodies of familiar design I preferred to use new material and write new melodies of new design and as many as possible.’ The strongest defender of Into the Storm was the Party-minded critic Georgiy Khubov, who stressed the importance of political correctness and proposed a direct comparison between Prokofiev and Khrennikov: ‘I recently became acquainted with Prokofiev’s opera. Go listen to this opera. To me it seems that now it is necessary to install criteria . . . It is necessary to come to clear conclusions and this will favour either Prokofiev or Khrennikov.’82 This confrontation between the two operas is exactly what occurred a year later, once Prokofiev’s opera began its proper run. The conflict had already been brewing, intensified by the fact that they were performed in the same theatre by rival opera studios. Those who heard the first three acts of Kotko played through at the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre on 8 July 1939 were enthusiastic: the composers Lev Knipper, Georgiy Kreytner, and Gavriil Popov, as well as Gorodinsky.83 Following Kotko’s first public performance a year later, in June 1940, a positive review was published by his advocate, Shlifshteyn, who made favourable comparisons to Musorgsky; in September a lengthy, detailed, and mixed review by Izrail’ Nest’yev appeared; Khubov published his sharply critical judgment in December.84 By that time, 80

81 83 84

RGALI f. 962, op. 3, yed. khr. 602, ll. 50 and 54. Khrapchenko understood that melody must be original and masterly, ‘But accessibility in itself has never been reprehensible’. RGALI f. 962, op. 3, yed. khr. 602, l. 55. RGALI f. 962, op. 3, yed. khr. 602. 82 RGALI f. 962, op. 3, yed. khr. 602. Morrison, The People’s Artist, p. 101. Semyon Shlifshteyn, ‘Semyon Kotko’, Sovetskoye iskusstvo, 29 June 1940, 3. An earlier review in Vechernyaya Moskva by Anatoliy Groman (25 June 1940) also made positive comparisons with Musorgsky, and praised the variety in the opera’s construction: ‘The subtle and well considered juxtaposition [sopostavleniye] of lyrical, comic, and tragic scenes imparts an extraordinary vitality to the action’. See also Izrail’ Nest’yev, ‘“Semyon

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in October, the Moscow Union of Composers had put the opera forward for a Stalin Prize, supported above all by Myaskovsky, but it had failed to receive this prestigious sign of approval. Marina Frolova-Walker has shown that at the Stalin Prize Committee the work was criticized for ‘coldness’, lack of popularity, and a failure to project heroism.85 Khrapchenko was also using his position to reject Nevsky for the same prize, believing that Prokofiev had not yet proven himself as a Soviet composer. Khrennikov’s Into the Storm was enjoying somewhat greater success with the public, but had not even made it this far in the selection of the prize, since the Music Section had rejected it.86 The production, however, had instead received the positive appraisal of Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov, after they accepted Nemirovich-Danchenko’s invitation to attend, and subsequently called him to their box to congratulate him (Khrennikov happened to be in Kiev supervising the production of his opera there).87 But audiences too were beginning to tire of the song opera, and the success of Into the Storm (according to a contemporary witness) ‘was short-lived, which clearly showed the steady growth of the demands of the mass audience, which was waiting not for more or less successful versions of the already completed stage [of development], but a tangible advance forward’.88 According to a report of 1940 provided by Georgiy Aleksandrov to Andreyev, Zhdanov, and Malenkov, the two operas often played to only 100–150 people in a theatre of 1,400 seats.89 Soviet opera, whether ‘professional’ or ‘populist’ in orientation, was suffering in comparison with the older repertory (ticket sales for which provided its financial subsidy). The debate was brought to a head in the conference in December 1940, the culmination of over two years of discussions. The effect of the partisan clash was to highlight the weaknesses of both operas; if consensus was the

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Kotko” S. Prokof’yeva’, Sovetskaya muzïka (September 1940), 14; and Georgiy Khubov, ‘Opernïye idealï’, Teatr (December 1940), 12 24. On 15 October 1940 the Moscow Union of Composers recommended the opera to the Stalin Prize Committee. RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 620. Also see Frolova Walker, Stalin’s Music Prize, p. 65. According to Shaverdyan, Into the Storm had a ‘considerable success with the public’. Aleksandr Shaverdyan, ‘Sovetskaya opera’, Sovetskaya muzïka (March 1941), 3 20 (5). Tikhon Khrennikov, Tak eto bïlo: Tikhon Khrennikov o vremeni i o seb’ye, ed. V. Rubtsova (Moscow: Muzïka, 1994), p. 58. Valerian Bogdanov Berezovskiy, ‘Sovetskaya opernaya kul’tura’, in Teatral’nïy al’ma nakh: Sbornik statey i materialov (Moscow: Vserossiyskoye teatral’noye obshchestvo, 1946), vol. II, pp. 79 124. Yekaterina Sergeyevna Vlasova, 1948 god v sovetskoy muzïke: Dokumentirovannoye issledovaniye (Moscow: Klassika XXI, 2010).

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route towards success in socialist realism, then neither was on the right path.90 While the battle was fiercely waged, an official line was emerging as to the merits and faults of both works as well as the overall aims of Soviet opera. It was put forward that the ideal should follow the greats of the past – Verdi, Wagner, Mozart, Glinka, Tchaikovsky – but composers should not be epigones. The music should be simple and contain elements of folk song, but should also be technically assured and monumental. There should be arias, duets, and ensembles, but also dramatic, and even ‘symphonic’, development.91 Kotko and Into the Storm were ‘polar opposites’, representing two halves that needed to be united: Khrennikov’s respect for standard (strophic) forms, accessibility to the masses, and a clear and correct ideological message, and Prokofiev’s mastery as composer and dramatist. As Viktor Tsukkerman put it, the former strove for feeling and pathos but lacked the musical skill to deliver it, the latter strove for characterization and humour but lacked expressivity.92 Prokofiev’s libretto, moreover, was found to be ‘theatrical’, leading to ‘physiological, naturalistic’ drama.93 Into the Storm’s flaws were technical, rather than political, and even these could be construed as the result of an intention to reach a wide audience (indeed that is how Khrennikov later construed them). The criticism of Kotko can be linked more specifically, in the examples below, to its melodramatic features, and in particular to their impact on the representation of heroism and nationalism that was essential to socialist realism. Some of the opera’s content as well as its style suggested to critics an insensitivity to some of the most pressing demands of the period. The strongest and most often repeated criticism of Kotko was that it lacked the necessary heroism in its central characters, Semyon and Remenyuk, an objection that does appear legitimate by contemporary standards. While the librettists had clearly attempted to associate Semyon with weapons (guns, grenades, artillery) and create a connection between peasant fate (dolya) and Bolshevik power (vlast’) in approved socialist realist terms, the character’s actions as well as his music, crucially, do not befit a positive hero of inspirational power. He appears at times meek and hesitant, lacking the necessary impulsiveness. In Act I, tableau 2, scene 6, he needs to be encouraged by Frosya and Sofya to approach the 90 91

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Frolova Walker, Stalin’s Music Prize, p. 286. See the editorial in the volume preceding the opera conference, ‘Sovetskaya opera’, Sovetskaya muzïka (October 1940), 3 11. Tsukkerman, ‘Neskol’ko mïsley o sovetskoy opere’, 74 8. Anatoliy Aleksandrov, ‘Muzïka i slovo v opere’, Sovetskaya muzïka (October 1940), 19 23; and L. Khristiansen, ‘Voplotit’ chuvstva sovetskogo cheloveka’, Sovetskaya muzïka (October 1940), 25 7.

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matchmakers, and is prompted again in scene 7 by his sister to tell them his marriage plans even though his thoughts are clearly with Sofya, as an appearance of the theme from their duet reveals. Semyon has a tendency to adopt the intonations of others, hardly the sign of strong character: that of the village women in scene 4, Frosya in scene 5 (fig. 53), and Remenyuk in scene 6. He lacks a theme that stays with him, and after his early soldier’s songs he is caught up in events and has no authentic or heroic voice. His Act I narration reveals how he was unable to resist exploitation by Tkachenko during the war. In Act II he does not participate in the confiscation of the list and guns from the Germans. He has moments of dynamism in Acts III, IV, and V, but these are outweighed by his more frequent and prominent moments of dejection. The other characters, particularly Tsaryov, Frosya, and Sofya, demonstrate impetuosity and bravery instead. Thus the ensemble cast and the general effort diluted the qualities that needed to be concentrated in the central ‘positive hero’. Furthermore, even at those few moments when Semyon does take action, he is motivated by his personal goals, to marry Sofya and farm his land. These remain consistent from beginning to end, and therefore there is insufficient evidence of a change in his priorities, as required by the socialist realist master plot. A pivotal point is reached in Act IV, when Semyon walks away from his comrades after being denied by Remenyuk the requirements for a raid that would free Sofya. He returns, stating that he recognizes that he must fight with the people, even if this means sacrificing his own happiness. This moment does not receive the musical or dramatic emphasis it required as the initiation rite (the acquisition of consciousness) that formed the climax of the master plot. The speedy resolution of the issue keeps the attention on the (melo)drama as I have described, and when Semyon rides off to cause the diversion in the village, Remenyuk sings (without irony) Theme 1 in E♭ to the telling words ‘Semyon is fighting for his happiness’. While Semyon may ride a horse and wield a grenade, his actions in Acts IV and V achieve little either for himself or for the general cause. There is no aria for the tenor role, stressing the truth of Bolshevik values, no thematic link between him and victory or reflection on how his personal fate is connected with national fulfilment.94 Evidence of his ideological redirection remains at best subtly symbolic. Without this climax, and without the novella’s scenes in the village soviet (excluded for lack of relevance to the central plot line), Remenyuk’s role as the Bolshevik agitator providing ideological guidance was diminished. He does not capture interest for his own sake – he too lacks a theme – and fails to 94

RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 11.

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emerge as a convincing leader, despite his assumed role in bringing the appropriate consciousness to Semyon. From the sketches for the libretto, it is clear that Katayev planned an aria for Remenyuk in Act IV, tableau 1, but Prokofiev turned this into a call and response with the partisans – more ‘realistic’, less heroic. At the end of Chapter 21, ‘At the Balta Market’, Remenyuk has a speech that strongly suggests a potential aria: as news is spread of the German invasion, he gathers the villagers around him and delivers a stirring oration like those in films of the late 1930s, inspiring resistance with references to historic victories over the Swedish and the French.95 Prokofiev did not, of course, set this speech. Because of the opera’s primary focus on the love story and its obstacles, Remenyuk comes across at times almost as a killjoy, standing in the way of Semyon’s goals by pointing out that his plans with Sofya are untimely, an inappropriate distraction from resistance operations. In his very negative review in Teatr, Khubov criticized these two characters severely: ‘Essentially Semyon dreams only about his own petty personal wellbeing,’ while Remenyuk ‘barely moves, and neither speaks nor sings, but “lectures” and “debates”’.96 Similar views were repeated by many critics, even otherwise supportive voices such as Panchekhin, Tsukkerman, and Shaverdyan.97 The assessment of the editor of Sovetskaya muzïka was that ‘the central figure of the opera, Semyon Kotko, was not successful: he is schematic and insufficiently rich’.98 In the words of Nest’yev, Remenyuk ‘fails to be a Bolshevik orator’.99 Shaverdyan, in his summary of the debate, stated that discussions were not concerned mainly with musical quality (since that was agreed in the case of Kotko) but on whether the musical idiom met with the demands of the ‘ideological-psychological content’ of the Civil War in Ukraine.100 He approves of the characters Frosya, Sofya, Mikola, and Tkachenko. The narod do not fare so well: on the one hand there is something grotesque in the babï and old men, and on the other the partisan songs appear almost primitive, sharply removed from the overall style of the music. Remenyuk’s musical representation was ‘not sufficiently striking and compelling’, and ‘The character of Semyon is not convincing. Semyon is acceptable as 95 96 97

98 99 100

Thinking in pan Slavic terms, evidently, since Napoleon did not invade Ukraine. Khubov, ‘Opernïye idealï’, 23. Nikolay Panchekhin, ‘Nit’ pravdï’, Sovetskaya muzïka (October 1940), 27 9; Tsukkerman, ‘Neskol’ko mïsley o sovetskoy opere’; Shaverdyan, ‘Sovetskaya opera’, 3 20. Shaverdyan, ‘Sovetskaya opera’, 10 11. Nest’yev, ‘“Semyon Kotko” S. Prokof’yeva’, 14. Tsukkerman also complained of the ‘severe lack of subjective, individual lyricism in the opera’, which would have been required for the communication of such content. Tsukkerman, ‘Neskol’ko mïsley o sovetskoy opere’, 68.

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a lover and as a soldier, but he is not portrayed as a hero, as a man of big ideas and great love for the motherland.’101 Into the Storm also failed to achieve a heroic quality, but crucially, for all its limitations, it concentrated on projecting its core message in an unequivocal manner and an uncontroversial form. Into the Storm’s lyrical deficiencies precluded a truly elevated style, but the character Listrat is depicted as a typically one-dimensional hero of strength, determination, and pristine political values. His brother Lyonka is a ‘wavering’ lesser hero involved in a romantic subplot (the brothers recall Ostap and Andriy of Gogol’s Taras). Unlike Semyon, however, Lyonka comes to recognize explicitly that his personal interests need to be set aside in order to accomplish communal goals (end of Act I, scene 2, at bar 785). Another aspect to consider is the doubt that had emerged over the Civil War theme, namely that there were too many operas this subject (statistically it was indeed predominant). According to the editorial of Sovetskaya muzïka, composers should consider post-war socialist construction, or real-life heroes, as in contemporary film biopics, such as Chapayev, Kotovsky, Kirov, Chkalov, and Frunze.102 These were among the few figures from the recent past who had not been disgraced during the Terror. Alternatively, they could have chosen from the group of legendary heroes, Nevsky, Minin, Pozharsky, Donskoy, Lomonosov, Suvorov, and Kutuzov, who had begun to be celebrated from 1936 and especially after 1937 – the year in which the project was launched to revise Ivan Susanin. But opera was slow to adapt to changing conditions, such as the revision of the heroic pantheon, and operas on the Civil War remained the most numerous even to the end of the Stalin era, while contemporary topics were the least numerous.103 A second persistent criticism of Kotko concerned the combination of comedy with a drama of disaster. The novella had synthesized references to Gogol’s early work that if taken alone could have provided the Russian audience with a representation of a Ukraine they preferred to imagine (in the 1930s just as in the 1830s): happy, singing, dancing, and faithful to Russia, offering a kind of escapist exoticism, as in the Dikan’ka tales, or heroically resisting foreign invasion while extolling a unified East Slavic empire, as in Taras. It could have been adapted into a pure comic opera, as even the hostile Khubov had pointed out, in a way that might have met with official approval.104 Prokofiev’s mixing of comedy and calamity was 101 102 103

104

Shaverdyan, ‘Sovetskaya opera’, 5. Sovetskaya muzïka (October 1940), 5; also repeated by Shaverdyan, ‘Sovetskaya opera’, 11. Nikolay Nikolayevich Kulikovich, Sovetskaya opera na sluzhbe partii i pravitel’stva (Munich: Institut zur Erforschung der UdSSR, 1955), pp. 108 and 112. ‘Stenogramma soveshchaniya po obsuzhdeniyu operï K. D. Makarova Rakitina “Ya sïn trudovogo naroda”’ (22 June 1940), RGALI f. 962, op. 3, yed. khr. 772. This was the

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regarded as a serious aesthetic error, detracting from purity of form and content, and diminishing the heroism of particular characters. The comic episodes were heavily criticized, particularly the gun-lesson scene for showing the partisans in a less than favourable light.105 Khubov found that ‘what the librettist wants to say seriously, the composer interprets as grotesque’, in a thinly veiled reference to the condemned Meyerhold.106 Ivan Sollertinsky repeated the view that ‘bustling-on-stage’ (i.e., Meyerhold) must not substitute for ‘acting’ (i.e., Stanislavsky) and strongly protested against the intermingling of genres.107 In Soviet aesthetics by the late 1930s, gesture was linked to the grotesque, and comedy in the context of heroic, socialist realist subject matter seemed suspiciously close to satire. The comedy was found to be irreverent, but it also failed to provide a proper counter to the abundant catastrophe. Critics pointed out that the opera had sublime moments of pathos, but did not contain even more impressive moments of romantic heroism, and many blamed this on its lack of a monumental finale. The swift and cheerful ending as the couples are reunited is another section reminiscent of the Little Russian comedy, a connection sarcastically made by Khubov when he described it as ‘a happy wedding finale, in which only the traditional “gopak” is missing!’108 The weight at the conclusion fails to balance the climax of Act III, lacking as it does the solemn grandeur of national heroism (as

105

106 107

108

record of the meeting of 22 June 1940, on the day before the premiere of Kotko, when it was mentioned during a discussion of another new opera on Katayev’s novel, by Konstantin Dmitriyevich Makarov Rakitin, which had been commissioned by the KDI in 1938 (Yakov Solodukha, Sovetskaya muzïka (July 1939), 56) and performed during the KDI’s 1939 opera conference. Makarov Rakitin was a student of Prokofiev’s. He died at the front in 1941. Similarly, Stalin himself criticized Aleksandr Korneychuk’s 1941 play V stepyakh Ukrainï (In the Steppes of Ukraine) for being ‘too jolly’, for, as he wrote to the author, ‘there is the danger that the revelry [razgul] of merriment in the comedy may distract the spectator’s attention from its content’. Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents on Contemporary History (RTsKhIDNI), f. 588, op. 1, yed. khr. 4674, ll. 1 2, quoted in Vlast’ i khudozhestvennaya intelligentsiya: Dokumentï TsK RKP(b) VKP(b), VChK OGPU NKVD o kul’turnoy politike, 1917 1953, ed. Andrey N. Artizov and Oleg Nikolayevich Naumov (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnïy fond ‘Demokratiya’, 1999). Incidentally, Prokofiev would compose the music for the film based on Korneychuk’s play, Partizanï v stepyakh Ukrainï (1943, dir. Igor Savchenko). Khubov, ‘Opernïye idealï’, 18. Ivan Sollertinskiy, ‘Dramaturgiya opernogo libretto’, Sovetskaya muzïka (March 1941), 21 31. He had changed his views on opera dramatically (compare with footnote 49), chastened by severe criticisms, during the Lady Macbeth scandal, of his influence on Shostakovich. See Laurel Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 89. Khubov, ‘Opernïye idealï’, 23.

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achieved in Nevsky) to answer the ostinato-heavy onslaught of the enemy. There is no imposing march at the appearance of the Red Army to liberate the village; the song operas The Quiet Don and Into the Storm end in this way, as do films on heroic subjects such as Dovzhenko’s Shchors (1939), also set in Civil War Ukraine. In the opera, attention remains on Semyon’s individual fate, his last-minute rescue and the reunion of the lovers. Theme 1 and the horse-riding theme, both light-hearted, are combined (in voices and orchestra, respectively) in the final chorus, which was in Nest’yev’s view ‘particularly disappointing’ since it ‘in no way expresses the pathos of the Civil War’.109 In other words, although Prokofiev successfully unites personal with national pathos through the appearances of Theme 2, he does not unite personal with national triumph in Theme 1, while the everyday tone and gestural musical style ruled out epic symphonism, the desired ‘pathetic and romantic sublimity’.110 Katayev’s final chapter had offered a clear opportunity for a conclusion in the Russian epic tradition. To emphasize the link between Ukraine and big brother Russia and the bright future that lay ahead, it describes a parade in Red Square in the present (1937), where Semyon and Sofya watch their son, a young Pioneer, marching before the Politburo leaders. A Red Square march was the most potent contemporary image of national celebration available, and even the comic mode could have admitted such an ending: a musical comedy film like the extremely popular Tsirk (1936, dir. Grigoriy Aleksandrov) ended in the same way as Katayev’s novella, including enormous banners with images of Lenin, Stalin, and Voroshilov. In omitting this scene, Prokofiev chose to ignore warning signs demonstrated by the reception of the play Katayev had adapted from his novella. A Pravda review, published half a year before work began on the opera score, criticized the external effects of the staging (the sound and visual ‘pyrotechnics’) and the focus on colourful language (both urban and provincial) in place of an exploration of inner feelings and projection of heroism (the effects and the language were doubtless among those features of the novella and play that Prokofiev found ‘rather lively’).111 Although the Red Square scene was included in the published play, on the evidence of this review it was not part of the performance, since Pravda complained of too much activity in the final scene, leaving no time for reflection on a clear 109

110 111

Israel V. Nestyev, Prokofiev, trans. Florence Jonas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961), p. 318. Editorial, ‘Sovetskaya opera’, Sovetskaya muzïka (October 1940), 6. A. Gruvich, ‘“Shyol soldat s fronta”. P’yesa V. Katayeva v teatre im. Vakhtangova’, Pravda, 27 September 1938.

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message. A static spectacle celebrating victory and unity was the correct way to end a work for the Soviet stage (or screen). Prokofiev had clipped a review of Katayev’s play, so we may assume he read it and ignored its warnings; his opera was subsequently criticized for the very same faults.112 As a final point on the criticism of Kotko, the lack of confirmation in the opera of the approved ideology was a major error perhaps in particular because of the Ukrainian setting. From Moscow’s point of view Ukraine was the republic of by far the greatest importance strategically, for its geographical position as a borderland and defensive buffer against invasion from the West, as well as agriculturally, as the bread basket of the Soviet Union.113 The region’s potential for nationalism remained an acute source of concern for the regime, particularly due to the growing threat from the West, which was preparing for war at exactly this time.114 The Gogolian comedy could have provided a traditional model for Prokofiev, but he had rejected the ‘national’ form of folk songs and dances (Katayev’s intention) and pure comedy (Khubov’s preference). As a genre it had in fact been invented as a way to promote Ukrainian and Russian brotherhood in the Tsarist empire; Tchaikovsky’s contribution in Cherevichki had celebrated the union in a way that misrepresented the history of Ukrainian national aspirations in a bid for state approbation.115 Prokofiev made reference to the genre but primarily achieved his own Ukrainian atmosphere. More problematic was the lack of ‘socialist’ content, with Prokofiev making inappropriate references to Ukrainian elements on both sides of the melodramatic mix: mixing comedy into heroism and turning his Gogolian characters into tragic victims, as we have seen, but also including intense expressions of suffering in those moments with most explicit reference to Ukrainian traditions. According to Marina Frolova-Walker, ‘Soviet musicians had to ensure that their music was not “national in content,” for that would be bourgeois nationalistic art, according to the code. Only the outward forms, the technical means of expression, might reflect the nationality of each republic.’116 Prokofiev’s setting in Act IV of the famous Zapovit by Taras Shevchenko (the national poet of Ukraine) leans, 112 113

114

115 116

RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 595, l. 17. Robert S. Sullivant, Soviet Politics and the Ukraine, 1917 1957 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 228 and 234. See, for example, Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (New York: Basic Books, 2015), pp. 255 7. Taruskin, ‘Sorochintsï Fair Revisited’, pp. 328 94. Marina Frolova Walker, ‘“National in Form, Socialist in Content”: Musical Nation Building in the Soviet Republics’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 51/2 (Summer 1998), 334.

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however, towards nationalism in its content, making no mention of Russia but reflecting on the region’s suffering at the hands of intruders (as the kobzar also does in Act V). This does not accord with the Party’s ‘Battle for Shevchenko’ in the late 1930s, which pushed for a pro-Russian interpretation of his works.117 Similarly, the final chorus of villagers and partisans returns to Theme 1 (related to village life) and to the opening key of C major, while the text celebrates ‘a free Ukraine’, without mention of Russia, the Bolsheviks, the Red Army, or Lenin. The problem with the symbolism and thematic material in the opera was its focus on the Ukrainian experience, eclipsing the involvement of Bolshevik Russia. This was a parallel to the improper attention given to Semyon’s personal fate over public interests; at a national level, the link between individual (republic) and collective (USSR) required emphatic articulation. Just as Semyon was expected to develop the awareness that his own fate was intertwined with that of his community and the socialist project, so Ukraine was expected to forge a bond between its national aspirations and centralized plans for its full participation in the Union. Throughout Kotko, an original pastoral innocence, the old way of Ukrainian village life, is maintained as an ideal, not just by the character of Semyon himself, but as part of a general mood of nostalgia. Folk culture was appropriated under socialist realism as a means to the ideological education of the masses, but Prokofiev used it within his melodrama for local colour, comedy, and catharsis. In melodrama, positive change occurs in society and/or the hero. The melodramatic aesthetic as it was subsumed in socialist realism included the representation of a newly conscious hero or a newly created society (often both together), demonstrated with monumental images of a great past, heroic present, or utopian future. In Kotko, there is some ambiguity at the conclusion, leading to the suggestion of a re-established status quo of village life; a transformation of society is only implied, and the inner development of the hero(es) can only be inferred. A Red Square finale (with an obvious connection to Susanin) could have resolved this, but such a spectacle did not accord with the tone of the opera. Nor was 117

George Luckyj (ed.), Shevchenko and the Critics: 1861 1980, trans. Dolly Ferguson and Sophia Yurkevich (Toronto: University of Toronto Press in association with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1980), ix. In March 1939 there were large scale celebrations of the 125th anniversary of Shevchenko’s birth, with emphasis deter minedly on his ‘revolutionary democratic’ (socialist) rather than nationalistic (Ukrainian) side (Serhy Yekelchyk, Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 23 4).

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there thematic material of sufficient heroic power (ideally, associated with the central protagonists) available in the work. For Prokofiev, the classical value of a balanced structure demanded the return to, as it were, a musical status quo, and therefore Kotko ends with a reprise of Theme 1. Prokofiev chose a politically acceptable source, but its transposition as a classic melodrama proved to be contrary to the adaptation of melodrama in Soviet art and public discourse. The treatment of heroism and of Ukraine led to ambiguity, even neutrality, in Prokofiev’s first Soviet opera, which emphasized the real over the ideal, the dramatic over the ideological, the regional over the national, the personal over the political.

1.6 Aftermath While never officially condemned like Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth had been in 1936, Kotko was cancelled after one season. The clash between Prokofiev’s and Khrennikov’s operas would be resolved in favour of Into the Storm, which in contrast was performed in other cities by the end of its first season (Kiev, Leningrad, and Saratov) and continued for a second, managing to remain on the stage as a token political work, if not a truly popular one. Across the country’s forty opera theatres, there were nineteen performances of Into the Storm in 1940, behind only Susanin and Onegin.118 It was hinted at by several in the debate at the time that the success of Into the Storm was the result of another intervention from the top. Leonid Maksimenkov has recently presented further evidence of this, showing that Stalin was personally involved, having approved of the music as well as the content of Into the Storm.119 His attendance with Molotov and Voroshilov on 18 December 1939 was officially announced on TASS, recalling the earlier success of Dzerzhinsky’s The Quiet Don, which had such a profound influence on the Soviet opera project.120 According to Maksimenkov, the result was that Khrennikov was immediately promoted to positions of influence, including being added to the editorial board of Sovetskaya muzïka just five days later (Dzerzhinsky’s own operas were both taken off the stage at the same time, following official instructions).

118

119

120

Kulikovich, Sovetskaya opera na sluzhbe partii i pravitel’stva, pp. 29 30. In 1939 and 1940, the three Soviet operas most often performed were Virgin Soil, The Quiet Don, and Into the Storm, but attendance was very low. Leonid Maksimenkov, ‘Slovo o Khrennikove’, in Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov: K 100 letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya. Stat’i i vospominaniya, ed. A. I. Kokarev (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2013), pp. 122 55. Maksimenkov, ‘Slovo o Khrennikove’, p. 125.

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The conflict between professionals and populists would reach its climax in the publication of the notorious Resolution on music of February 1948, one of the major upheavals in the history of musical life of the Soviet Union.121 At the same time the Orgkomitet was dismissed, and the leading composers (Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Myaskovsky, Khachaturyan) were publicly castigated for formalism, while Khrennikov was appointed as the new ‘General Secretary’ of the Composers’ Union and chairman of the Stalin Prize Committee’s Music Section. His opera had a role to play in his steady climb to these positions at the top of Soviet music. Dmitriy Shepilov, the head of Agitprop under Andrey Zhdanov, was the author of a report for the Central Committee that was submitted just when Khrapchenko asked for advice on Muradeli’s The Great Friendship, the opera that prompted the crackdown on composers after Stalin’s dissatisfaction.122 According to his recollection it was felt, including by Stalin himself, that Soviet music had not created anything sufficiently heroic after the war, especially in opera, and that by 1948 something needed to be done. Shepilov’s acquaintance with Khrennikov’s Into the Storm and music for theatre persuaded him that the young composer was the right candidate to take the reins.123 It appears that Stalin had already been convinced, also by Into the Storm, that Khrennikov was the man for the job. In 1949, when the musicologists were brought to heel, the cycle was completed, as Shlifshteyn was forced into a humiliating climb-down, and took back his earlier criticism of Into the Storm, stating that exactly those aspects which in 1939 he had derided as egregious flaws were the features that enabled success in reaching a wide audience.124 Meanwhile, Moisey Grinberg, an experienced administrator in music, wrote to Zhdanov in 1948 arguing that it was the outcome of the opera debates beginning in 1939 that represented the beginning of the ‘harmful’ path, which instead of the ‘healthy, democratic’ music of Khrennikov favoured the leading composers such as Prokofiev, in whose Kotko were revealed the ‘most harmful shortcomings of a modernist nature and very far from popular aspirations, regardless of the composer’s many brilliant

121

122 124

The Central Committee issued the Resolution on music on 10 February 1948. It has been published as ‘Postanovleniye Politburo TsK VKP(b) ‘Ob opere “Velikaya druzhba” V. Muradeli’, in Vlast’ i khudozhestvennaya intelligentsiya, pp. 630 1. Vlasova, ‘The Stalinist Opera Project’, p. 165. 123 Tomoff, Creative Union, pp. 131 2. Vlasova, 1948 god v sovetskoy muzïke, p. 371. The archival reference is TsAOPIM f. 1292, op. 1, yed. khr. 17, l. 11.

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“discoveries”’.125 Taking account of Into the Storm’s official stamp of approval in 1939, its ‘victory’ in the opera debates of 1940, and its continued run in the theatres, it appears that 1939 had the very opposite effect to that which Grinberg claimed: the outcome was a major step towards the eventual triumph of the populist side, with the Party hierarchy directly involved once again in determining the path of Soviet music. Despite the fact that back in 1939 Grinberg had found ‘many shortcomings’ in Into the Storm, he had reversed his view after its official endorsement and recommended it for a Stalin Prize in a letter to Stalin in 1941, and now praised the composer’s ‘healthy, democratic tendencies’ and his musical style, which was ‘bright, melodic, comprehensible and close to the people’.126 This position was thus another exaggerated echo of the official line, put across clearly in 1947, which had stated a preference for Into the Storm over Kotko despite its obvious musical flaws: ‘If the first enticed with freshness, democracy, and lyrical song, without achieving, however, great heights of musical-dramatic generalization, then the second, with a number of particular merits, revealed with especial sharpness the vices of the creative method that hampered the movement towards realistic art: disregard for melody, the lack of definite forms, the complexity of the musical language.’127 Khrennikov was a member of the same generation and social class as those Stalinist cadres who were being selected by the Party for promotion in 1937–8, when there was a push to replace the old guard.128 The loyalty of this group was assured once they attained positions of authority, and in this light it seems unsurprising that Khrennikov was picked to take the lead at the moment when the battle between professional and populist composers would be turned conclusively in favour of the latter. In the melodrama of Stalinism, backgrounds were important, since socio-economic position was thought to determine one’s outlook. Prokofiev, the former émigré, had failed to prove himself by 1948, when he and his peers were brought down by their juniors and inferiors (Prokofiev had bluntly criticized Khrennikov’s work in the 1930s). With the status and privileges of an elite artist came responsibilities. Artistic originality was not valued in the way to which Prokofiev was accustomed, and political disinterestedness was unacceptable: a creative artist could not be independent from service 125 126

127

128

Vlasova, 1948 god v sovetskoy muzïke, p. 257. RGALI f. 962, op. 3, yed. khr. 602, l. 21; Frolova Walker, Stalin’s Music Prize; and Vlasova, 1948 god v sovetskoy muzïke, p. 257. From the article ‘Muzïka’ in the Bol’shoy Sovetskoy Entsiklopedii, SSSR (Moscow, 1947), pp. 1553 83, quoted in Kulikovich, Sovetskaya opera na sluzhbe partii i pravitel’stva, p. 28. Simo Mikkonen, Music and Power in the Soviet 1930s: A History of Composers’ Bureaucracy (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009), pp. 97 8.

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to the state, and there was no tolerance for ‘wavering’ or doubts about loyalties in the context of high Stalinism’s own public melodrama, the struggle between state builders and wreckers, between the nation and growing threats from abroad. In a sense Prokofiev failed in his first Soviet opera to demonstrate his own development of political consciousness and to fulfil his role in Soviet society. Like his character Semyon, he returned to his provincial home after years abroad to find it changed and in the hands of a new power; while appearing to comply with the new regime, he did not surrender his own long-held personal objectives, and he remained on some level an outsider, still attached to the timeless values of another world. Semyon Kotko was not performed again during Prokofiev’s lifetime, and it remained a point of reference through the 1940s for those who wished to criticize his approach to opera. However, as a work that put ‘lively’ drama before propaganda, those characteristics that led to its initial failure allow it to be appreciated today within the traditions of opera and the theatre from which it drew. In presenting moral issues, melodrama tends to be tied to the historical circumstances of its creation.129 While Kotko does indeed direct our attention to cultural conditions under Stalin, it can also, unlike the vast majority of the products of socialist realism, lay claim to more than mere historical interest. 129

See the remarks by McReynolds and Neuberger, ‘Introduction’ to Imitations of Life, p. 5.

2 Buffered by Buffa: Betrothal in a Monastery

Having finally made a return to opera after a break of more than a decade, Prokofiev was eager to continue, and before Semyon Kotko was in production he was planning his next work. In January 1940, Mira Mendel’son (an aspiring poetess with whom he had begun an affair) was working with a fellow student from the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow on a translation of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comic opera The Duenna (1775), their project having been inspired by the successful staging of The School for Scandal at The Moscow Arts Theatre.1 When Mendel’son showed The Duenna to Prokofiev, he expressed immediate interest, exclaiming ‘But that’s champagne – it could make an opera in the style of Mozart, Rossini!’2 Without hesitation, he started creating the libretto himself, while Mendel’son wrote the text for several songs (based on those included in Sheridan’s comedy); this first stage was completed by 27 May.3 Prokofiev began work on the score in the middle of July, as soon as he was free to devote himself to composition after the production of Kotko, and wrote the music quickly: by 10 September the piano score was complete, and before the end of the year the orchestration was finished and the opera had gone into production. Betrothal in a Monastery (the title the composer invented for it) has a form which is unique among his operas, adopting the self-contained number as its basic constitutive element. This was nevertheless consistent with his usual practice of faithful transposition, in that it replicates features of the literary source, in particular Sheridan’s inserted songs. At the same time, and contrary to his usual assumption or prejudice, this did not entail the sacrifice of continuity or vividness of stage action: ‘The structure of Sheridan’s play, containing many songs, gave me the opportunity to execute, without stopping the course of action, a series 1

2

3

[67]

For details of the opera’s composition, see Simon Morrison, The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 167 8. Mira Abramovna Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, O Sergeye Sergeyeviche Prokof ’yeve. Vospominaniya. Dnevniki (1938 1967) (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2012), p. 42. Rossini’s music was frequently compared to champagne, while Prokofiev used ‘champagne’ as a descriptor for music on a number of occasions. According to one of his public statements on the opera, ‘“Obrucheniye v monastïre” (“Duen’ya”)’ (17 January 1941), in Prokof’yev o Prokof’yeve: Stat’i i interv’yu, ed. Viktor Varunts (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1991), pp. 197 9 (198).

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of fully rounded numbers – serenades, ariettas, duets, quartets, and large ensembles.’4 Unusually for Prokofiev, Betrothal is indeed a number opera, albeit with concise numbers that are remarkably well integrated into the stage action. Besides the dialogue-plus-songs structure, the combination of good-natured farce with lyrical warmth in Sheridan’s comedy offered an ideal match for Prokofiev’s compositional style, and Betrothal highlights his most characteristic attributes: rhythmic vitality, melodic invention, deft setting of text, and witty caricature. In its characters and intrigue, Sheridan’s comedy shares a historical connection with the Italian opera buffa that had sparked Prokofiev’s imagination. In terms of form, on the other hand, there are significant differences between the English and Italian comic opera traditions, and this led to an original interpretation of a familiar genre in Betrothal; Prokofiev was able to achieve simultaneously a faithful transposition of his source and a refreshing ‘update’ of classic conventions. Buffa is the most formulaic of operatic genres, and while Betrothal conforms to a number of its typical features, derived from both Mozart and Rossini, the opera also contains some notable innovations beneath its sparkling surface. In the first part of this chapter I argue that it is a distinctive hybrid work which incorporates aspects of ballet into opera, also uniting Prokofiev’s mature ballet style with Mozartian rhythmic topoi. It is this hybridity that allows the numbers to function as the connective tissue of the action, rather than the cause of its rupture. Prokofiev’s relaxation of his self-imposed restriction on operatic formulae finds its ultimate success here, in that, somewhat unexpectedly, the number format allowed for significant flexibility. These qualities, along with the opera’s links to tradition, are central to my assessment of the relationship of Betrothal to its historical context. As a pure comic opera, it is usually considered to be conventional, superficial, and therefore – considering the tumultuous times in which it was created – a work effectively disconnected from Stalinist cultural production. Critics have presented it as a withdrawal to a safe haven after the failure of the ‘socialist realist’ Semyon Kotko, a sort of kneejerk defensive reaction to difficult circumstances. I will argue instead that it represents in many ways a companion piece to Kotko, as its aesthetic complement and in some ways as a development of its dramatic and structural novelties. In a manner comparable to the inclusion of Gogolian comedy within classic melodrama in Kotko, Prokofiev’s ballet style served as a crucial component in his reinterpretation of opera buffa in Betrothal: in both operas he synthesizes two different sets of traditional, even ‘classical’, 4

Prokofiev, ‘“Obrucheniye v monastïre” (“Duen’ya”)’, p. 198.

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formulae. In the second half of this chapter I examine Betrothal in terms of its relationship to major trends in contemporary culture, including the propagation of kul’turnost’ (‘culturedness’) in Stalinist society. The opera presents a paradox, in that it can be considered simultaneously one of Prokofiev’s most characteristic works for the stage and the one among his late operas that was most compatible with the cultural demands of Stalin’s Soviet Union. While socialist realism dominated the arts, it was not the whole story, and there were alternative routes to success. While we are habituated to think of creative artists under Stalinism being crushed by a censorious regime, a revisionist history has considered negotiation, accommodation, and even points of convergence between artists and the state. This chapter may contribute to such a history.

2.1 From Ballad Opera to Ballet-Opera, Part 1: Source and Genre Betrothal inevitably invites comparison to the genre of opera buffa by virtue of its subject. Prokofiev himself immediately drew this link when he first encountered The Duenna, and no doubt it added to his attraction to it. His affection for Italian comic opera dated back at least to his days as a Conservatory student, when he conducted Marriage of Figaro and Falstaff.5 Figaro marked a breakthrough in operatic history for its inclusion of (visual) action within numbers, while Falstaff, which appeared some years after the buffa tradition had come to an end, represents the pinnacle of the process of weaving numbers into a continuous action. Carl Dahlhaus singles out precisely these two operas as examples of a ‘primary affinity . . . to stage action’.6 This must have been one reason for their appeal to a composer ever obsessed with maintaining stage action. Closer to Betrothal in terms of tone, however, is The Barber of Seville, the epitome of the buffa genre; they share a witty irreverence, including a knowing, often parodic, treatment of conventional topics and forms. Commentators have usually compared Betrothal to Falstaff, while Taruskin suggests that Gianni Schicchi (1918) had an influence.7 I return instead to the earlier 5

6

7

Sergey Prokofiev, Diaries 1907 1914: Prodigious Youth, trans. Anthony Phillips (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), pp. 509 11, and 595. Carl Dahlhaus, ‘The Dramaturgy of Italian Opera’, in Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, trans. Kenneth Chalmers and Mary Whittall (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 73 150 (77). Richard Taruskin, ‘Tone, Style and Form in Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas: Some Preliminary Observations’, in Studies in the History of Music, Volume II: Music and Drama (New York: Broude Brothers, 1988), pp. 215 39 (231).

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exemplars of buffa that Prokofiev claimed, however spontaneously, as his models, arguing that the connection to these is stronger in terms of underlying musical principles. I believe that it makes more sense to consider Betrothal a parallel work to comic operas by Verdi and Puccini, as a fellow descendant of the classic buffa, rather than their subsequent progeny. A close association with familiar conventions was perhaps inevitable, since reference to comic tradition is an essential feature of all comedy. Yet the most significant links to buffa are to be found beneath the surface. While Prokofiev imagined composing ‘in the style of’ Mozart and Rossini he had no intention of creating a pastiche. Because of his temperamental and stylistic proximity to the classic genre, he could work from within it and carry it forward in an authentic and original manner. Betrothal shares with opera buffa its literary background, and its characters and situations belong to traditions stretching back centuries. Prokofiev admitted that ‘[t]he theme is old and banal, but it is worked out with great humour and brilliance by the English dramatist.’8 Don Jerome, a nobleman, wants to marry his daughter Louisa off to his business partner Isaac Mendoza, an unattractive fish merchant, rather than allow her to marry her young beau, the noble but impecunious Antonio. Through a plan hatched by Louisa’s Duenna involving the swapping of clothing and identities, Louisa makes off with Antonio while the Duenna corralls Mendoza, who, while imagining himself the clever rogue who eliminates the obstacle of Antonio while he woos Louisa, is really the dupe of the others. Another pair, Louisa’s brother Ferdinand and his beloved Clara (with whom Louisa will also swap identities), complete the picture and add to the confusion, which at the end is happily resolved for all except Mendoza, while Jerome recognises the error of his ways. The plot is well-crafted, seemingly intricate but actually uncomplicated, being based entirely on variations around a single ‘joke’, in which the schemer is the victim of his own scheme.9 As is typical for comedy, there is little psychological depth, the narrative contains no prehistory of the characters, and the action requires no explanation or expansion that would pause its progression. Sheridan’s play was both the most traditional source of all Prokofiev’s operas and the most straightforward in its transposition. It could be set more or less directly, and was already endowed with the theatrical qualities he required.

8

9

Sergey Prokof’yev, ‘Prokof’yev rasskazïvayet o svoyey posledney opere po “Duen’ye” Sheridana’ (24 October 1940), in Prokof’yev o Prokof’yeve: Stat’i i interv’yu, ed. Viktor Varunts (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1991), pp. 187 8 (187). Mark Auburn, Sheridan’s Comedies: Their Contexts and Achievements (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), p. 79.

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The Duenna, which was extremely popular in its own time, contains numerous allusions to earlier comedies, although no single primary influence has been discovered. Possible sources include Molière’s comedies Le Sicilien and Dom Juan,10 or the Spanish comedy of manners, although Sheridan counterbalanced the style of sentimental comedy then prevailing in England with something of the exaggerated manner of the commedia dell’arte.11 In The Duenna the commedia influence does not predominate, however, and the tone overall is that of good-natured humour, in which satire is balanced with sensibility. As a basis for opera the play was open to a range of interpretations, and emphasis could have been given to either the romance or the farce. In this respect one can compare the differences in tone separating Figaro and Barber, operas based on almost the same source (two plays by Beaumarchais with the same characters), which has much in common with The Duenna (Sheridan was known in Russia as ‘the English Beaumarchais’12). True to his practice of faithful transposition, and to his own mature musical personality, Prokofiev retained Sheridan’s combination of humanism and humour, avoiding any sentimental indulgence, like Barber, yet remaining warm-hearted, like Figaro. Betrothal also follows the structure of The Duenna, and here there is a significant divergence from opera buffa. Sheridan’s work was subtitled a ‘comic opera’, but belonged to traditions separate from and less familiar than the Italian: it is a cross between a ballad opera and an English opera, neither of which had much in common with the dramma giocoso (despite, as noted, a shared literary background).13 Instead of recitative and aria these genres feature spoken dialogue complemented by airs and songs (and trios, glees, and choruses); the airs in The Duenna enhance characterization, while the spoken dialogue concentrates on the intrigue.14 The major difference between English opera and ballad opera is that the former included airs by a well-known composer, while the latter – invented by John Gay with The Beggar’s Opera (1728) – borrowed traditional or popular songs of the day. For The Duenna, approximately half of the airs 10

11 12

13

14

Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 415. Katharine Worth, Sheridan and Goldsmith (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 109 10. Israel V. Nestyev, Prokofiev, trans. Florence Jonas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961), p. 389. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Duenna: A Comic Opera. In Three Acts. As Performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden: With Universal Applause (London: T. N. Longman, 1794). See Linda Troost, ‘The Characterizing Power of Song in Sheridan’s The Duenna’, Eighteenth Century Studies, 20/2 (Winter 1986 7), 153 72.

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were composed for Sheridan by Thomas Linley, the elder, and his son Thomas Linley, the younger, while the rest were based on an eclectic range of popular songs that the Linleys selected.15 Prokofiev did not have prior access to this original music, and in any case there was no question of creating a pastiche. Of the twenty-seven airs, he incorporated only the texts of six that were especially pertinent to the plot.16 The English form of dialogue-punctuated-by-airs was more consistent in its pacing and degrees of dramatic tension in comparison with opera buffa, in which set pieces are organized to lead to culminations in act finales. Prokofiev’s dramaturgy in Betrothal is nearer to its English source, although a few conspicuous buffalike numbers were nevertheless prompted by songs and airs from The Duenna – for example the Act I Serenade, the quartet that ends tableau 5, and Clara’s aria in tableau 7 – and the final act builds to a grand choral conclusion. Each of the characters in Betrothal is assigned short numbers, ariettas, or motifs, which I will usually refer to as their themes. Some of them also have more self-contained numbers that are based on the texts of airs in Sheridan’s comedy. Prokofiev’s repeatedly stated aversion to numbers in opera was that they precluded action. Here he was able to solve this perennial issue of operatic form by incorporating short ariettas and motifs into the action and exchanges of dialogue. Departing from a mainly declamatory style, the typical structure unit in Betrothal corresponds to what was otherwise his default approach to thematic material in other genres – melody with accompaniment in balanced phrases. This allowed him to make use of pre-existing material, in the form of themes collected in his notebooks, which were often invented without a specific work in mind. My study of Prokofiev’s manuscript notebooks reveals that Betrothal recycles a significant number of themes, some of them many years old. Such an approach to musical material, which was thenceforth to become his normal practice in opera, was appropriate for this work because of its formal outlines and the suitability of its stock characters for ‘generic’ melody à la Italian opera. The declamation itself often approaches arioso, and the contrast with the lyrical nature of many of the individual themes is therefore decreased, although as in Kotko there is a range of vocal styles, 15

16

Roger Fiske, ‘The Duenna’, The Musical Times, 117/1597 (March 1976), 217 19 (218). See also Fiske, ‘A Score for The Duenna’, Music & Letters, 42/2 (April 1961), 132 41. Larisa Geyorgevna Dan’ko, ‘S. Prokof’yev v rabote nad “Duen’yey” (sozdaniye libretto)’, in Chertï stilya S. Prokof’yeva: Sbornik teoreticheskikh statey, ed. L. G. Berger (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1962), pp. 82 115, reprinted in Larisa Geyorgevna Dan’ko, Teatr Prokof’yeva v Peterburge (St Petersburg: Akademicheskiy proyekt, 2003) as ‘S. Prokofiev v rabote nad “Duen’yey” (stsenarnïy plan i libretto)’, pp. 43 75.

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including examples of notated speech. Instead of Kotko’s series of scenes with their own unique atmosphere, however, Betrothal is based on themes linked to particular characters that return virtually unchanged (they may be slightly varied or curtailed) in the course of action and dialogue. Each character has a combination of themes (between two and five in total) which are singular and stereotypical in affect and representation, related in many cases to dance topics, or linked to a text suggestive of a specific attitude or emotion. The insertion of song into the action thus unites comedy and lyricism in the opera, whereas the dialogue and airs are discrete components in Sheridan’s comedy. Katharine Worth writes that ‘the combination of melodic fluency with mordant wit made The Duenna a refreshingly sweet–sour mix’.17 Essentially this mix is retained in Betrothal, but the sweet and sour ingredients are blended together more smoothly, and the concentration of both is increased, so that, I suggest (in contrast to received opinion), the flavour is more piquant overall. The tone often resembles that of farce. First, Prokofiev added a number of extra little jokes in his libretto.18 Second, because of his interest in colourful everyday speech, the text became, as Harlow Robinson has pointed out, ‘more folksy and crude than Sheridan’s’.19 Third, the music, supporting the dialogue, does not moderate it, but supplies an additional layer of comic effect, including through the rhythms and inflections of the vocal parts. Fourth, the lyrical airs and songs, entering as they do the comic sphere of the action, relate more directly to the intrigue than to individual expression, are heard as ironic, and frequently serve to parody conventions, at the same time that the brevity and stylized nature of the characters’ themes and motifs reduces the warmth of the original airs. In The Duenna the lovers’ music ‘hints at the possibility of some real emotional life behind the stereotypes’,20 but this hint is diminished in the opera since ariettas and duets are always heard within a comic context, as illustrations of those stereotypes. Fifth, the overall structure is tilted towards farce; for example, Prokofiev’s opening 17 18

19 20

Worth, Sheridan and Goldsmith, pp. 26 7. Many fly past in rapid dialogue and thus have a throwaway quality to them. Jerome says to the Duenna ‘Give me back the letter, do you not understand Spanish?’ (II/2/4); during his domestic music performance he tells his cornet playing friend he is playing off key when the friend has made a Prokofievian shift from E♭ to D (III/6/1); the servant Lopez tells Jerome at his party, ‘Don Juan has arrived, and behind him Don Quixote with his wife’; in reply Jerome tells him to serve madeira to the guests, ‘the vintage one from 1715’ (IV/9/3); Ferdinand, objecting to Jerome’s plans for Louisa’s marriage, tells his father ‘we’re not living in the tenth century’ (II/2/3). Robinson, Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography, p. 380. Worth, Sheridan and Goldsmith, p. 123.

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scene is full of buffoonery (Jerome, Mendoza, and fish), and the finale has little of Sheridan’s sentimentality. Betrothal is labelled a ‘lyrical-comic opera’, but contains only one scene that is serious in affect and psychologically revealing – lyricism as subjective expression. This is Clara’s aria in tableau 7, but it too is perceived as a function of her stock role. The ‘romantic’ characters are lampooned throughout: Jerome mocks his daughter’s sighs, Ferdinand and Clara are too jealous and too proud, respectively, for their love to blossom, Don Carlos affects an absurd posture of consummate gallantry, and so on. Taruskin contrasts Betrothal with The Love for Three Oranges, stating that ‘[t]he earlier opera is pure farce . . . The later work is a lyrical romantic comedy . . . Either opera could have been handled in either way; the differences cannot be attributed to their respective literary sources.’21 Having stressed the comic side of Betrothal, I propose a different interpretation: that in both cases, as ever, Prokofiev transposed his source text with an acute sensitivity and conscious adherence to its particular qualities: Gozzi-Meyerhold is zany and satirical, while Sheridan is witty and humane. The contrast in tone can be put down to the literature he selected at certain points in his creative development. The earlier opera, a prank-filled parody, is very much the work of a young firebrand (seeking to conquer America in 1919), whose exuberance is evident in the orchestration and some of the slightly overplayed musical jokes, while the later work is that of a mature composer whose priorities included concision, clarity, and subtlety of detail. When promoting his works publicly, Prokofiev often paid lip service to Soviet aesthetics, and, although his statements on Betrothal stress its melodic nature, the opera is predominantly comic, and, as in Rossini, its lyricism is fully a part of the comedy.

2.2 From Ballad Opera to Ballet-Opera, Part 2: Rhythmic Topoi In realizing the individual qualities of his characters, Prokofiev borrowed a technique from Mozartian buffa. This was the use of rhythmic topoi to represent essential external traits: appearance, persona, and class status. As is usual in comedy, all characters are to an extent physical caricatures; their stock personalities are revealed by how they move and carry themselves. Many of the themes are directly modelled on eighteenth-century social dances, and therefore provide a subtle means of placing the comedy in its historical setting as well as its generic tradition. Again there is little sense of pastiche, since musical syntax and formal models based on classic 21

Taruskin, ‘Tone, Style, and Form in Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas’, p. 231.

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dances were fundamental to Prokofiev’s style, especially during his later period. (Betrothal was conceived around the same time as Cinderella, a work that the composer insisted would be set in the eighteenth century and showcase classical dances.22) Indeed, the dance topoi are so much a part of his idiom, and are deployed with such finesse in Betrothal – are so appropriately matched to character and situation, as in Mozart – that no critic, as far as I am aware, has noticed them. This is a further development of the practice of gesture in Kotko. Parallel with the expanded spectrum of vocal styles, there is a wider range of rhythms in this opera, from repeated accompaniment figures and parlante motifs to formal social dances (in ariettas and numbers). Wye Allanbrook observed in her study of Mozart’s rhythmic gesture that metre is ‘the first choice a composer makes’.23 There is certainly evidence that this was true for Prokofiev. Sergey Eisenstein offered a description of his method during work on Alexander Nevsky: How does Prokofiev work out the structural and rhythmic elements of his musical equivalent to a given film sequence? . . . An image runs across the screen, and Prokofiev’s precise and sensitive fingers tap on the arm of his chair, tense as if striking a telegraph key. Is he beating time? No. He hits at much more than that. His tapping fingers perceive the structural pattern that unifies the durations and tempos of individual sequences within the montage, and equally, at the same time, interweaves with the actions [s postupkami] and speech patterns of the characters.24

Larisa Dan’ko’s work on the sketches for the libretto has shown that the same method operated in Prokofiev’s work on Betrothal, in that he would first determine the basic metre that would unify individual sections of text, and then incorporate this into the underlying rhythm of a scene.25 Dan’ko does not note the other element involved in this unity, which Eisenstein observed and which I am applying to the opera: that in addition to the patterns that were determined by the text, Prokofiev also took into account the rhythms of the characters’ movements and gestures. In the case of opera, unlike Nevsky or other films, the moving images were not presented 22

23

24

25

Vladimir Perkhin, ‘Istoriya Zolushki: shestnadtsat’ pisem S. S. Prokof’yeva o balete (1940 1946)’, in S. S. Prokof’yev: K 125 letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya. Pis’ma, dokumentï, stat’i, vospominaniya, ed. Ye. S. Vlasova (Мoscow: Kompozitor, 2016), pp. 151 69 (151 3). Wye Jamison Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro & Don Giovanni (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 8. Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn, ‘Zametki o Prokof’yeve’, in S. S. Prokof’yev: Materialï, dokumentï, vospominaniya, ed. S. I. Shlifshteyn (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye muzïkal’noye izdatel’stvo, 1956), pp. 296 305. Dan’ko, Teatr Prokof’eva v Peterburge, p. 35.

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Example 2.1 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 2, scene 1, Louisa’s first theme (L1)

in advance, but were conceived only in the composer’s imagination. However, as we shall see, a portion of the opera’s raw material pre-dates the construction of the libretto, having been written down in Prokofiev’s notebooks (which were also not part of Dan’ko’s investigation) – but these examples are also tied to dance, as I will show. Indeed, the striking and unique quality of Betrothal is that it is so comprehensively based on dance rhythms, and here I offer an account of these. To begin with there is Louisa, who is a type familiar in Prokofiev’s mature works, a vivacious but also dreamy young girl (like Juliet, Tatyana, Frosya, Cinderella, and Natasha). Louisa is characterized most strongly by the bourrée, a dance with an affect of carefree joy, playfulness, and contentment. Of her four themes and one motif – she has more than any other character – three conform to this dance form (there is also a lyrical theme expressive of her love for Antonio, and an entreating theme which she uses to manipulate both her father and Mendoza). Louisa’s entrance motif suggests the rhythm of a bourrée (‘Con vivacità’, fig. 110, Example 2.1), being in duple metre in a quick tempo, with an upbeat, four-bar phrasing, and arrival at the beginning of the fourth bar. (According to the form that will be used for all themes, I label this L1, with reference to the first letter of the character(s) name followed by a number determined by the order of the theme’s first appearance in the opera.) Her third theme, L3 (‘Vivace’, figs. 124–7), is another bourrée with lively rhythm and firm accents, consisting of a four-bar subject over a broken chord accompaniment in C major. It is introduced as she and the Duenna excitedly discuss the execution of their newly hatched plan to thwart the intentions of Jerome and Mendoza (Example 2.2). (L1 and L3 are combined at fig. 182, which demonstrates their similarity.) Louisa’s third bourrée (L5, Example 2.3) underlies Act II, tableau 3, scene 4 (henceforth I use the form II/3/4), where again she is involved in an excited discussion as she hatches a plan, this time with Clara (figs. 195–201). The scene has the form ABABABA, but it feels monothematic since there is only a slight contrast between the two sections. As an animated

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Example 2.2 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 2, scene 1, Louisa’s third theme (L3) TRANSLATION: Duenna: Your father is coming. Louisa: Oh, hide the letter. Duenna: From your sweetheart?

Example 2.3 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 3, scene 4, Louisa’s fifth theme (L5) TRANSLATION: Louisa: If I had known what pranks Ferdinand had played, I would have directed him long ago [to your feet, humbly to ask forgiveness.]

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back-and-forth exchange over the energetic rhythm, it is a perfect match to the characters and the situation. L5 is one of a handful of themes in Betrothal that were excavated from the composer’s notebooks, some of them several years old.26 It appears in Notebook 4, and can be dated all the way back to December 1931– December 1932. In this original form it is in D major and begins with what will later become its B section.27 It appears again in Notebook 5, among other themes selected from previous notebooks, revised and neatly notated.28 Here it is complete, in the form that it appears in the opera, in B♭ major and ending da capo. Louisa’s lyrical theme (L2, Example 2.4) appears in the same notebooks, and went through a similar process of refinement (the changes were minor, as it is only two bars in length).29 It was written down again on the first page of Notebook 9 (1940), a collection of thematic material specifically intended for Betrothal. L2 is the most often repeated of Louisa’s themes, its flexibility being enhanced by its brevity. Louisa and Antonio also share two themes that are representative of their love. The first is the Act I Serenade (LA1), the other a mellow theme (LA2, Example 2.5) that expresses their happiness as the intrigue unfolds in their favour (III/5/4, fig. 292). I have discovered LA2 in Notebook 7, which served essentially as a sketchbook for Romeo and Juliet (dating between May 1935 and May 1936), and it is highly likely that the theme was originally intended for that ballet.30 Its rhythmic topic is the pastorale, in 6/8 and B♭ major, with a tranquil affect. 26

27

28 29

30

Notebooks 4 13, dating from 1931 to 1950, are held in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 284 93. Presumably in a rough draft (where it begins with the B section, originally notated in D major), Zapisnaya knizhka N4, RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 284, l. 15. Notebook 5 (Notnaya zapisnaya knizhka N5, RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 285) is dated ‘May 1930’, while Notebook 4 was begun 28 November 1931, and the ‘unnumbered’ Notebook 6 dates from January 1933 (Notnaya zapisnaya knizhka bez nomera, RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 286; I assign it number 6 because of the chronology). Notnaya zapisnaya knizhka N5, in RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 285, l. 17. In Notebook 4 (RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 284, l. 20ob), in Notebook 5 (RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 285, l. 19), and then on the first page of Notebook 9 from 1940, the collection of themes for Betrothal (Notnaya zapisnaya knizhka N9, s nabroskami tem dlya operï ‘Obrucheniye v monastïre’ i dr., RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 285, l. 1). On page 2 of Notebook 9 is L1 and on page 33 is L3, to take just the examples from this particular character. Notnaya zapisnaya knizhka N7, RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 287, l. 29. Notebook 7 is dated 14 May 1935, and Notebook 8 (Notnaya zapisnaya knizhka N8, s nabroskami tem dlya operï ‘Semyon Kotko’ i dr., RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 288) begins 31 May 1936, so it can be dated to that year. In the original there are six bars, and one can see how Prokofiev changed it from a single melody, added the harmony, and altered the climactic point of the melody; the later copy has the phrase repeated on the subdominant.

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Example 2.4 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 2, scene 1, Louisa’s second theme (L2) TRANSLATION: Louisa: and I love him, love him so much that any more would be impossible. Duenna: Oh, dear girl!

For each of the three couples in the opera the male and female roles share stylistic attributes, although Louisa and Antonio are unique in sharing so many actual themes. They are the fresh and spontaneous pair, whose love is uncomplicated, and who are in general more convivial, participating in the opera’s few duets and ensembles (much like Susanna and Figaro). In contrast to them, the second couple, Clara and Ferdinand, are earnest and passionate, and are mildly satirized, respectively, as proud and proper, and fiercely jealous. Their music is in a somewhat fervid mode, and, unlike Louisa and Antonio, whose numbers usually appear within the context of dialogue, they tend to sing solo ariettas, addressing the absent other. They are, in other words, mezzi caratteri, and such moments serve to parody opera seria, the traditional target in buffa. Their prehistory includes an encounter that recalls Don Giovanni, with Ferdinand forging a key and stealing into Clara’s room,

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Example 2.5 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act III, tableau 5, scene 4, Louisa and Antonio’s second theme (LA2)

and she resembles a lighter version of Donna Elvira, always complaining of this offence whilst pining for the offender. All of their music is based on the noble and elegant dances that usually identify the aristocracy, the minuet in particular. Within the limitations of this formal dance (three even beats in a slow or moderate tempo) and its attendant affect of dignified composure, their themes are furnished with an abundance of expressive chromaticism. They are thus simultaneously poised and passionate, pushing against the restraints attending their social position (the humour based on this contradiction also consistently comes through in the text). The second of Clara’s two main themes is the minuet that introduces her aria in II/3/3 (Example 2.6). Its juxtaposition of E♭-major and B-minor triads lends a solemn and stately effect, enhanced by the chromatic ascent in the voice on each downbeat (II/3/3, fig. 189). Later, her aria in the nunnery, ‘Ya obrechena na odinochestvo’ (‘I am doomed to solitude’, III/7/2, fig. 368), is the only other full-scale aria in the opera, with a rondo form of unusual length and a passionate climax. As it happens, Clara and Ferdinand represent the serious mode in an almost literal manner, in that they are both given a number that originates as unused or unperformed material from earlier dramatic works, and in each case with an explicit connection to dance. Clara’s aria was taken from the Romeo and Juliet sketchbook, where it appears in a complete form.31 Its melodic turns, orchestration, and pacing may seem less appropriate to 31

RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 287, l. 17.

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Example 2.6 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 3, scene 3, Clara’s first theme (C1) TRANSLATION: Clara: Ferdinand alone is dearer than anyone on earth, Ferdinand alone can cheer me up.

a ballet number than an expressive slow movement, but that is the nature of the lyrical music in Romeo and Juliet. Ferdinand’s gavotte-like first theme (I/1/3, figs. 31–6) also appears in Notebook 7, on the reverse side of the page from Clara’s aria.32 It is first heard in the opera as the A section of an ABA form, combined with his second theme, which was previously the trio of the Mazurka from ‘Larin’s Ball’ in Prokofiev’s incidental music to Pushkin’s Yevgeniy Onegin (unperformed at the time of composing Betrothal), but now resembles a waltz since its accents are softened by the slow tempo.33 These two themes are later used independently, and therefore are labelled F1 and F2 (Examples 2.7(a) and (b)). F2 in particular juxtaposes prim formality with emotional fervour through ascending chromatic melodic motion in a C-major harmonic area, as Ferdinand strives for 32

33

RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 287, l. 18. The gavotte is a courtship dance. Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, p. 50. Another part of ‘Larin’s Ball’ will become the seductive waltz associated with Anatol Kuragin in War and Peace, and another will provide both the slow movement of the Eighth Piano Sonata as well as a number in Cinderella.

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Example 2.7(a) Betrothal in a Monastery, Act I, tableau 1, scene 3, Ferdinand’s first theme (F1) TRANSLATION: Ferdinand: Ah, Clara, Clara, my dearest! How cruelly, how mercilessly and pitilessly you have disturbed my peace of mind!

the utmost expression within a conventional frame (a Spanish stereotype?). The expressive manner of Romeo and Juliet is thus drawn into an ironic context in Betrothal, as I discuss in more detail below. Another central character strongly tied to classic rhythmic topoi is the other member of the family and social class: Don Jerome, the father of Louisa and Ferdinand. As a fully comic character he has many speech-like episodes and gets involved in animated arguments with others, but he is also connected to dance. With his domestic trio (Jerome on clarinet, a friend on cornet, and servant Sancho on bass drum) he plays his own composition, a ‘favourite’ minuet, which provides the basis for an entire tableau (III/6/1, fig. 311, B♭). Its harmony is rudimentary and its form is square (four related sections, each eight bars in length), but it is also revelatory of Jerome’s character in that it is dotted, ornamented, uptempo,

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Example 2.7(b) Betrothal in a Monastery, Act I, tableau 1, scene 2, Ferdinand’s second theme (F2) TRANSLATION: Ferdinand: Ah, Clara, capricious, stubborn, perfidious, and your gaze is mocking and malicious.

and less graceful than the Haydnesque norm it otherwise suggests. With its strong accent on the downbeat, it is almost turned into a much less elegant ‘German’ allemande,34 and its instrumentation suggests the military march rather than the ballroom. Although Don Jerome is a member of respectable society, he is brusque and bombastic rather than dignified: his clarinet part increases in virtuosic embellishments as he becomes more 34

The allemande in triple metre (also called Deutscher Tanz, Ländler, boiteuse) is the ancestor of the waltz, and is the dance ‘most distant from the French court tradition’. Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, p. 59.

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excited, and his performance overall is flamboyant. Earlier, he has a solo song of complaint about his daughter in the style of a mildly frenzied waltz (‘If a daughter you have’, fig. 59), with typical melody and accompaniment figures, flashy orchestration, and an affect of unrestrained animation (form AA′BB′), which, along with its text, simultaneously parodies her behaviour and expresses his frustration. The other character to be strongly marked by social dance is Don Carlos, Mendoza’s sidekick, and he is the most narrowly circumscribed of all. His signature tune is a sarabande, with three slow beats and a distinctive stress on the dotted second beat (fig. 221), in a miniature binary form consisting of antecedent and consequent phrases, made to sound more archaic by its mode and final plagal cadence. A sarabande is the obvious choice for the sentimental–nostalgic Carlos, who subscribes to the chivalric values of a bygone age, and admits ‘I’m an old dreamer’ (II/3/6). He serves to contrast with the vulgar Mendoza and deflate the latter’s aberrant selfperception, and also to provide a whimsical outside perspective on the young lovers. A second theme, appearing only once, is shared with Louisa at III/5/1 (fig. 269). It is another pastorale, in the standard form of that dance, in 6/8, C major, with a musette-like pedal, and a tempo marking (Andante tranquillo) and text (with references to nature) that match its usual affect of ‘rural innocence’.35 The third couple is the more strictly comical Mendoza and the Duenna. Their music is suggestive of physical gesture, gait, or intonation rather than tied to social dance, apart from the minuet of their courtship scene (fig. 247). The Duenna especially is characterized by short repeated motifs, and it seems possible that she was modelled on Mistress Quickly in Falstaff, in particular her ‘Reverenza!’ (addressed to Falstaff, in Act II, part 1); there are similar falling fifths in both of the Duenna’s themes (fig. 116, Example 2.8). Her introductory motif depicts her clumsy deportment (fig. 112), with oompah accompaniment (chromatic descending thirds over a pedal, like Mendoza’s music) and accented ‘odd’ notes. She also has a coarse song of beguilement in II/4/3 (fig. 253), in binary form, based around an ungraceful oscillation of a fifth and minor sixth above the tonic. The Portuguese fish merchant Mendoza is the opera’s most ludicrous figure, and well before his encounter with the Duenna he is already marked as a special case. From the opening bars of the opera a sharp contrast with Jerome is apparent, when his sly introductory motif follows Jerome’s spirited one, in the same metre but with an entirely different rhythm, melodic inflection, and sonority. Instead of strong regular accents, Mendoza has 35

Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, pp. 43 4.

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Example 2.8 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 2, scene 1, Duenna’s second theme TRANSLATION: Duenna: When your cunning pays off and you marry Antonio, then I’ll marry Mendoza.

offbeats in the accompaniment, underneath chromatic lines in interweaving double reeds (English horn and bassoon) (Example 2.9). His second theme (fig. 15) is heard as he moves around, ‘pleased and excited’ about his deal with Jerome, while the latter ‘critically examines him’ (stage directions) with the following words: ‘Unattractive. Round-shouldered. His beard ought to be cut off and thrown in the Guadalbullón.’ Mendoza’s third theme is heard as he leaves the plaza with his servants, while Ferdinand sharply criticizes him. All his music is particularly suggestive of appearance and movement, and while classic genres do not suit him, dance remains at the foundation of all his themes inasmuch as they are, I suggest, based on klezmer music – klezmer, that is, as Prokofiev knew it from composing his Overture on Hebrew Themes, C minor, Op. 34, commissioned by the Zimro Ensemble many years earlier (1919, orchestrated 1934).36 The Jewish quality of 36

The Zimro Ensemble provided a notebook collection of themes to the composer, and their authenticity has not been ascertained: ‘it seems most likely that [their leader, clarinetist Simeon] Bellison composed them himself in modo ebraico’. David Nice, Prokofiev: From Russia to the West, 1891 1935 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 161.

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Example 2.9 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act I, tableau 1, scene 1, Mendoza’s first theme TRANSLATION: Mendoza: The fish trade in all of Seville and almost along the entire Guadalquivir is undeniably falling into our hands.

Mendoza’s musical themes has not yet been recognized by scholars; on the contrary, the standard view is that Prokofiev’s did not define the character as Jewish, and that the representation in the opera therefore ‘erased’ the ‘blatant anti-Semitism’ of Sheridan’s comedy.37 But Prokofiev left most of the (indirect) references to Mendoza’s ethnicity intact, and I argue that his Jewishness is enhanced by the musical characterization, in which klezmer works as an equivalent to the dance topoi of the rest of the cast (and indeed, in other respects he is given a very negative image as a Jew – a point I return to below). All of Mendoza’s music (three themes and one short motif) is directly related – in rhythm, instrumentation, style of accompaniment, mode, and melody – to the klezmer themes Prokofiev included in the Overture on Hebrew Themes. Very typical is the duple metre in medium tempo with oom-pah accompaniment in the strings and the melody played by wind instruments or solo violin. Where the Overture features the clarinet solo, 37

Richard Taruskin, ‘Betrothal in a Monastery’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 459 60 (460).

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which was common in klezmer in twentieth-century America (it had become part of the ensemble slightly earlier, in Russian Ukraine), the opera has a range of solo wind instruments (clarinet, cor anglais, bassoon, oboe), and the more traditional violin also appears as a solo instrument in Mendoza’s third theme.38 The Overture has conspicuous augmented seconds, between the third degree and a sharpened fourth degree in the minor first theme, and between the flattened second degree and a raised third degree in the second theme, evoking the characteristic Altered Phrygian (or Freygish) scale. All three of Mendoza’s themes likewise include this interval. In his entrance theme (fig. 7), over offbeat major/minor thirds, it appears at the end of the first phrase in both voice and oboe, also suggesting the Freygish scale: this is the most obvious example, in that it is heard melodically, marking him out from the beginning as ‘other’. In his second theme a B♮ falls against A♭ on the downbeat (fig. 15), and his third theme has a sharpened fourth degree (A♯), most obviously in the violin solo part, against a repeated E-minor chord in tick-tock pizzicato strings. In addition to his themes, Mendoza has a striking gestural motif based on a slide of a minor ninth up and down over a repeated chord. It befits a self-important posture, and is linked to its text, ‘Clever boy, a real Solomon’, demonstrating Mendoza’s mistaken belief in his own powers of cunning. This is another Jewish (self-)reference, taken from a single remark in the play and turned into a recurring motif. Mendoza also adopts, as though they were his own, the ‘courtship’ minuet motif and the ‘anticipation’ motif from II/4/2, as well as the ‘dark night’ theme (first heard from the Maskers in I/1/8): these are all incorporated into his hilariously inaccurate selfimage as a romantic, dashing figure, accompanied by galloping horses, moonlight, and the like. Another manner of physical movement is sharply foregrounded in the bacchanalian burlesque of the Monks at the beginning of Act IV (fig. 386) – an altogether different sort of balletic number. In extreme contrast to the nuns’ serene melody in Act III, they are given a fast, loud, and dissonant ostinato in a swirling 3/4 that is explicitly linked to gyration (the text refers to ‘spinning round the sun’); a circling motion, linked in Kotko to madness, here represents drunkenness. A waltz rhythm follows at fig. 405, then a religious chant in duple rhythm, a farcical parody of the Monks’ hypocrisy (an addition of the librettists).39 The insincerity of the chant also results from a play on the classic topoi: in Allanbrook’s description of Mozart’s 38

39

On the klezmer ensemble, see Walter Zev Feldman, Klezmer: Music, History and Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Dan’ko, ‘S. Prokof’yev v rabote nad “Duen’yey” (sozdaniye libretto)’, p. 108.

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rhythmic spectrum, from galant to ecclesiastical, quick triple metres are most worldly, and slow duple metres the most ‘meditative’, connected to the sacred. Finally (and most obviously), there are also a few examples of social dance in the ensemble numbers. An extended ballet sequence is included at the end of Act I (I/1/6–8), in the divertissement of Carnival celebrations by Maskers, which includes an ‘oriental’ section in minuet rhythm, and a final section with a musette-gavotte in offstage instruments.40 The divertissement provides nocturnal calm after a hectic act, and also introduces important thematic material, in particular a contredanse theme. The contredanse is a dance of unrestrained communal celebration, having emerged in the late eighteenth century as a ‘democratic’ and freely expressive group dance, and is ‘the most lighthearted of all, especially in its 3/4 German version’.41 The theme supplies the expected mood of mass revelry when it returns as the main theme of the opera’s finale, IV/9/5, built on a Rossiniesque accellerando. At the appearance of the contredanse, the soloists and members of the chorus are instructed by Prokofiev’s stage direction to dance along with it: ‘(All dance)’ (fig. 495, Example 2.10). This feature had been intended since the first draft: in the original outline the opera ends with a ‘Chorus with ballet’, next to which are written the first two bars of the contredanse melody.42 This bears comparison with the typical finale of opéra bouffe, in which ‘the plot dissolves in the orgiastic frenzy of a waltz or a cancan finale’.43 Despite what I argue is the foundation of dance in the entire opera, the Act I divertissement and Jerome’s minuet are the only examples of dance that have been recognized as such by critics, no doubt due to their explicit status as dance numbers (and the divertissement merely as a ballet sequence, not for the classic dance types that I have mentioned). But they are only the most immediately perceptible examples of what is a consistent means of representation in Betrothal.

40

41

42 43

This was significantly expanded by Prokofiev from a single direction in The Duenna, ‘Enter Don Antonio with masks and musicians.’ Dan’ko, ‘S. Prokof’yev v rabote nad “Duen’yey” (sozdaniye libretto)’, p. 95. Allanbrook’s description is applicable here: ‘a common phrase used to express the triple allemande’s distinctive gaiety is “skipping joy”’. Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart, p. 63. RNB f. 617, yed. khr. 5, l. 4020. Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989), p. 229.

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Example 2.10 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act IV, tableau 9, scene 5, the contredanse finale TRANSLATION: Guests: Open wide the doors, light the candles! Drink and sing this evening! Raise your glasses! Youth is always our happiness!

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2.3 From Ballad Opera to Ballet-Opera, Part 3: Form I argue that the opera can be considered a ballet–opera hybrid, taking together the dance basis of the characters’ themes, the ballet divertissement, and the structure of the work, which I discuss in this section.44 As the themes return along with the characters, they also create its form. Their function is not only to represent these characters’ prevalent traits, they also point to their involvement in the action, their physical presence on stage, or references to them in the text. This method, and the attention to symmetry it involves, is unusual for opera, and it invites a comparison with the structure of ballet, as Prokofiev had come to organize it in his thenrecent Romeo and Juliet. Although Romeo is not dominated by eighteenthcentury rhythmic topoi, its themes are similar to those in Betrothal, in being short and relatively self-contained (often ending with a full cadence). The largest bundles of themes are given to the leading ladies, Juliet and Louisa, and their themes also return most frequently. Romeo has fewer themes and they return less often, but like Antonio he also shares a number of love themes, including a more ‘mature’ variety that appears mid-way through the drama. Both works also contain themes that are the basis of ensemble numbers, which include several more or less contrasting sections. This method is made possible by the rounded nature of the themes. Prokofiev provides himself in the early parts of both works with a collection of themes, and tends in the latter stages to concentrate on just a few. As in Romeo, themes in the opera do not undergo development or transformation, but are restated with minimum variation – in a different key, or leading in a new direction via a new modulation or cadence. It is important to recognize the uniqueness of this technique of thematic return in Betrothal, and to stress that it is neither that of the leitmotif nor the reminiscence motif. Leitmotifs tend to be short, openended, and evocative although often vague in their associations, and are heard most frequently in the orchestra alone: this fits with their usual function of symbolic signification or representation of unconscious experience. Wagner’s music dramas, especially The Ring cycle, include the best known examples, some of which have quite specific referents, like ‘Wotan’s spear’ or ‘Siegfried’s horn’, while others have more multivalent meanings, such as ‘Nature’, ‘the Ring’, or ‘unavoidable Destiny’ (as 44

Rita McAllister has also called it a ‘hybrid opera ballet’, but she refers only to the explicit dance numbers. Rita McAllister, ‘Sergey Prokofiev’, in The New Grove Russian Masters 2: Rimsky Korsakov, Skryabin, Rakhmaninov, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, ed. Gerald Abraham (London: Macmillan, 1986), pp. 109 71 (152).

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labelled by Robert Donington).45 Reminiscence motifs, belonging to Italian opera, tend to be complete themes; they appear less frequently than leitmotifs, being reserved for moments of particular significance when specific previous events or emotions are recalled. Verdi is perhaps the composer best known for this technique, and one famous example is the beginning of the final act of La traviata, where Violetta reads Germont’s letter while a solo violin plays a reminiscence of his Act I declaration of love. In Betrothal themes and motifs appear frequently along with the characters they identify (like leitmotifs), yet, on the other hand, are melodic in design and symmetrical in their phrasing, and may call to mind earlier events (like reminiscence motifs). Unlike leitmotifs and reminiscence motifs, however, they do not relate to either abstract concepts or recollected emotional experiences. Instead, as in ballet, they straightforwardly represent a single mood or expression that is directly connected to particular characters who are (most often) present on stage. In addition to their actual musical basis in dance, therefore, their semiotic and formal functions are similar to those of themes in ballet. Without going into detail, it is worth mentioning that the orchestration of Betrothal is also similar to Prokofiev’s later ballets, for example in the abundant use of percussion. I suggest three ways in which the technique of thematic return creates form both in Romeo and in Betrothal: small-scale symmetry, evolving symmetry, and long-range recall. The first, small-scale symmetry, is found at the level of the number. This is particularly common in the ballet, but in Betrothal Prokofiev was also able to unite the demands of formal symmetry with those of scenic continuity (a trait that is typical of buffa more generally, and for which Rossini especially provided a model). Themes are usually in balanced periods, and numbers are in small binary or ternary forms, often arranged symmetrically within scenes: ABA, ABAB, and ABABA, with ABA preferred in earlier scenes (particularly in Act 1), and ABAB thereafter. (Besides opera buffa, one may perceive references in Betrothal to eighteenth-century French opera, not just in terms of its separate dance numbers, but also these ABAB and rondo-like formal arrangements.) These higher-level structures are created by interruptions, asides, and the back-and-forth of dialogue. To give one example, the first theme of Ferdinand’s arietta (fig. 38) is a period of eight bars. It is repeated (cut to six bars) as his servant, who has ‘overheard’ his master’s private thoughts, begins to 45

Robert Donington, Wagner’s ‘Ring’ and Its Symbols: The Music and the Myth, 3rd edn (London: Faber and Faber, 1974).

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declare how his life, too, has been turned upside down by Clara (he complains of his lack of sleep due to Ferdinand’s escapades, recalling Leporello’s complaint about Don Giovanni). The second, more passionate theme of the arietta follows, rounded off by a return of the first theme (the last six bars). Thus far the listener has a sense of an (interrupted) ABA structure. After an exchange with Antonio, Ferdinand sings the second theme again (in between ‘Oh, wait’ and ‘Señor, I wish you success’), revealing his jealous thoughts on the likelihood that Antonio will serenade at Clara’s window if he sends him away from Louisa’s. The structure of the scene thus becomes A. . .BA. . .B. Typical of this opera, the return of the B section has an ironic effect in itself, in that it corresponds to Ferdinand’s reversion to his characteristic mode of thought. There is a double irony at work here, first in terms of the musical caricature (discussed above), and second in the creation of musical form as a parallel to the text and action, perceived as an additional layer of knowing humour on the part of the composer. The formal symmetry is united with a subtle musical wit, and contributes to it. The second category is a larger-scale evolving symmetry across scenes and tableaux, often through varieties of rondo form, including a progressive kind of rondo that undergoes metamorphosis via the addition of new sections. Jerome’s minuet is the most ‘realistic’ example of music-making, but also the most straightforward example of a theme providing both a background context and a symmetrical form for an entire tableau, in this case consisting of four scenes. The sections of the minuet are repeated through a series of interruptions: his friend playing ‘out of tune’, letters arriving, and preparations for the festivities (Table 2.1). A more complex design is the second half of Act I, where symmetry is created by the pseudo-lazzi tricks of several Maskers, who interact in an impertinent manner with both Antonio and Jerome, interrupting the Serenade at their first appearance with an Oranges-style puncturing effect: the comic effect of bathos (fig. 75). Their theme has a rapid duple rhythm theme (2/4, Vivace), like the rustic vesyanki of Kotko but also his earlier ballet Le pas d’acier (and with a similar sonority, including wood blocks, snare drum, and cymbals). In Table 2.2, we see how this theme creates a larger structure, bridging Antonio’s Serenade, Jerome’s song, and the divertissement, in which they also participate. The resulting arrangement, not including scene 8, is ABA|BCBC|BDB|E (with B representing the Maskers theme and vertical lines between the scene divisions). In Table 2.3, I point to a similar process in scene 2 from Romeo. As just one example among many of evolving symmetry in the ballet, scenes 13 and 14, ‘Dance of the Knights’ and ‘Juliet’s variation’, have the formal

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Table 2.1 Themes in Betrothal in a Monastery, Act 3, tableau 6 Act

Tableau

Scene

Fig.

III

6. Don Jerome’s house

1

310 311 323 326 327 328 329 331 334 340 342 344 345 348

2

3

4

Theme

22 J3: Minuet 5 Carlos Minuet DM2 Minuet DM2 3 Minuet 9 L1 1 3 Minuet Introduction 7 50 Minuet

Table 2.2 Themes in Betrothal in a Monastery, Act 1, tableau 1 Act

Tableau

Scene

Fig.

Theme

I

1. A plaza in front of Don Jerome’s house

4

39 43 44 8 50 3 54 55 8 59 62 63 5 66 8 69 74 75 7 78 85 88 98 99 101 102 9

LA1 Maskers LA1 (J1) Maskers J2 Maskers J2 Maskers Oriental dance (ballet) Maskers ‘Carnival’ (contredanse) ‘Dark night’ Silhouette dance

5

6

7 8

scheme ABACADEDA|DEFE (the vertical line showing the division between them). We can also observe Juliet’s second theme (J2) and a theme from the beginning of the ball, ‘Ladies’ Dance’ (11b according to my labelling) serving as refrains throughout the act. Juliet’s theme is heard in her pre-ball musical portrait, during the ball itself (including her variation), and in the scene on the balcony with Romeo after the ball.

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Table 2.3 Themes in Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, tableau 2 Scene

Theme

9. Preparations for the ball 10. The young Juliet 11. Arrival of the guests 12. Masks 13. Dance of the Knights 14. Juliet’s variation 15. Mercutio 16. Madrigal 17. Tybalt recognizes Romeo [18. Gavotte (departure of the guests)]a 19. Balcony scene 20. Romeo’s variation 21. Love dance

3a (from scene 3) and N (Nurse) alternating J1, J2, J1, J3, J2, J1 11a, 11b, 11a, 11c, 11a, 11c 12a, 12b, 12a, R1, R2 13a, 13b, 13a, 11b, 13a, 13c, J2, 13c, 13a 13c, J2, J4 (J2) M1, M2, M1 RJ1, J2, RJ1, J2, RJ2, J2 13b, 13a, 11b, 5a, 13a, 11b R2, RJ1, J2, RJ2, RJ2, RJ3, RJ2 RJ4, RJ3, RJ2, RJ3, RJ4, J4, R2, J4, R2

a This number, originally the second movement of Prokofiev’s ‘Classical’ Symphony, was added to the ballet by the director during rehearsals, and its inclusion does not correspond to the composer’s intentions. Because there is no thematic link to its material elsewhere in the ballet, I have not included it in this scheme.

Finally, there are many examples of longer-range thematic return. These are, again, representative of a character’s physical presence or identity, rather than anything more abstract. In a strictly structural sense they may be compared with the return of ‘Se vuol ballare’ in Act III of Figaro, ‘Vieni, cara Susanna’, although in that case the number’s reference is to an intended action rather than to Figaro himself. Tableau 5, for example, features different kinds of recall, some of it humorous in effect. Antonio ironically comments on Ferdinand as he quotes his theme (fig. 278), the Serenade is played by an offstage ensemble during the meeting of Antonio and Louisa behind closed doors (beginning at fig. 282), and Carlos sings along with their theme as he and Mendoza eavesdrop on the pair.46 There is also symmetry within part of this tableau (ABABA in III/5/3), 46

Other humorous examples include the following: Louisa’s theme is heard while the Duenna is in her disguise (fig. 241), Mendoza’s ‘Cunning’ motif is sung sarcastically by Louisa and Antonio (fig. 466), Louisa disingenuously introduces herself as Clara to Mendoza while singing her own theme (fig. 206); there are returns of Jerome’s song ‘If a daughter you have’, as he complains about a letter from Antonio (appropriately, since the song makes reference to letters) (fig. 156), and at the beginning of IV/9/1 during preparations for the festivities (fig. 442); when Jerome reads Mendoza’s and Louisa’s letters, we hear their respective themes (figs. 327 and 334), and likewise when Antonio reads Jerome’s letter we hear his minuet, which he had been playing at the time he composed it (fig. 362).

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while new numbers are introduced into the mix (LA2; ‘Señor Mendoza’). In the final tableau the same process can be observed, with shorter sections in rounded forms, the themes serving as calling cards as the characters arrive at Jerome’s house. Here the interruptions of the servant provide a kind of refrain, parallel to the Maskers in Act I. In Romeo, certain themes recur frequently in the later stages, in particular the shared (‘RJ’) themes, and one of Juliet’s (J3). There are also isolated recollections of earlier themes, as in No. 32, ‘The Meeting of Tybalt and Mercutio’, where the theme from No. 3 (‘The street awakens’) appears in the minor, along with ‘Dance of the Knights’ themes, one of Romeo’s as he appears, and then one of Juliet’s as he thinks of her. The theme from No. 6, ‘The fight’, returns in No. 35 (the duel between Romeo and Tybalt), and the theme of No. 7, ‘The Duke’s order’, at the beginning of Act 3, tableau 6, to explain Romeo’s banishment. It is clear even from these brief examples that Prokofiev’s ballet narrates the story musically through an abundant use of thematic return, typical of the ballet genre. Variation of a theme in a new context reveals something additional about plot events, a technique that the ballet relied on to a greater extent than the opera in the absence of a text. The non-developmental form is suitable for a comedy, where the final resolution is assured and the audience’s attention is focused on the unravelling of the intrigue. The balanced form of Betrothal is very different from Prokofiev’s early operatic ideal of a steady dramatic crescendo, and may be considered a realization of a certain type of dramaturgy which Sheridan is partly credited with creating.47 According to Martin Meisel, Sheridan was a major practitioner of a new ‘pictorial dramaturgy’ of the late eighteenth century, in which, instead of the existing practice in which ‘the building block of the play was transitive’ and part of ‘an unfolding continuum’, the ‘unit is intransitive . . . an achieved moment of stasis, a picture . . . Each picture, dissolving, leads not into consequent activity, but to a new infusion and distribution of elements from which a new picture, will be assembled or resolved.’48 The formal procedures of Betrothal realize this dramaturgy musically, as themes return in a ‘new infusion and distribution’ in each scene, in contrast to the ‘unfolding continuum’ of Prokofiev’s earlier operas. As a final point here, the balletic nature of the form can be clearly observed in the opera’s jovial and extended finale, which – in addition to being based on the swinging 47

48

Michael Cordner, ‘Introduction’, in Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal and Other Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), xxi. Martin Meisel, Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth Century England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 38.

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contredanse – is also balletic in its scale and formal emphasis. None of Prokofiev’s other operas has such a full-scale final chorus, and indeed all the other Soviet-period operas end abruptly – to their detriment, in the eyes of critics. Here for once he achieved a sublime ending, although significantly with hedonistic celebration rather than heroic-nationalistic affirmation.

2.4 Retreating or Advancing? At this point I turn to a consideration of the opera in its original context, first by countering presumptions concerning Prokofiev’s intentions in writing it. Clearly, Betrothal did not engage with nationalism and heroism, and was not based on a contemporary work of socialist realist literature. The inference that has usually followed from this is that the opera represents a withdrawal from the ideological–aesthetic pressures of the period. Prokofiev’s decision to compose an opera on Sheridan’s comedy is almost always explained as the result of his poor experience with Kotko, which Betrothal, as a classic comedy, would avoid. There is a grain of truth in this, but it would be misleading to let it stand as the whole story. The standard view is that Betrothal represents a ‘retreat’, ‘refuge’, or ‘escape’ on the part of the composer. For Taruskin, Prokofiev opted for a comic opera, ‘[e]ager as he then was to retreat into politically innocuous terrain after the frustrations that had attended the production of his first Soviet opera, Semyon Kotko.’49 According to Simon Morrison, ‘[t]he project was undeniably escapist, as was the instantly appealing music that resulted.’50 But ‘escapist’ for whom, and in what way, requires clarification. Because of what Morrison writes here (and elsewhere about Prokofiev’s turn from ‘fraught ideological terrain’ in Kotko to ‘burlesque’ in Betrothal), it seems fair to assume that for him the opera was doubly escapist: the project offered escapist creative activity for the composer, and the resulting work provided an escapist experience for the audience.51 But scholars have yet to 49

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Taruskin, ‘Betrothal in a Monastery’, p. 459. Elsewhere Taruskin points out that Betrothal ‘is usually looked upon as a kind of refuge in comedy that is, a retreat to a dramatic medium for which Prokofiev’s methods were unquestionably suitable and in which there could be no requirement for heroism’ (Taruskin, ‘Tone, Style, and Form in Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas’, p. 231). Morrison, The People’s Artist, p. 168. Morrison, also quoting Taruskin, ‘Yet the path from the fraught ideological terrain of Prokofiev’s first Soviet opera, Semyon Kotko, to the blatantly “anti clerical and anti mercantile” burlesque of The Duenna was hardly smooth.’ Morrison, The People’s Artist, p. 165.

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explore the ways in which this may have been related to contemporary culture and society. I will argue that the work can indeed be interpreted as escapist, but not in the sense of a retreat. Betrothal, like Kotko, was written for a mass audience and belonged to both popular and high culture (there was considerable overlap in the Stalin era); as Richard Stites puts it in his study of popular culture in the Soviet 1930s, ‘[t]o call such culture “escapist” is a truism.’52 Providing the means for escapism was a major function of art and entertainment in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and so what is needed is an account of how specifically Betrothal fulfils this role. Later in this chapter I explore how the opera was bound up with Soviet cultural requirements on the esthesic side (relating to the audience). In this section I consider the poietic side of the escapist claim, contesting the view that Prokofiev purposefully avoided Stalinist pressures by turning to comedy. It is important to emphasize at the outset that during this period no actual ‘retreat’ or ‘escape’ was possible in creative activity, certainly not if such activity was pursued with a view to public exhibition or performance. The theatre was one of the most circumscribed spheres of Soviet art, and Betrothal was intended for a major theatre in the centre of Moscow, so there can be no question that he was attempting to avoid engagement with Stalinist demands. Speculation about Betrothal usually relies on the explanation that Prokofiev was reacting to the criticisms made of Kotko both before and after its first performance, including the hitch when the appearance of German characters had to be reconsidered in the light of the Nazi–Soviet Pact.53 This needs to be put into context. First, Prokofiev had decided to set The Duenna before any real difficulties with Kotko had emerged: the meeting with officials took place later in 1940 (17 April), and, as the archival record of the meeting reveals, he was at that time dismissive to the point of rudeness of the bureaucratic interference, stating with apparent irritation ‘I will not change anything in the music.’54 Second, Prokofiev wrote the libretto of Betrothal before, and the score immediately after, Kotko had reached the stage, by which time the composer must have 52

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Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 96. As Stites summarizes, Stalinist popular culture ‘was not a unified or homogeneous culture. It served many functions, in the words of film historian Maya Turovskaya “escapist, socializing, compensatory, informational, recreational, prestige giving, aesthetic, and emotional,” among others and not only mobilizational and mystifying.’ See Morrison, The People’s Artist, pp. 103 4. ‘Stenogramma. Zasedaniya posle 2 go progona operï “Semyon Kotko”. 17 April 1940’, RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 117, l. 5.

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thought that all hindrances had been overcome – he felt confident enough to invite Vyacheslav Molotov to a closed review.55 He also seemed assured that Kotko would go on to enjoy success when the production continued in the autumn of 1940, telling those members of the first audience who had voiced criticisms that they would be likely to change their minds upon a second hearing (he believed a more polished performance would aid such an outcome).56 Indeed, overshadowing any negative experiences, the positive fact that Kotko had reached the stage, despite impediments, may well have been precisely the encouragement he needed to embark immediately on his second Soviet opera. Other commentators have claimed that the reception (rather than the production) of Kotko led to the so-called ‘retreat’ to comedy. But by the time of the composition of Betrothal in the summer of 1940, the reception of Kotko had been mostly positive, with the publication of what would be its most glowing reviews.57 Kotko was just beginning its run and was being put forward for a prestigious Stalin Prize in October 1940, by which time the piano score of Betrothal was complete. The first opera’s reception, positive or negative (it was actually mixed, as we have seen), is therefore of limited relevance. Thus there is no evidence that Betrothal was written as a defensive reaction to the composer’s experience with Kotko; on the contrary, it seems more likely that at that time he considered it to have been a moderate or potential success rather than a failure. On the issue of avoiding ideology and ‘propaganda’, this was something Prokofiev sought to do even when working with socialist realist subject matter (according to critics of Kotko, but also by his own admission).58 His goal of maintaining maximum creative automony continued until late into the process of revising War and Peace. If Betrothal represents a turning away from a topical subject, it was not because of external pressure, but more simply because Prokofiev was not interested in topical subject matter. Having finished a Soviet opera along official lines, he had in effect paid his dues, fulfilled his entry requirements, and was now at greater liberty to 55

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Letter to Molotov. RGALI f. 1929, op. 3, yed. khr. 74, l. 1. As chairman of Sovnarkom (head of the government), Molotov received many such requests for support or patronage from artists, scientists, etc. ‘“Semyon Kotko”. Obrïvki razgovorov na prem’yere 23 June 1940 i posle neyo’, RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 117, l. 12. Semyon Shlifshteyn, ‘Semyon Kotko’, Sovetskoye iskusstvo, 29 June 1940, 3, and A. Groman, review in Vechernyaya Moskva, 25 June 1940. Sergey Sergeyevich Prokof’yev and Vera Vladimirovna Alpers, ‘Perepiska’, in Muzïkal’noye nasledstvo: Sborniki po istorii muzïkal’noy kul’turï SSSR, vol. 1, ed. G. B. Bernandt, V. A. Kiselyov, and M. S. Pekelis (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye muzïkal’noye izdatel’stvo, 1962).

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pursue something nearer to his own interests. Moreover, Prokofiev had a lifelong habit of turning to very different subjects from one opera to the next, seeking variety in terms of literary source, genre, and tone. His operas had already drawn on a range not only of subject matter, but also of musical and operatic traditions, from Gothic Expressionism in Angel to Gogolian comedy in Kotko, from Musorgskyan opéra dialogué in The Gambler to a satire of operatic clichés and audiences’ attitudes in Oranges. Comedy was the genre for which Prokofiev had a particular affinity – considering his enthusiasm for external characteristics, everyday language, and action – and he had not yet engaged with opera buffa. Comedy was appearing in his stage works even where it did not belong, in Kotko, as we have seen, and even in Angel, which includes an erroneous comic episode, as Morrison points out.59 The choice of an Italian genre, finally, offered the opportunity for pure vocal melody and uncomplicated emotions, entirely suited to his mature idiom. In the light of some key features of Prokofiev’s style, therefore, the turn to opera buffa appears as a natural next step. Not only was Betrothal not a ‘retreat’ after Kotko, it is a continuation of many of the same basic principles of that work, and serves as a complement to it. The two operas were different solutions to the same problem, namely of how to compose an opera in the Soviet context, while pursuing independent artistic goals. And in both his operas Prokofiev took a theatrically effective form of music theatre that plays to a broad public. Like melodrama, comedy is aimed at a popular audience, and buffa, as a reaction against opera seria, was situated ‘between “art” and “entertainment”’.60 Both comedy and melodrama also represent longstanding ‘classic’ traditions, for which familiarity of genre, plot, and character types are central. Betrothal is therefore a continuation of the composer’s Meyerholdian turn to the theatrical conventions of stock characters and stage gesture. My characterization of Kotko as melodrama in Chapter 1 allows the complementary nature of Betrothal to become apparent. They are two sides of the same music-dramatic coin, as innovative hybrid forms with ensemble casts and physical action, focused on interaction rather than inner emotions. The third literary-dramatic mode, tragedy, did not appeal to Prokofiev; as a dramatist he was interested in activity, intensity, and colourful details, not complex psychology. In Kotko and Betrothal the emphasis is on plot and action. In both we find pantomime and humour. 59

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Simon Morrison, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002). Mary Hunter and James Webster, ‘Introduction’ to Opera Buffa in Mozart’s Vienna, ed. Mary Hunter and James Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 5.

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Betrothal edges more towards pure dance, and jocularity gives way to a (relatively) more refined classical comedy, but the difference is one of degree, not of kind. (The subject encouraged him to include the songs and dances that Katayev had suggested for Kotko.) The two operas also share structural and stylistic features such as short scenes within tableaux; a wide range of vocal styles; genre and period settings and associated music; a generally light instrumentation and a variety of orchestral sonorities used in the creation of atmosphere; and new methods of placement of instruments and singers for novel effects, including the abundant use of onstage music within the diegesis. Betrothal was also intended to build on Prokofiev’s experience with the production of Kotko. Indeed, it was created for literally the same performers (and in a sense the same audience) since it was to be produced by the same company in the same theatre (the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre) one year after Kotko’s premiere. It is significant that Betrothal was written after Prokofiev had gained familiarity with the particular skills and attributes of Stanislavsky’s troupe, and the theatre space itself. Stanislavsky’s singers were equally actors, and thus well suited to comedy.61 Opera buffa was a genre in which the theatre had a great deal of experience and expertise, and for which their modest space was eminently suitable. While Prokofiev was composing Betrothal in the summer of 1940, they were in Voronezh performing The Barber of Seville (among other works).62 Meyerhold’s influence seems potentially to have been as relevant for Betrothal as it was for Kotko, since one of his goals when he took over the Opera Theatre was to stage Mozart’s operas there. In an address to the company on 4 April 1939 he recalled the following words of Stanislavsky: ‘I’ve taken over a Mozart-style auditorium. It would be a good idea to start staging intimate Mozart operas there. The productions there may be run-of -the-mill and cliché-ridden, but we’ll blow some fresh air through the theatre.’63 Meyerhold followed through on this intention: his plans for

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‘Opera buffa required singing actors rather than expensive virtuosi’. Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama, new and revised edn (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 58 9. The announcement in Vechernyaya Moskva, 20 June 1940, states that the theatre will perform Yevgeny Onegin, Boris Godunov, Tsarskaya Nevesta, Carmen, and Rigoletto, as well as the new production of Kotko. ‘Stat’i i zametki o tvorchestve S. S. Prokof’yeva. “Semyon Kotko”’ (June December 1940), RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 956, l. 8. Vsevolod Meyerhold, Meyerhold on Theatre, trans. and ed. Edward Braun (London: Methuen, 1969), p. 300. The quote is taken from Vsevolod Emil’yevich Meyerkhol’d, Stat’i, pis’ma, rechi, besedï (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1968), vol. 2, p. 476.

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repertoire in 1939 included Don Giovanni.64 I have argued that buffa was ideal for Prokofiev, and will go on to discuss the ways in which it conformed with Soviet culture, but it must not be underestimated that it was composed with a particular theatre and manner of performance in mind. The complementary nature of Betrothal and Kotko was, finally, one that was familiar in the Soviet theatres during the late 1930s. At the Vakhtangov, for example, there was ‘a typical balance being struck between the romanticcostume period and the grim history of the not-distant Soviet past’.65 Betrothal represents not a fearful retreat from political pressures, but something very different: it was an expression of confidence, freedom, and agency, and even enthusiasm, in an engagement with Soviet cultural production. Despite its avoidance of a specifically ideological content, I suggest that Betrothal was a work more consistent with values of the late 1930s than the ‘socialist realist’ Kotko, and fulfilled official and popular expectations for opera more successfully. This may appear as a paradox, but then the Stalin era was full of paradoxes. Betrothal succeeded where Kotko failed by being better aligned with current trends and by playing to the composer’s more acceptable strengths. The traditional form of buffa enabled his controversial tendency towards farce and caricature to find an appropriate outlet. Comedy was for Prokofiev a more ‘conciliatory’ genre than melodrama, in being less radical and less tied to the revolutionary theatre of Meyerhold. Rather than challenge his audience, he sought easy appeal. The words of Robert Heilman would seem to apply to Prokofiev’s attitude of reconciliation: ‘Melodrama is for victory or defeat, comedy for compromise.’66 The link with Stalinist culture was not incidental, but the result of a continued effort by the composer to match his interests with the expectations of his patrons and the public.

2.5 Comedy Here I turn to a consideration of Soviet comedy in its cultural context. Providing a wider perspective that takes account of the development of 64

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Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre, trans. and ed. Edward Braun, 2nd edn (London: Methuen, 1998), p. 293. Joseph Macleod, The New Soviet Theatre (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1943), p. 119. According to Heilman, they ‘share a large common ground: they are both ways of meeting the world the many sided, inconsistent, imperfect world, occasionally gratifying or fulfilling, often frustrating, and perhaps still more often seeming punishably unregene rate. Melodrama would do something about it, comedy would strive for ways of coming to terms with it.’ Robert Heilman, The Ways of the World: Comedy and Society (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1978), pp. 96 7.

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comedy in the Stalin era, I seek to show that Betrothal was a work of its time. The study of Soviet comedy has been neglected until recently, and the following remarks are preliminary, intended specifically to reflect on Betrothal.67 Discussions of the function and proper form of comedy began soon after the Revolution, in the early 1920s, and, despite the radically new context, debates proceeded along lines familiar to those that have accompanied comedy for centuries. From the time of its origins in Ancient Greece, comedy has been thought of as crude and frivolous, ‘ephemeral and lacking intellectual weight’, unworthy of the respect accorded to tragedy.68 On the other hand, it is also generally understood that an essential feature of comedy, along with laughter and a happy ending, is that it serves as a commentary on contemporary society (irrespective of whether it mirrors or contrasts with society, and whether it supports or opposes authority). One defence of comedy, asserted especially in the twentieth century, is that it represents a domain of social critique and acts as a moral force for change. Satire and parody in particular have this reforming edge, by exposing all manner of vices, dogma, and oppression.69 It was agreed at the beginning of the early Soviet period that comedy was not to be frivolous and needed to have a didactic function; as part of this, social critique was not suppressed, and the Soviet bureaucrat was frequently the target of satire, as often as class enemies (although there was also some concern that the critique of such individuals constituted an indictment of the system as a whole).70 Debates picked up in the early 1930s, being initiated by the Moscow theatre critic Vladimir Blyum, who wrote that satire was undesirable since within the new circumstances it would be counterrevolutionary (he drew a comparison with anti-establishment sentiment in works of tsarist-era Russian comedy). While this view was at first rejected, it generated a considerable amount of reflection. Lunacharsky was one of many who responded, writing several articles, in which he stressed the double power of laughter to create social bonds as well as produce societal self-critique, claiming that collective laughter contributes to a sense of community. He went on to launch a special Commission on Researching Satirical Genres under the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1930 and began (but did not complete) an ambitious book project, which, like his articles, ‘associated laughter with two major social effects – obedience and cohesion, 67

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For an overview, see Serguei Oushakine, ‘“Red Laughter”: On Refined Weapons of Soviet Jesters’, Social Research, 79/1 (Spring 2012), 189 216; and also Dennis G. Ioffe and Serguei A. Oushakine, ‘Introduction: The Amusing Disturbance of Soviet Laughter’, Russian Literature, 74/1 2 (2013), 1 10. Andrew Stott, Comedy (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 18. Stott, Comedy, pp. 147 and 109. 70 Oushakine, ‘Red Laughter’, 196.

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on the one hand, and distinction, on the other’.71 The question remained what the balance should be, and a standard form would emerge only later in the decade. Comedy shifted in character and function from the mid 1930s, and moved away from satire that was concerned with the development of the new society towards the ‘instrumental deployment of laughter for the affirmation of the consolidated regime’.72 At the end of the second Five-Year Plan, industry and agriculture had undergone fundamental transformations, and attention now turned to culture as the next stage in the development of socialism. Stalin encouraged the Soviet people to take an optimistic, idealized view of the future, no matter how miserable their existence in the present.73 In a famous statement he claimed that ‘[l]ife has become happier, comrades, life has become more joyous’,74 and citizens were to be inspired with the ‘hope that tomorrow would be happier still’.75 While socialist realism had been established as the mainstream of artistic practice, other areas of creative production were encouraged in response to these supposedly prosperous times. There was encouragement of joyful laughter and entertainment as well as ‘enlightenment’. Stalin himself personally enjoyed comedy films and recognized their useful function of providing workers with rest and relaxation after a day at the office or factory.76 He emphasized the importance of comedy films to Boris Shumyatsky, head of Soyuzkino and then GUKF, and in 1932 suggested to the director Grigoriy Aleksandrov that he should create a Soviet version of the Hollywood musical. This became the cinecomedy genre; Aleksandrov, in collaboration with the composer Isaak Dunayevsky, would go on to produce a number of Soviet comedy films which indeed proved wildly popular and became Soviet classics.77 As entertainment, moreover, comedy would not only give people an ‘escape’ after a day’s work and respite from the drab and overtly political 71 73

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Oushakine, ‘Red Laughter’, 196. 72 Oushakine, ‘Red Laughter’, 205. Karen Petrone, Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000), p. 118. From Stalin’s speech to the First All Union Conference of Stakhanovites on 17 November 1935. See Konstantin Dushenko (ed.), Slovar’ sovremennïkh tsitat (Moscow: AGRAF, 1997), p. 341. Petrone, Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades, p. 100. Sarah Davies and James Harris, Stalin’s World: Dictating the Soviet Order (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 264. Richard Taylor, ‘Ideology as Mass Entertainment: Boris Shumyatsky and Soviet Cinema of the 1930s’, in Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema, ed. Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 193 216; and Peter Kupfer, ‘“Our Soviet Americanism”: Jolly Fellows, Music, and Early Soviet Cultural Ideology’, Twentieth Century Music, 13/2 (2016), 201 32.

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culture of the first Five-Year Plan era, but was also to provide variety and ‘stability’ to socialist realism. In Evgeny Dobrenko’s words, ‘Comedy fit into the system, it stabilized it – while the high, functional-productive pole remained principal.’78 It did so not only as a contrast with socialist realism, but also by complementing it and carrying similar messages into the plots of light entertainment. Comedy from the mid 1930s presented optimistic images of positive heroes, and satire was targeted at the antagonists of the socialist state, clearly avoiding ‘counterrevolutionary’ messages. Soviet comedy therefore incorporated some of the features of melodrama that were typical of Stalinism and socialist realism (as discussed in Chapter 1). According to Vladimir Frolov, a Soviet scholar of comedy writing in 1954, summing up the Stalin era, ‘the most popular type of our [Soviet] comedy is the one that depicts sharp collisions of positive and negative characters; this comedy demonstrates how nasty people behave in the positive environment.’79 Frolov underscored that the grotesque was ‘vitally necessary’ for ‘emphasizing in the most graphic and sharpened way’ the typicality of the negative character.80 Despite this new direction and the critical support behind it, Soviet comedy was slow to develop outside of the cinecomedy.81 During Stalin’s cultural renaissance (discussed in more detail below) the demand was met instead by a great influx of works of world literature, drama, and music, in which comedies and the classics were prominent (and classic comedies above all). Opera buffa was included in this trend. Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville – the two operas particularly relevant to this chapter – had hugely successful productions at the Bolshoy in 1935 and 1936 (the Figaro production was new, while Rossini’s opera had another long run in 1939).82 Comic opera began to be made a priority for Soviet composers too, promoted by the arts administration: in July 1937 the chairman of the KDI, Platon Kerzhentsev, outlined commissioning plans for 1938 in a letter to the conductor Samuil Samosud, in which he suggested that comedy was an important, if difficult, task for composers, and recommended works by classic (rather than Soviet) authors such as Gogol, Griboyedov, Ostrovsky, 78

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Evgeny Dobrenko, ‘The Literature of the Zhdanov Era: Mentality, Mythology, Lexicon’, in Late Soviet Culture: From Perestroika to Novostroika, ed. Thomas Lahusen with Gene Kuperman (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 109 37 (127). Vladimir Frolov, O sovetskoy komedii (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1954), p. 42, quoted in Oushakine, ‘Red Laughter’, 209. Oushakine, ‘Red Laughter’, 209, quoting from Frolov, O sovetskoy komedii, p. 231. On these difficulties see, also for an extensive bibliography, Serguei Oushakine, ‘Laughter under Socialism: Exposing the Ocular in Soviet Jocularity’, Slavic Review, 70/2 (Summer 2011), 247 55. The Barber of Seville was performed eighteen times in 1939, and had been in the repertory since the 1920s.

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Goldoni, Lope de Vega, and Molière (then very popular).83 Such foreign works fulfilled a similar function to Soviet comedy in providing entertainment, of course, and also in reinforcing the messages of socialist realism. Comedy from the ‘enlightened’ European past conveying a revolutionary sensibility could support authority in the Stalinist present, being far enough removed historically and geographically to avoid any association with ‘counterrevolution’ against the regime and the emerging Soviet elite (and any antipathy to the privileges they enjoyed). For example, the works of Molière typically lampoon the clergy and the greedy bourgeoisie, who in this context symbolized the corrupt old world and the decadent West. Akin to the positive heroes of Soviet comedy was the typical rise of a new generation within classic comic narratives, representing youthful spontaneity, the overcoming of obstacles, and the establishment of a morally superior society. Prokofiev’s reference to two very popular (and classical) operas when presented with Sheridan’s comedy suggests that he was aware of the audience interest in comic opera as well as the official promotion of the genre. In Betrothal, we find a similar mild satire (sympathetic rather than biting) of the bourgeoisie and the clergy. The noble young lovers outsmart their greedy elders and the boorish monks, and the opera ends conventionally with joyful communal celebration. Indeed, all of Prokofiev’s operas and ballets of this period – Romeo, Kotko, Betrothal, and Cinderella – have similar plots dealing with rebellion and the overturning of authority. The ‘Cinderella story’ was almost a default narrative in the Soviet Union at this time, promoting cleverness and resourcefulness, with a happy ending that pointed to a bright future. In this period Prokofiev had considered a number of other opera subjects from works that had been performed successfully in the theatre, including Ostrovsky’s The Dowerless Girl and a number of Shakespeare’s works.84 In choosing The Duenna, 83 84

RGALI f. 962, op. 3, yed. khr. 331, ll. 57 8. During the period of work on Kotko (1939 40) and before settling on The Duenna, he had contemplated a number of Shakespearean subjects for opera King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet as well as a ballet on Molière’s Dom Juan (Dan’ko, Teatr Prokof’yeva v Peterburge, p. 72 (footnote 1)), Aleksandr Ostrovsky’s The Dowerless Girl and The Thunderstorm, and Nikolay Leskov’s The Spendthrift, for which Prokofiev drafted a synopsis in 1940 (Morrison, The People’s Artist, p. 165). In the summer of 1946, the ballet master of the Bolshoy Theatre, Leonid Lavrovsky, suggested that Prokofiev com pose a ballet on Dom Juan or Othello. According to Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Seryozha would be able to write a terrific ballet on Othello, but this subject repulses him with its gloominess. He says that the essence of the story is “corruption of the blood” and corruption of mood.’ Mira Abramovna Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, in Sergey Prokof’yev: K 50 letiyu so dnya smerti. Vospominaniya, pis’ma, stat’i, ed. M. P. Rakhmanova (Moscow: Deka VS,

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Prokofiev may have turned away from socialist realist subject matter, but that did not entail any departure from its underlying ideology. Beyond the issue of didactic or ideological content – extolling the youthful state and castigating its enemies – comedy and entertainment served the purposes of the regime in another sense too. In offering Soviet people an amount of enjoyment, something to relieve their hardships, comedy’s provision of amusement and distraction functioned in a manner similar to Adorno and Horkheimer’s account of its role in capitalist society: ‘[t]he supreme law is that they shall not satisfy their desires at any price; they must laugh and be content with laughter.’85 Comedy and laughter were ‘bourgeois’ answers to a different sort of alienation, not to mention fear, experienced by Soviet subjects during the years of the Great Terror. In the early 1940s, operetta – classic and Soviet – would join Italian comic opera as a favoured genre, offering as it did the ‘ultimate escapist entertainment’, omitting even the semblance of a moral message. During the late 1930s, the new and extremely popular phenomena of carnivals and festivities received official encouragement, as carefully controlled spaces of fun and leisure for the urban classes, ‘characterized by a holiday mood which knows nothing of scarcity, tension or necessity, but quite the contrary, a world of overabundance, amusement and forgetting’.86 This Stalinist version bore no real relationship to the traditional carnival, with its upsetting of conventions, overturning of social hierarchies, and ‘questioning of authority’ (although even such aspects of the carnival are often considered to serve the powers that be by allowing people to let off steam, thus ‘releasing dangerous social pressures’).87 In Betrothal, meanwhile, features of carnival in its traditional sense (and

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2004), pp. 5 226 (37 8). She writes in her diary of February 1946 that ‘In the evening we were at Shlifsteyn’s, celebrating his birthday . . . Seryozha was talking about his intention to revise The Love for Three Oranges, increasing the lyrical element. Gayamov prevailed upon Seryozha to write an opera on Peter the First (after A. N. Tolstoy). Shlifsteyn still campaigned for Ostrovsky’s The Dowerless Girl.’ Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve’, p. 17. On The Dowerless Girl in the Soviet theatre, see Nikolai Aleksandrovich Gorchakov, The Theater in Soviet Russia, trans. Edgar Lehrman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), p. 339. Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (London: Verso, 1997), pp. 140 1. See Rosalinda Sartorti, ‘Stalinism and Carnival: Organisation and Aesthetics of Political Holidays’, in The Culture of the Stalin Period, ed. Hans Günther (London: Macmillan in association with the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, 1990), pp. 41 77. T. G. A. Nelson, Comedy: An Introduction to Comedy in Literature, Drama, and Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 171.

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setting) provide local colour and atmosphere, but also introduce typical disruptive elements in the subversive maskers and the divertissement ballet sequence in Act I. None of this is anarchic, since both are literally brought into the status quo: the divertissement contributes to the rounding off of the structure through the thematic return of the carnivalesque contredanse in the festive finale, while the apparent introduction of chaos and upsetting of normal processes in (most prominently but not exclusively) the Maskers’ mockery of the lead characters and interruption of their numbers has been shown to provide the very opposite, namely balanced and even symmetrical musical form. Soviet comedy and amusements, like Prokofiev’s Maskers, appear to bring out a popular spirit, unleashing merriment and abandon – but in fact they contribute to the regular order. Apparent licentiousness is allowed to exist because it aids the system. Betrothal fitted well into the general trend for comedy, and fulfils its main purpose, to entertain, and like its literary source does not push any ‘message’. The opera is in fact even more frivolous than The Duenna, the lightest, least serious of Sheridan’s dramatic works, which ‘seems curiously remote from serious human concerns of the eighteenth or of the twentieth century.’88 As I have argued, the work became more comic in the transposition, and is even less morally engaged than the Sheridan play. In the final tableau, for example, Prokofiev does not dwell for a moment on the learning of lessons by Ferdinand and Jerome – this sets up a few jokes and quickly gives way to drinking and dancing. In one sense, however, Betrothal does make a moral point, at least, that is, according to its context: in its exaggeration of the exclusion of the outsider, Mendoza. In The Duenna, it is forecast that Mendoza will be content with the state of affairs at the conclusion, which for him means being married to a homely maid. He is less of a dupe because he finds ‘something consoling and encouraging in ugliness’ (2.1, 26–7), and even sings a song about being able to tolerate unattractiveness: ‘Give Isaac the nymph who no beauty can boast / But health and good humour to make her his toast’ (2.1, 28–9). In the opera there is no indication that his fate will be a (relatively) happy one. We can partly compare it with Falstaff, where a vain and ridiculous character is outwitted by the others. At the conclusion of Betrothal, it is Jerome who accepts his comeuppance and is returned to the fold (like Falstaff, and Almaviva). But Mendoza remains an outsider, shunned by the community, and the opera ends happily for everyone except him. He is 88

John Loftis, Sheridan and the Drama of Georgian England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976), pp. 72 3.

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closer to Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (incidentally, another subject for opera Prokofiev considered in 1939–40). A darker contemporary message remains here, of doing away with a scapegoat, ‘onto whom the accumulated evils of the community were transferred prior to his or her expulsion’.89 This has particular relevance for the time of the purges in the late 1930s, but with its anti-Semitic and anti-foreign elements it is particularly characteristic of the xenophobia of the post-war period, the time of the opera’s first performance. On the issue of anti-Semitism, it is significant that Ferdinand attacks Mendoza harshly and repeatedly. His first statement is to call Mendoza ‘rotten as his fish’, and he is adamant during his argument with his father in his objections to Mendoza’s religion, low birth, repellent appearance, and other unsavoury qualities. Mendoza’s first and most prominent theme, with augmented seconds, returns twice at indications of his greed – avariciousness was the particular negative characteristic attached to the character by Sheridan. Finally, he is mocked and shunned at the end, especially by the lovers, after he discovers the Duenna’s identity. At fig. 466 Louisa and Antonio sarcastically sing his ‘real Solomon’ theme (‘Mendoza is a very clever boy’), followed at fig. 469 with all four lovers ridiculing him as they send him away, adding new words (‘Go away, go away, go away Mendoza’) to the theme from fig. 295 (originally, the ironic ‘Señor Mendoza, you are such a friend’). I do not want to overstate these observations, or suggest that Prokofiev was espousing anti-Semitism in any way, but rather point out another connection between the setting of The Duenna and contemporary Stalinist culture. Comedy provided an escape for the Soviet public from their regular lives, as a morsel of fun and fantasy, but could simultaneously maintain and support the established ideological framework in various ways.

2.6 Kul’turnost’ A related aspect of the Stalinist cultural renaissance must also be covered here. The influx of foreign comedies was part of a new attitude in the mid 1930s towards European culture and pre-revolutionary Russian culture. It was the Pushkin centenary in 1937 (preparations for which began in December 1935) that provided the trigger for the return of the classics across the arts.90 Russkaya klassika in literature and music was reinstated as 89

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Stott, Comedy, p. 93. On scapegoats in Soviet society, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times. Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 199 205. See, most recently, Jonathan Brooks Platt, Greetings, Pushkin!: Stalinist Cultural Politics and the Russian National Bard (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016).

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part of a process linked to a return to nationalism and the wider use of the national past (its symbols, iconography, and heroes), to which I referred in Chapter 1 and will return in Chapter 3. Here a different aspect of this phenomenon is highlighted. Nicholas Timasheff labelled it the ‘New Esthetic Policy’, which essentially involved appealing to the existing tastes and aptitudes of the people, even if this entailed adopting practices that had recently been condemned as bourgeois.91 Theatres, for example, were run on the principle of supply and demand; their managers tended to stage works that would attract a guaranteed audience rather than risk new works, and therefore plays by Shakespeare and operas by Verdi were programmed. Indeed, Shakespeare and other European writers were central to the repertory in the later 1930s, and Russian classics remained in the minority.92 The ‘New Esthetic Policy’ was one component of what Timasheff famously termed ‘The Great Retreat’ of the mid 1930s, the return to etatism and social hierarchy, and reduction in revolutionary rhetoric. Scholarly debate continues over whether the measures that Timasheff describes represented a retrograde step or a temporary concession in order to safeguard socialism.93 One alternative interpretation points to the practical need to address the backwardness of the Soviet people – as part of the next stage of modernization – by promoting kul’turnost’ (culturedness). The enormous influx of peasants into the cities had caused a range of social problems; they had to be guided to adapt to urban life and brought in line with the rest of society, in order to be able to serve their function and support the regime.94 Fitzpatrick outlines the three levels of achievement that were officially encouraged: the first was ‘basic hygiene’, the second was the adoption of the ‘mores and rituals’ of Soviet society and ideology, and the third was ‘the culture of propriety, involving 91 92

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Timasheff, The Great Retreat, pp. 276 and 280 1. See Macleod, The New Soviet Theatre, p. 196. Nicholas Timasheff wrote that ‘classical plays are given much more frequently than Soviet plays, and moreover, the poorest day in the week (such as Monday) is chosen to give such plays as Battleship Potemkin. Shortly before the outbreak of war, the repertoire in Moscow’s theaters was comprised of 75% of classical plays, with Ostrovsky, Chekhov, and Shakespeare in leading positions, and only 25% of post revolutionary plays performed.’ (Timasheff, The Great Retreat, pp. 280 1.) See, for example, ‘Ex Tempore: Stalinism and the “Great Retreat”’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 4/5 (2004), 651 733, which includes contributions by David Hoffmann, Evgeny Dobrenko, and Jeffrey Brooks. Vadim Volkov, ‘The Concept of Kul’turnost’: Notes on the Stalinist Civilizing Process’, in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 209 30 (214). Volkov refers to a number of stages: in 1934 6, neat dressing and being clean, in 1936 7, ‘inner culture, with broad knowledge and education’, and in 1937 8, ‘the sphere of consciousness and private ideological commitments’ (p. 226).

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good manners, correct speech, neat and appropriate dress, and some appreciation of the high culture of literature, music, and ballet’.95 These levels were associated with different groups in a social structure that was becoming increasingly hierarchical: the first to the large numbers still living essentially as peasants, the second to the urban working class, and the third to the managerial class, a new elite of former peasants or proletarians who had been educated and promoted to administrative posts by the regime – the vïdvizhentsï. This ‘party elite was in the process of learning to behave like the intelligentsia (or at least the way they thought intelligentsia people would behave)’.96 High culture functioned as confirmation of the position that this class now held in society, and they became eager consumers of it. Vera Dunham’s well-known concept of a ‘Big Deal’ describes the appeasement of the cultural and material pretentions of the vïdvizhentsï in return for their cooperation and loyalty to the regime, leading to ‘the embourgeoisement of Soviet manners, values, and attitudes’.97 Perhaps it was inevitable that the regime fell back on older standards of high culture and ‘proper’ behaviour borrowed from the pre-revolutionary period – what other examples were there to choose from? High art as a marker of prestige belonged within a wider system of material rewards, in parallel with what Jukka Gronow has described as common or ‘plebeian luxuries’, as a part of the officially sanctioned practices of consumption, serving a similar purpose of satisfying social aspiration.98 Cheap Soviet champagne, massproduced caviar, and kitsch household furnishings were sought after by those able to afford them, who could now ape the lifestyle of the former aristocracy, at least as they were able to imagine it. Gronow emphasizes the Party’s role in the process of determining cultural values, ‘given the 95 96

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Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, pp. 80, 81, and 80. Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Stalin and the World of Culture’, in Totalitarian Dictatorship: New Histories, ed. Daniela Baratieri, Mark Edele, and Giuseppe Finaldi (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 64 82 (75). See also See Lynne Attwood and Catriona Kelly, ‘Programmes for Identity: The “New Man” and the “New Woman”’, in Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution: 1881 1940, ed. Catriona Kelly and David Shepherd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 256 90, and Catriona Kelly and Vadim Volkov, ‘Directed Desires: Kul’turnost’ and Consumption’, in Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution: 1881 1940, pp. 291 313. Also see Fitzpatrick’s discussion of the vïdvizhentsï as beneficiaries of the purges, in The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 180. Vera S. Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 4. Jukka Gronow, Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury and the Ideals of the Good Life in Stalin’s Russia (New York: Berg Publishers, 2004), pp. 33 and 36.

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chronology’, that is, the fact that the commodities and the class that desired them were created simultaneously. The tastes of the vïdvizhentsï can hardly have been said to contrast with that of the Party hierarchy, with whom they shared a social background.99 This describes a broader cultural phenomenon that also involved other segments of the urban population. Nicolas Rzhevsky points to a more general taste for aristocratic culture on the stage, for ‘aesthetic relief’ from the drab world of Soviet reality, another development which served ‘to inspire upward mobility’.100 Opera naturally was a part of all of this, not least for its former status as a leisure pursuit of the tsarist nobility. The officially preferred repertoire of nineteenth-century opera and the pomp of the Stalinist style of opera production (especially at the Bolshoy) matched the new pretensions perfectly. Indeed, the push to kul’turnost’ was arguably one of the reasons for the development of the Soviet opera project in the mid 1930s. Italian opera (formerly favoured by imperial audiences) was officially promoted alongside Russian classics, and would continue to be a model for Soviet composers as long as the opera project survived, that is, into the late 1940s. The heroic nationalism of early Verdi, for example, represented the kind of opera Soviet authorities wanted for themselves, and Italian opera remained extremely popular with audiences. Even Meyerhold, formerly dismissive of Italian opera, eventually got in on the action as part of his attempt to return to favour: Rigoletto was his last (completed) production at the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre. Classicism in Soviet music aesthetics was surely related to this, as those most Italianate among the Russian masters, Glinka and Tchaikovsky, were favoured from 1939–40 (the production of Ivan Susanin and the centenary of Tchaikovsky).101 As with comedy, classicism in Soviet music during this period was intended, as Taruskin has pointed out, to provide an ‘anodyne’ to the public.102 Also relevant for Betrothal was the return of the classical ballet, which had a particular cachet for the Stalinist elite (as mentioned by Fitzgerald in the quote above), and which, like opera, represented the Imperial style that was now reclaimed for Soviet consumption. The association of ballet with Tchaikovsky was inevitable, and it was surely a happy coincidence that Prokofiev’s first full-length ballet (based on Shakespeare) was premiered in the midst of the centenary celebrations. Romeo and Juliet’s first 99 100

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Gronow, Caviar with Champagne, p. 11. Nicolas Rzhevsky, The Modern Russian Theatre: A Literary and Cultural History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2009), p. 90. Kulikovich, Sovetskaya opera na sluzhbe partii i pravitel’stva, p. 71. Richard Taruskin, ‘Neoclassicism as Ideology’, in The Danger of Music: And Other Anti Utopian Essays (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009), p. 404.

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performance took place on 11 January 1940 in Leningrad, and by 5 April the production had reached the stage in Moscow. It had a major success, prompting a series of articles in the musical press praising the work and promoting Russian and Soviet ballet (many of these were clipped by Prokofiev, as can be seen from the holdings at RGALI).103 The premiere of Romeo occurred at exactly the time at which Prokofiev discovered The Duenna, and while it might seem fanciful to suggest that this ballet influenced the style of Betrothal (despite the similarities in formal construction that I have pointed to), the desire to continue a successful run does certainly seem relevant for his next work, the Tchaikovskyesque Cinderella, a ballet à grand spectacle tied more closely to the Imperial style than any of his other works. Betrothal and Cinderella are both set in a never-neverland, with a plot in which a happy ending is assured from the beginning, leaving the audience to enjoy the beautiful melodies, the humorous caricatures (e.g., Cinderella’s sisters), and the gorgeous rococo stagings. Enchanting, classical works such as these served a social–political function, as part of a necessary balance to the seriousness of Soviet life and the heroic stimulus of socialist realism. Kotko’s melodrama was too close to its classic form, since melodrama had been reinterpreted within Soviet aesthetics; but being a comedy that closely adhered to a familiar genre was an advantage to Betrothal, when this genre had become established on the Soviet stage. Kotko was more obviously experimental, more closely tied to the revolutionary period, while its Civil War subject was rather dated by the late 1930s. Betrothal was more conservative, and in that sense more in tune with the times. Owing to his lack of interest in expressing heroic emotion, Prokofiev’s operatic style was unfit for socialist realism, but comedy was one sphere of Soviet art where he could operate without much compromise.

2.7 Revision and Reception Betrothal was in production at the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre in June 1941, but was cancelled because of ‘insufficient belief in the piece’, according to Mendel’son, perhaps the result of the controversy that by that time had surrounded Kotko.104 But also, comedy would have seemed inappropriate in a climate of anticipation of war, which indeed broke out on 22 June with the German attack. As with the interruption of the Nazi–Soviet Pact (and the premiere of Ivan Susanin), Prokofiev was unfortunate in his timing; career setbacks due to major historical events 103

RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr., l. 955.

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would be a pattern that would repeat throughout his Soviet opera career. But Betrothal was under consideration again soon enough, in 1942, although this time the Stanislavsky decided to stage Strauss’s operetta The Gypsy Baron instead; even if the theatre’s music specialists preferred Prokofiev, they were outvoted by the majority.105 In January of 1943, Samuil Samosud, who was becoming involved in Prokofiev’s career through his efforts on behalf of War and Peace, made a presentation of the opera both to officials and to his company at the Bolshoy.106 His tenure at the Bolshoy did not last, however, and the performance fell through, but it was decided in June 1945 that he would perform it back at the Stanislavsky in the coming season, after, as anticipated, he had conducted War and Peace.107 Betrothal would eventually be premiered the following season, in 1946, in a different city by a different company, the Kirov. It had a considerable success: the performers were ‘enthusiastic’, the composer’s peers were ‘delighted’, and the work would go on to prove popular with audiences and critics.108 This was despite the fact that the production ran into trouble and was about to be cancelled, due to anxious bureaucrats seeking to avoid even the slightest whiff of controversy, such as a new opera by Prokofiev by this time was almost guaranteed to generate. Indeed, the amount of concern, described in Mendel’son’s memoir, itself contradicts the idea that this opera was a ‘retreat’ that somehow flew under the radar of official scrutiny. On 3 November 1946, an audition with a public audience was held to decide the fate of the opera. One problem for officials was the opera’s foreign source, which in the post-war atmosphere had become 105

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RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 505, l. 7 7ob. Published in Irina Medvedeva, ‘S. S. Prokof’yev i S. I. Shlifshteyn v perepiske 1940 x godov’, in S. S. Prokof’yev: K 125 letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya. Pis’ma, dokumentï, stat’i, vospominaniya, ed. Ye. S. Vlasova (Мoscow: Kompozitor, 2016), pp. 173 219 (193). Samuil Samosud, ‘Vstrechi s Prokof’yevïm’, in Prokof’yev: Stat’i i materialï, ed. I. V. Nest’yev and G. Ya. Edel’man, 2nd edn (Moscow: Muzïka, 1965), pp. 123 73 (130 1). RGALI f 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 505, ll. 10 11. Published in Medvedeva, ‘S. S. Prokof’yev i S. I. Shlifshteyn v perepiske 1940 x godov’, p. 209. Also in the summer of 1945, Prokofiev heard on the radio that the opera would be staged at the Kirov and the Bolshoy in the coming season. Letter to Shlifsteyn, 30 August 1945 (p. 214). In Mendel’son’s account, ‘the composers present at the run through of the first Act were delighted’ (11 March 1946). ‘Having arrived from Leningrad B. E. Khaykin discussed with Seryozha the run through of The Duenna. He said that the singers were enthusiastic about the opera, that during the rehearsal many are laughing.’ (25 April 1946). From a letter to the composer from director Khaykin: ‘The success was very great, very many musicians and theatrical figures approached me and spoke of the production sincerely and exceptionally warmly. They called this opera “a contem porary Falstaff ”.’ Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 87.

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problematic. Another complaint was that the work did not capture the true characteristics of its literary source (a criticism that was weak, false, and irrelevant). In the end the performance was assured by the intervention of one bigwig, Yuriy Kalashnikov, the head of the theatrical division of Glavrepertkom, who enjoyed the production immensely.109 An important aspect of the opera that has yet to be investigated and assessed in detail is the revision it underwent in 1943, in preparation for the anticipated performance at the Bolshoy. Having examined all of the manuscript materials, I offer a brief description and explanation. In January of that year, the official audition at the Office of Musical Institutions was positive, as was the audition two days later at the Bolshoy, after which it was ‘considered accepted’: unlike War and Peace, Betrothal was not picked apart, and its revisions were undertaken on the composer’s own initiative, upon revisiting the score after several years.110 As he claimed in his statement on the opera, Prokofiev decided to enhance the lyricism in Betrothal.111 By this time he was also able to reflect on the reception of Kotko as well as his ongoing experience with War and Peace, the revision of which he was just completing in early 1943 (this is explored in Chapter 3). Both Taruskin and Morrison – referring to summaries of the revisions published by two different Russian scholars – have raised the question of whether it was undertaken as a result of ‘political’ interference, and serves as ‘evidence that Prokofieff consciously “Sovietized” his style’.112 I have not uncovered any evidence in the correspondence or elsewhere that he was acting on the suggestions of others. Neither Samosud nor Shlifsteyn, both of whom were at that time actively involved in War and Peace, for example, made any recommendations in response to Prokofiev’s announcement of his intention to revise Betrothal, nor did there seem to be any administrative obstacles apart from finding a theatre to produce it.113 Prokofiev’s 109

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Kalashnikov had this role between 1944 and 1948. Vasiliy Kukharsky, the Inspector of the Theatrical Administration of the Committee, also had an influence. Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 87. Revisions were entered in the vocal score (held at the Russian National Library), then added to the full score (Glinka Museum), which states ‘Completed in 1940. Revised in 1943.’ Semyon Isaakovich Shlifshteyn (ed.), S. S. Prokof’yev: Materialï, dokumentï, vospomina niya, 2nd edn (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye muzïkal’noye izdatel’stvo, 1961), p. 243. In Taruskin’s case by Yevgeniy Ratzer in the published vocal score, and in Morrison’s by Larisa Dan’ko, Teatr Prokof’yeva v Peterburge, pp. 76 85. Taruskin, ‘Tone, Style and Form in Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas’, p. 231. Morrison, The People’s Artist, pp. 168 9. In June of 1942, Shlifshteyn reported the apparent agreement of KDI’s deputy chairman, Aleksandr Solodovnikov, to arrange a production of Betrothal. This was two months before Solodovnikov approved Prokofiev’s plans to revise War and Peace

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comment about lyricism applies to his other operatic work in this period, and was an aspect of the continuing development of his style (this is in fact Taruskin’s main argument in his article); around this time he was also making plans to revise his earlier pre-Soviet operas. The primary obstacle to his official acceptance was not so much a lack of lyricism, but rather a failure to create ‘heroic uplift’ (including his habit of introducing comedy where it did not belong). This is a theme that I return to in the following chapters. Prokofiev’s declamatory tendency in opera and his ‘grotesque’ style amounted to a problem in socialist realist genres in that they detracted from the elevation of the characters and seemed irreverent in a solemn context (as they had since at least the time when Musorgsky revised Boris Godunov114). But none of this applies to a comic opera. Even with these qualifications, it is clear that the turn towards lyricism was limited and does not represent the overall incentive, since the majority of the revisions cannot be so categorized. The hypothesis of outside pressure has relied primarily on the revisions to the role of Jerome, whose part was the one that Prokofiev was most concerned was overly ‘grotesque’.115 It is true that in places the lyricism is enhanced and replaces declamation. At several points the composer lowered notes that were at the top of the range and might have produced a shrill tone in performance (e.g., fig. 13+1 to 13+5); but there are other instances where Jerome’s part is raised in pitch (e.g., at fig. 329). Most typical of the changes to this role are that the vocal lines are made smoother, with chromatic inflections replacing leaps (e.g., at fig. 13+1 to 13+5 and at fig. 18+4 to 18+6). The characterization is enriched, becoming slightly more nuanced – more suave and less ‘stock’. Most of the revisions appear in Jerome’s most abrasive encounters, notably his arguments with Ferdinand and Duenna in tableau 2 (scenes 2 and 4), and in his first appearance, his dialogue with Mendoza in tableau 1. He never becomes a ‘lyrical’ character, of course, since that is not his role in the conventional format. A more plausible explanation for the revision of this role is that it was undertaken as a precaution against singers and directors, with the intention of keeping the work’s lyrical–comic balance intact. This was due to Prokofiev’s legitimate concern to avoid exaggeration in performance, to discourage a coarse type of humour that was typical of the

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(see footnote 35 in Chapter 3). Shlifshteyn’s letter to Prokofiev is published in Medvedeva, ‘S. S. Prokof’yev i S. I. Shlifshteyn v perepiske 1940 x godov’, p. 187. See Richard Taruskin, Musorgsky: Eight Essays and an Epilogue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 258 61. According to Mendel’son, he worried that it might be too ‘tiring’ for the singer, Mira Abramovna Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, O Sergeye Sergeyeviche Prokof’yeve. Vospominaniya. Dnevniki (1938 1967) (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2012), pp. 165 6 (4 May 1943).

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Soviet theatre at that time and which he might have anticipated would affect his work. I recall Frolov’s comments on the ‘grotesque caricature’ of negative characters, which was ‘emphasized in the most graphic and sharpened way’, even in comedies.116 Another account of the Soviet theatre, published in 1943, points to the contemporary taste for the ‘robust humour and practical jokes’, indeed the ‘crudity’, of Goldoni.117 Prokofiev, in an article written in connection with the later Bolshoy Filial production of his opera, explicitly criticized a production of Sheridan’s The Duenna that he had attended in 1943, the same year as the opera’s revision: ‘the Moscow Chamber Theatre, which put on The Duenna after my opera had been completed, really overemphasized the comic line, bringing it in places close to buffoonery. The theatre must be credited with having procured the original music, but to my mind this exaggeration of the comic element was not justified.’118 He also criticized the ‘grotesque’ makeup worn by Mendoza and the Duenna, since in his view it was the play’s ‘absurd situations’ rather the characters’ ‘physical ugliness’ that ‘should produce laughter’.119 It seems quite possible that Prokofiev’s aversion to an over-accentuation of the caricature and farcical qualities in the score was a major factor in his decision to revise his opera: he did not want it to be brought down to a crude, sophomoric level. Jerome was the main worry here, since as the most histrionic character he was the one most in danger of distortion. On the other hand, of course, most of the many sharp comic touches remain, and we should avoid the assumption that the style of the opera was fundamentally changed. In addition, it is important to emphasize that the role of Jerome was just one aspect of the revision. There were many other minor alterations, including changes to text (especially Clara in 2/3/3), adjustments to scoring (e.g., fig. 38 to 38+4), additional instrumental lines (e.g., flute at fig. 126 to 126+6, cello at fig. 136–1), tempo indications (figs. 8, 234), metronome markings (figs. 15, 18), and added dynamics (fig. 8+7–8), ornaments (fig. 138–1), and stage directions. This attention to a wide range of details is further evidence that this was an independent revision rather than one imposed. In a few cases new sections were lengthy enough to require that entire pages be entered into the full 116 117

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Oushakine, ‘Red Laughter’, 209. Macleod wrote in 1943 that ‘[t]he high spirits of Goldoni we have already seen making audiences roar in almost every part of the Union. His robust humour and practical jokes are very close and comprehensible to the Soviet citizen more so than to the British middle class, who even in University towns deplore his crudity with the wan comment that the day of the practical joke has passed.’ Macleod, The New Soviet Theatre, p. 205. Prokofiev, ‘“Obrucheniye v monastïre” (“Duen’ya”)’, pp. 198 9. Dan’ko, ‘S. Prokof’yev v rabote nad “Duen’yey” (sozdaniye libretto)’, pp. 87 8.

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Example 2.11 Betrothal in a Monastery, Act II, tableau 4, scene 3, original ‘Segodnya vecherom’ (manuscript)

score (including, for example, the argument between Jerome and the Duenna, figs. 151 to 153+3). There are also thirteen separate peredelki (alterations), ranging in length. The first is the exuberant four-bar theme which was at first added to the first scene at figs. 22+6 and 25, and later to the very opening of the opera, the first four bars of the Introduction (peredelka 10).120 By far the most substantial is the new music for the end of the scene between Mendoza and the Duenna (‘Segodnya vecherom’ [‘This evening’], figs. 260–3 to 262+4, peredelka 8). Originally, this section featured an evocative texture of string trills and tremolos and harp glissandi (Example 2.11). The music in the revision is more conservative and the confirmation of the seduction more straightforward: after a repeated exchange of complementary phrases, in which the Duenna is accompanied by string tremolos and a chromatic melody and cadential progression, and Mendoza by staccato winds and pizzicato 120

RNB f. 617, yed. khr. 5.

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strings playing a repeated G♯-minor chord, he adopts her accompaniment, melody, and chromatic inflection. This music is repeated by Mendoza in the later scene when he describes his intended elopement to Louisa and Antonio, where it is clear he has been entirely taken over by the romantic fantasy the Duenna has suggested to him, as he expands her phrase and adds a few more images of his own (fig. 299, peredelka 9).121 Another large addition to the score was a full statement of the Serenade in tableau 7 (Clara in the nunnery), an extra reprise of Louisa and Antonio’s duet, after they bid farewell to Clara and before her final solo reflections (peredelka 11). This is the last appearance of this number, just after Jerome’s reply to their letter arrives, and it serves to enhance the lyrical–romantic quality of the scene – not only for its own sake, but also to increase the contrast with the manic farce of tableau 8, while strengthening the system of thematic reprises to which I have drawn attention.122 There are also minor ‘simplifications’, such as in 2/3/4, where Louisa and Clara sing along with (rather than in counterpoint with) the solo clarinet and (muted) violin accompaniments, as well as a few changes to text. The theme in the introduction at figs. 3–4 and 5–6 was also a later addition. None of these revisions – or any of the many small details which I have not described – marks any fundamental change in the character of the work, or bears the imprint of ‘political’ concerns. While Prokofiev had taken care to refine his classical comedy, in the end the production of Betrothal at the Kirov was given with severe cuts to his score. This provides further evidence against the notion that grotesque qualities posed a problem for officials or that lyricism was found to be lacking. The conductor Boris Khaykin and his associates decided specifically to cut some of the most lyrical sections, in order to keep attention focused on the comedy – to make it, in his words, more ‘effective’.123 The cuts included the whole of tableau 7 (including the newly added reprise of the Serenade), as it was considered to be ‘longwinded’ and in a different mood from the rest of the opera. Of course that is part of its musical and dramaturgical function, but Khaykin obviously believed his audience would prefer boisterous humour without pause: he admits that

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VMOMKG f. 33, op. 411, ll. 134 6 and 152 155ob. These were new pages in Prokofiev’s hand added to the full score. According to Mendel’son, Prokofiev undertook the revision in order to increase the devel opment, that is the number of reprises, of certain thematic material. Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, O Sergeye Sergeyeviche Prokof’yeve, pp. 165 6. Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, pp. 88 90.

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his audience has a limited attention span, but also claims that the opera is more ‘pure’ (more comic) without this tableau. (The monks’ drinking scene was also reduced, but much of it remained, even though it is not necessary for the plot.)124 In the context of the original production of Betrothal, therefore, comedy was given preference over lyricism. With the cuts it became more like a lowbrow form of entertainment – in other words, similar to the theatrical production that Prokofiev had objected to, and consonant with Soviet comedy in general. His careful attention to a proper balance between high and low, sentiment and satire, had not been judged entirely correctly according to contemporary taste. From the point of view of the Kirov and its audience, Prokofiev’s softening of some of the grotesque elements was unnecessary. From the perspective of the composer’s sensibilities, on the other hand, these concerns were well founded, and the revisions must have appeared necessary (although, as it turned out, they were not sufficient) to avoid degradation of his work in performance. On the other hand, Betrothal was a hit with musicians in the audience, and Prokofiev himself especially enjoyed (‘like a big child’) the performance of Jerome on wine goblets in the finale (these metal goblets had been made in a Leningrad factory especially for the production).125 Despite this degree of tampering with the score, which is unexceptional in any case in operatic production, Betrothal represents one of the closest meeting points between contemporary taste and Prokofiev’s compositional style. The social relevance of Soviet art did not reside solely in themes of socialist realism. Prokofiev’s first two Soviet operas represent two related ways of connecting with society. Melodrama and comedy share a worldly, social basis, in the one case by trying to change things, in the other case by accepting them as they are. Heilman’s view of comedy is that it is ‘affirmative, conciliatory’ rather than ‘negative or at least adversary in character’.126 For Prokofiev, the shift from melodrama to comedy, was, I suggest, less ‘escape’ than engagement, or to put it another way, less an act of ‘retreat’ than participation in the Great Retreat. The content of Betrothal, including festivities, dancing, and preoccupations with social hierarchy, was in correspondence with public practices and official programmes. Kotko may have been somewhat naïve as an attempt to reach a mass audience; 124

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According to Michael Cordner, The Duenna’s plot does not require the priory scene. Cordner, ‘Introduction’, xx. Yelena Krivtsova, ‘Antonio Spadavecchia: “Ya ne bol’shevik, ya yeshchyo tol’ko uchus’”. Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve’, in S. S. Prokof’yev: K 125 letiyu so dnya rozhde niya. Pis’ma, dokumentï, stat’i, vospominaniya, ed. Ye. S. Vlasova (Мoscow: Kompozitor, 2016), pp. 264 79 (271). Heilman, The Ways of the World, p. 10.

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Betrothal was more ‘worldly’, sophisticated in its appeal and its relationship to contemporary life inside and outside the theatre. Prokofiev’s update of a classic form is a parallel to the return in Soviet culture of bourgeois luxuries; the ‘champagne’ that he discovered in Sheridan’s The Duenna is analogous to the mass-produced Russian variety that the Soviet people enjoyed from the late 1930s. But I would suggest that in essence it is not mere ‘Soviet champagne’,127 but rather genuine musical champagne as the composer intended, a rare effervescent comic opera of the twentieth century, balancing dry and sweet flavours in its sharp wit and charming lyricism, and reminiscent of eighteenth-century vintage opera buffa. Classic comedy played to Prokofiev’s strengths: his mastery of classical form, rhythmic and melodic invention, humour, and precise characterization. Thus the opera presents us with a paradox. Considering the work in historical terms, we must recognize that it was closely tied to Stalinism. Experiencing it in the theatre, however, it is perfectly possible that Betrothal should appear to have transcended that original context, because it displays no essential link with Stalinist culture, no intrinsic trace of its origins. It may seem just as valid to perceive it in more purely aesthetical, more narrowly stylistic terms as a work in the tradition of opera buffa as it would be to consider it a work within the history of Soviet opera. This universal appeal points to a singular achievement, one which we may assume was fully the intention of the composer. His operas were created not only for the entertainment of Soviet audiences, but also for an international audience and for posterity. Of his last four operas, it is only with Betrothal that Prokofiev would have understood he had potentially been able to accomplish both objectives.128 127

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The title of Marina Frolova Walker’s article on the opera also makes this metaphorical connection: ‘Soviet Champagne: On Prokofiev’s Betrothal’, Opera, 57/7 (July 2006), 772 9. Albeit temporarily, since the opera was among those works of the composer that were banned by the Resolution on music of 1948. It returned to the stage in 1961 and remained in the Soviet repertoire.

3 Kutuzov’s Victory, Prokofiev’s Defeat: The Revisions of War and Peace

Today a repertory item admired for its grand set pieces, Prokofiev’s War and Peace was substantially shaped by the historical context of its composition under the Stalinist regime, specifically by developments in the political climate during and after the Great Patriotic War that led to corresponding shifts in official demands for the mass arts (which in the Soviet Union included opera). Prokofiev completed a vocal score in 1942, less than a year after the German invasion had prompted him to set to work on a scenario, then newly written, based on Tolstoy’s novel. But over the next decade the opera underwent a series of revisions in increasingly desperate attempts by the composer to have it brought to the stage.1 Revisions were at first recommended by the arts administration so that the work could better inspire national feelings in a wider audience during the early years of the war, a time at which historical parallels with Tolstoy’s novel were quite extraordinary; eventually, however, major additions were imposed, as ideological requirements evolved alongside the progress of Soviet victory. The opera was the object of intense scrutiny, and many of its now most familiar features were the result of direct interference that closely followed political directives. Various delays and constraints prevented a complete performance, and the attempt to assimilate Prokofiev into socialist realist practice ended in failure. Although numerous versions of War and Peace were created between 1942 and 1952 (five were proposed, and the first, second, and fifth prepared in score), since its publication in 1958 until very recently only the final version, including almost all revisions and additions, had reached the stage in a full performance.2 The premiere of the original version took place in 2010 in a student production at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow and the Rostov State

1

2

[121]

RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 32 6. The opera’s versions have been studied in detail by the Soviet musicologist Anatoliy Isaakovich Volkov, ‘Voyna i mir’ Prokof’yeva: Opït analiza variantov operï (Moscow: Muzïka, 1976). A summary of the opera’s revisions and versions appears in Richard Taruskin, ‘War and Peace’, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie, vol. 4 (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 1100 5. Another source in English for a discussion of revisions within a chronological framework is Malcolm Brown, ‘Prokofiev’s War and Peace: A Chronicle’, Musical Quarterly, 63 (1977), 297 326. Voyna i mir (partitura), in Sobraniye sochineniy, 6 (Moscow, 1958).

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Musical Theatre, using an edition by Rita McAllister.3 McAllister and Katya Ermolaeva have since created a critical edition of the original version (which is expected to be published in the future), and this was given its premiere performance at the Welsh Opera in October 2018, albeit in English.4 My assessment of the original 1942 version and the revisions made to it (first presented at conferences in 2005 and 2006 and published in 20095) is based on an examination of the composer’s original manuscript score and other documents held at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Prokofiev’s opera in its post-Soviet incarnations has managed somehow to transcend the rocky conditions under which it was created. Unlike the story of scandal that is inevitably connected with Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, for example, War and Peace has been received as if there were no essential connection between the work and the context of its creation, and no study prior to my own had probed the historical and political dimensions or revealed the extent of official involvement in its composition. It is also remarkable that, in spite of all the Stalinist clichés that remain in the final version, no attempt had been made to assess the potential damage to Prokofiev’s original or present a case in its favour. An examination of War and Peace can shed further light on the broader aspirations for the mass arts under Stalin. While Prokofiev’s opera certainly had the potential to enjoy a Susanin-like success, and to bring both the composer and the opera project a maximum level of prestige, instead it emerges as a chronicle of the disintegration of the creative independence of 3

4

5

The premiere was given at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow on 22 January 2010, featuring students from the Opera Schools of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Dance, the Rostov State Conservatoire, and the Komitas State Conservatoire in Yerevan, accompa nied by the orchestra of Scottish Opera. This production then travelled to Rostov on Don, where the first complete and uncut (albeit semi staged) public performance was given on 11 March 2010 at the Rostov State Musical Theatre. Ermolaeva completed her own edition of the original version as part of her doctoral research, under McAllister’s supervision. I am grateful to her for sharing her work with me. Katya Ermolaeva, ‘Prokofiev’s First Version of War and Peace: Lyrico Dramatic Scenes on the Novel by L. N. Tolstoy, Op. 91 (1942)’ (PhD Dissertation, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and University of St Andrews, 2018). My paper, ‘Prokofiev’s War and Peace: A Stalinist Spectacle’, was presented at ‘Music and History’, a conference organized by the Royal Historical Society in association with the Royal Musical Association, held in March 2005 at the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities of the University of Cambridge; this paper was subsequently developed and presented as ‘Kutuzov’s Victory, Prokofiev’s Defeat: The Revisions of War and Peace’ at the AMS/SMT Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, 2 5 November 2006. It was then expanded and published as an article with the same title in Music & Letters, 90/3 (August 2009), 399 431.

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the former and the overall collapse of the latter. As a defender of the traditions of high art, Prokofiev sought the free expression of what he considered his pre-eminent talent, notwithstanding his desire to reach a new, vast, unsophisticated audience. After his return to the Soviet Union in 1936, he intended to continue his work in accordance with his own principles, neither willing to ‘surrender [his] artistic ego’ nor able to foresee what the leaders desired.6 As a result, in the case of such a highprofile project as War and Peace, others more attuned to Party policy had to interfere. Although there had been setbacks caused by the reception from critics, bureaucrats, and theatre personnel of Kotko, and even Betrothal, it was through the long and difficult genesis of his third Soviet opera that Prokofiev was brought forcibly into line with the role of the creative artist as a functionary serving the state. The process was prolonged due to fundamentally opposed aesthetic priorities in opera and the composer’s reluctance to make major adjustments to his work. Time spent on various preparations for the stage led to a failure to keep up with ideological realignments, as criteria that related to its subject matter were in rapid flux: what may have been politically correct at the point of creation would be found inappropriate at the time of the opera’s next audition before officials. This chapter therefore considers the timing of revisions alongside changes in the cultural and political environment.

3.1 1941–1942: The Original War and Peace Prokofiev had contemplated War and Peace as a subject for an opera as least as early as 1935, but had put it aside because it required extended work.7 His interest was renewed in early 1941 when Mira Mendel’son read the novel to him, particularly inspired at this time by the operatic possibilities of the scene of Natasha Rostova and the wounded Andrey Bolkonsky in the hut at Mïtishchi. Immediately after completing Betrothal, therefore, he was already searching for a subject for his next opera, just as Betrothal had followed directly after Kotko. Prokofiev completed a scenario soon

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As Boris Groys writes, within socialist realism the ‘personal dream’ of artists needed to correspond to Stalin’s will. Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond, trans. Charles Rougle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 50. The composer’s first wife, Lina Prokofieva, claimed that the idea of writing an opera on War and Peace went back much further. Lina Prokof’yeva, ‘Iz vospominaniy’, in Sergey Prokof’yev: Stat’i i materialï, ed. I. V. Nest’yev and G. Ya. Edel’man, 2nd edn (Moscow: Muzïka, 1965), p. 224.

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after his fiftieth birthday, in April 1941.8 In recent years he had sketched a number of scenarios based on works of nineteenth-century Russian literature, and War and Peace may have remained another unfulfilled idea, but the beginning of the war with Germany on 22 June led him to take up composition. When Hitler’s armies attacked the Soviet Union, the story of Napoleon’s invasion became unquestionably timely, and while like other creative artists Prokofiev was expected to participate in the national struggle and had to set aside work on a current project (when the production of Cinderella, then almost complete in piano score, was cancelled), in his case he was able to pick up another that he had recently prepared. Tolstoy’s novel, elephantine in scale and labyrinthine in design, presented a unique challenge to the librettists. Following the inspiration provided by the reunion at Mïtishchi – and aware of Tolstoy’s own assessment of this as ‘the “knot” at which all the themes are united’9 – Prokofiev and Mendel’son focused the first two acts (consisting of six tableaux) on the central love story of Natasha and Andrey, its interruption in the form of Anatol Kuragin, and the intervention of Pierre Bezukhov, introducing only a handful of the novel’s vast number of characters. The libretto included Tolstoy’s own language as much as possible, and tableaux were based on individual chapters, giving the opera, in the Russian tradition, the quality of ‘scenes from’ the novel, although at the same time the central plot line was focused with an elegant efficiency. Lyrical themes connected with Natasha and Andrey recur as reminiscence motifs, most significantly in the opera’s penultimate tableau, their meeting at ‘Mïtishchi’: the ‘knot’ of Tolstoy’s plot is also the point in the opera at which Prokofiev’s musical threads are tied together. In fact this is also the only time these two characters meet on stage; the love story is otherwise sustained in the spaces between tableaux, as the ‘absent centre’ (to quote one common criticism of Tolstoy’s novel) around which the narrative revolves. Although Prokofiev had been inspired by a typically operatic moment, he remained more faithful to the structure of the novel than to music-theatrical conventions. In contrast to the concentrated and linear action of the first two acts, the three large tableaux dealing with the War of 1812 in Acts III, IV, and V suggested large-scale movements of masses of people – Russian militiamen and peasants, French soldiers, Muscovites – by presenting a shifting 8 9

The scenario is published in Volkov, ‘Voyna i mir’ Prokof’yeva, pp. 122 9. ‘The first half of the opera narrates the relations of the principal characters Natasha Rostova, Prince Andrey, Anatol’ Kuragin, Pierre that which Tolstoy himself in one of his letters called the knot of the novel.’ This is part of an article the composer wrote for the newspaper Literatura i iskusstvo, quoted in Volkov, ‘Voyna i mir’ Prokof’yeva, p. 54.

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panorama (tableau 7, ‘Borodino’), a kaleidoscopic montage (tableau 9, ‘Moscow’), and a condensed sequence of events (tableau 11, ‘Smolensk Road’). Drawn from Tolstoy’s description of the war, and also from various historical sources, these tableaux illustrate key incidents within an overall representation of the chaos of war.10 Tableau 8 (‘Shevardino Redoubt’), featuring Napoleon and his camp during the Battle of Borodino, and tableau 10 (‘Mïtishchi’), were again based on particular chapters (Book 10, Chapter 34 and Book 11, Chapter 32). Their placement resulted in a symmetrical form for the opera’s second half (see Table 3.1).11 In spite of their expansive qualities, the three large-scale tableaux were still focused on the individual fates of specific characters. It was consistent with both the novel and Prokofiev’s usual approach that unique personalities and modes of communication were sketched with sharp delineation, including those of minor roles. Author and composer ‘zoomed in’ on the masses to reveal a colourful group of peasants and citizens who serve to represent the Russian people as a whole. Most prominent are two women, Vasilisa and Kondratyevna; three men, Tikhon Shcherbatïy, Fyodor, and Matveyev; and the boy Trishka. They reappear periodically in a series of short vignettes, alternately comic and tragic in tone, that create snapshots of ordinary experience during the war. Colloquial language for the lower classes contrasts with the lyrical manner of the aristocrats, in accordance with theatrical custom and in line with Tolstoy, who explored with remarkable acuity the psychology of his main characters while members of the lower orders remained picturesque. All three war tableaux originally began with lengthy genre episodes, which established a setting and atmosphere and served as introductions to the central sections in which the major characters appeared. The opening scenes of ‘Borodino’ presented the preparations of the Russian forces. Militiamen shout encouragement to each other and sing a short chorus, followed by a scene of peasant women bringing them food. Prince Andrey then enters with Vasiliy Denisov, who promotes his plan for partisan warfare, before both go off to find their commander-in-chief. The peasants then continue with brave statements about their intended resistance (see Example 3.1). The remainder of the tableau consisted of the reflections of Andrey and Pierre before the battle, the appearance of the

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11

Sources listed in Mira Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Iz vospominaniy’, Sovetskaya muzïka (April 1961), 96 7. The durations of each tableau were written by the composer in the manuscript. It is worth comparing these timings with those of the final version in Table 3.3, for one basic yet telling indication of the extent of the revisions.

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Table 3.1 War and Peace, original version (April 1942) Tableau setting Act 1

Overture Tableau 1 Tableau 2

Act 2

Tableau 3 Tableau 4 Tableau 5

Act 3

Tableau 6 Tableau 7 Tableau 8

Act 4 Act 5

Tableau 9 Tableau 10 Tableau 11

The garden and house on the Rostov estate A small hall in the dark old mansion of the elder Prince Bolkonsky on Vozdvizhenka Street A sitting room in the home of Pierre Bezukhov At Dolokhov’s A room in the manor of Mariya Dmitriyevna Akhrosimova in the Staraya Konyushennaya District Pierre Bezukhov’s study Before the Battle of Borodino The redoubt at Shevardino during the battle at Borodino A street in Moscow, occupied by the French A dark hut Smolensk Road TOTAL

Duration (min sec) 4 30 7 30 10 10 9 35 9 30 21 00

11 00 28 00 9 15 26 00 12 15 22 00 170 45

commander Kutuzov, the procession of troops with songs and marches in period style (half hidden, upstage), Kutuzov’s interviews with Dolokhov and Andrey, and a final soldiers’ chorus. In ‘Moscow’ and ‘Smolensk Road’ the abundance of genre episodes increased. Even as the group is broken up amid the turmoil and violent anarchy of the occupied city, narrative detail remains focused on the activities of Pierre and the partisan characters, who read a decree of Napoleon, comment on the conduct of the plundering French, encounter various Muscovites, and get involved in the defensive strategy of burning supplies. The final tableau, the conclusion of the war, is devoted to a partisan attack on the fleeing French (also liberating Pierre, who had earlier been taken prisoner), and then a general celebration of victory, as Tikhon, Fyodor, Trishka, and Kondratyevna are reunited with Denisov and Vasilisa (Matveyev having been executed as an arsonist in ‘Moscow’). Enemy characters also received a rounded representation. Napoleon in ‘Shevardino’ is suitably imperious and irritable, but appears as an ordinary man, with only a hint of a majestic or malevolent caricature.12 French soldiers in two pairs, Ramballe and Bonnet and Gerard and Jacquo, are 12

The antagonists Anatol and Napoleon are both treated with mild irony. There is humour to be found in the banter between Napoleon and his retinue, and he snaps ‘Idite vï k . . . ’ (‘Go to . . .!’) at De Beausset as the latter offers him lunch (fig. 364).

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Example 3.1 War and Peace, original version, Act III, tableau 7, peasants at the front TRANSLATION: Kondratyevna: They slaughtered so many people and ruined their property, the damned marauders. Vasilisa: But we will hit him so hard, women, that he’s done for. Matveyev: We will finish off the adversary. Peasants: The adversary. Fyodor: But I wonder, women, what we would use [as a weapon]. Kondratyevna: Be quiet, Fyodor, when Vasilisa is speaking. Vasilisa: With whatever is found. We will greet the uninvited guest with scythes, bless him with pitchforks. Tikhon: Well, if even the women are taking up pitchforks, then it will soon be the end of Bonaparte. Vasilisa: Afterwards we shall calculate, lads, who has slaughtered the most Monsieurs.13

13

RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 34, ll. 64 64ob.

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Example 3.1 (cont.)

counterparts to the Russian peasants, being similarly tragic-comical and providing genre details. In ‘Moscow’ they frolic with their comrades, while at the beginning of the final tableau, in contrast to their looting and revelry, the two pairs in turn shuffle disillusioned and distraught along a wintry road to a trudging accompaniment, followed by a pair of grenadiers.14 This scene conveys a sympathy for the retreating soldiers that tallies with Tolstoy’s account of Russian soldiers’ pity for the French at the end of the campaign.15

3.1.1 Tolstoy, History, and Fieldmarshal Kutuzov Drawing from Tolstoy’s form of realism, celebrated for its perspicacity and detail, the opera also communicated something of the novel’s radical philosophy of history. For Tolstoy, historical writing that was oriented towards the actions of prominent figures was fundamentally flawed; as he wrote, rather presciently, in one of the novel’s embedded non-fictional essays: ‘[t]o study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses 14 15

RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 36, ll. 11 12. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude (London: Macmillan, 1942), Book 15, Chapter 3.

1941 1942: The Original War and Peace

Example 3.1 (cont.)

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are moved.’16 Tolstoy was an extreme sceptic, who wrote War and Peace in opposition to the traditions of nineteenth-century historiography, believing that since ‘history . . . [is] shaped by radical contingency and the purely random’,17 all historical systems, patterns, and narratives are necessarily false. Such systems are satirized in the novel’s battle scenes, in which Tolstoy posits instead the opposite view, that all events are governed by chance (and therefore cannot be assigned cause and effect, as historians imagine). Tolstoy’s representation of Fieldmarshal Kutuzov is key to the exposition of his philosophy. Kutuzov is a gruff old man in poor physical condition, whose appearance and behaviour are the subject of ridicule by the elite, but who is tied to the nation and loved by its people. He embodies the idea of the futility of action, recognizing the ineffectiveness of councils and detailed plans and the importance of being alert and able to react to changing circumstances. Thus he emerges as the very antithesis of the typical image of a great military commander making significant decisions at pivotal moments. Napoleon, meanwhile, is a parody of this image, wrongly believing that his will determines history. In Prokofiev’s opera, Kutuzov is an individual representative of the army, and his main purpose is to praise his soldiers. In ‘Borodino’ he enters to survey the troops, and sings a short arioso, ‘Incomparable people’ (fig. 250 in the original, fig. 313 in the published score), in the epic-heroic key of B♭ major (Example 3.2, which includes the whole of the original arioso).18 As most commentators have pointed out, the theme of the arioso with its heroic resonance is linked not to Kutuzov himself, but to the Russian people its text acclaims: at the end of ‘Borodino’, for example, the peasant militiamen transform the melody into a marching song. Kutuzov returns briefly at the very end of the opera to congratulate the soldiers and partisans on their victory, as in the novel, 16 17

18

Tolstoy, War and Peace, Book 11, Chapter 1, p. 911. Gary Saul Morson, Hidden in Plain View: Narrative and Creative Potentials in ‘War and Peace’ (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), p. 85. In Prokofiev’s music it is possible at times to assign associations to particular keys. B♭ major, as one example, can, in the music of his Soviet period, and certainly within War and Peace, be connected with a heroic mode, which is related to Russian musical traditions. This key is the basis of his Russian Overture, Op. 72 (1936 7), the final chorus of Alexander Nevsky, Op. 78 (1939), the Symphonic March, Op. 88 (1941), the March for Military Band, Op. 99 (1943 4), and the Fifth Symphony, Op. 100 (1944). The origin of this association is clearly the military band and earlier Russian works that relate to military topics, such as Tchaikovsky’s Slavonic March, Op. 31. This link is made explicit in War and Peace by the onstage army band and the chorus of Cossacks in tableau 8, and the onstage marching band in the first final chorus, all of which are in B♭ major (figs. 317 20 and 323 6).

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Example 3.2 War and Peace, original version, Act III, tableau 7, Kutuzov’s arioso TRANSLATION: Kutuzov: Incomparable people. Splendid, incomparable people. The brute will be mortally wounded by a united Russian force, he will be banished from our sacred land.

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Example 3.2 (cont.)

although the composer renders his comments as blithely humorous (and also sets to music the laughter of the crowd). Prokofiev therefore applied Tolstoy’s philosophy by concentrating on the role played by the common people in the defeat of the French.19 There is no final chorus, and thus the war narrative, like the love story in the previous tableau, has a subdued ending that is far removed from the norms of historical grand opera, and remains on a human scale. (In addition to the ‘absent centre’, therefore, we might identify here an ‘absent ending’, another familiar criticism of Tolstoy’s novel.) The ‘War’ tableaux thus conveyed key elements of the novel’s historical narrative, just as the story of Natasha and Andrey had distilled the essence of its personal narrative. Attention was given to distinct characters and everyday details instead of collective groups, and to personal experience (both Russian and French) rather than the articulation of general feelings.

3.2 1942–1943: First Audition and Revisions Prokofiev’s faithfulness to central tenets of the novel and to his own vision was all the more remarkable given that composition began immediately after the German invasion. In spite of obvious contemporary parallels with the War of 1812, the changes made to the original scenario when preparing the libretto in the summer of 1941 showed only a limited response to the catastrophe. Prokofiev had already been given plenty of indication in the preceding year that his treatment of heroism in opera, so central to socialist 19

Tolstoyan ethics, including freedom from society and abdication of will, meanwhile, has its own symbol in Karatayev, a simple old soldier who befriends and imparts homely wisdom to Pierre in Moscow and is later shot by the retreating French, episodes that Prokofiev included in the opera.

1942 1943: First Audition and Revisions

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realism, fell well below the mark, when numerous sharp criticisms of Kotko were put forth in the opera conference debates and appeared in the musical press. Furthermore, when War and Peace had been promoted in 1937 as a subject for Soviet opera by the then chairman of the KDI, Platon Kerzhentsev (in a letter to the conductor Samuil Samosud), he wrote that any opera on Tolstoy’s novel ought to focus on the heroism of the war rather than the romance.20 Once the opera was taken up after the war with Germany had begun, this requirement should have been abundantly clear, but Prokofiev did not attempt to write a rousing or overtly patriotic work, neither generating a ‘heroic uplift’ (according to the proper function of opera that Kerzhentsev had proclaimed in the same year) nor presenting the French as an evil force. Yet there was no getting round the urgent need for War and Peace to contribute to wartime mobilization. The score was assessed and revisions were begun even before the completion of the first version in April 1942, since the distance from the expectations of the authorities was recognized immediately. In February the musicologist Semyon Shlifshteyn, then an advisor to the KDI, had travelled to Tbilisi with the new chairman Mikhail Khrapchenko to hear works under consideration for the Stalin Prize.21 Shlifshteyn listened to the composer play through the eight completed tableaux of the opera, including, according to the dates for completion written in the manuscript, all except the eighth, tenth, and eleventh. (The ninth, ‘Moscow’, was finished on 21 February.) On a second visit Shlifshteyn heard ‘Borodino’ and ‘Moscow’, and undoubtedly gave advice at this time regarding the treatment of the fighting forces.22 From the composer’s manuscript it is possible to determine what Shlifshteyn’s advice was. A cut was made near the end of ‘Borodino’, removing Dolokhov’s statements of willingness to serve his country and Kutuzov’s absentminded replies. More significant was the reworking of the chorus of 20

21

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RGALI f. 962, op. 3, yed. khr. 331, l. 58. ‘Zatem istoricheskoy temoy, tozhe geroicheskogo poryadka, mozhet bït’ “Voyna i mir”, no vzyat’ ne v dukhe P’yera Bezukhova i Natashi Rostovoy, a kak temu bor’bï russkogo naroda protiv inozemnogo nashestviya, kak geroiku narodnoy bor’bï’ (‘Then [I would recommend an opera] with a historical theme, and of heroic character, perhaps War and Peace, but interpreted not in the spirit of Pierre Bezukhov and Natasha Rostova, but as a theme of the struggle of the Russian people against foreign invasion, as a heroic national struggle’). Irina Medvedeva, ‘Istoriya prokof’yevskogo avtografa, ili GURK v deystvii’, in Sergey Sergeyevich Prokof’yev: K 110 letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya. Pis’ma, vospominaniya, stat’i, ed. M. P. Rakhmanova (Moscow: Gosudarstvennïy tsentral’nïy muzey muzïkal’noy kul’turï imeni M. I. Glinki, 2001), pp. 216 39 (220), quoting from Mendel’son’s Diary, p. 21. For a reminder of Shlifshteyn’s role as adviser to Prokofiev before the first official audition I am grateful to Simon Morrison.

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militiamen in the opening scene of the same tableau. The original chorus (‘Hark! The foreign locust flew towards us!’) had been of minimal duration, only thirty bars of Allegro 4/4. Suggestive of the vigour of peasant soldiers as they prepared for battle, it was rhythmically incisive, sparse in texture, and almost devoid of melody, with a brusque quality enhanced by repeated accented emphasis on the tritone above the tonic within an otherwise rudimentary diatonicism. The text was based on a song from the period, telling of French attacks.23 In order to create a new chorus Prokofiev perused his notebooks of musical themes (where he collected thematic material as it occurred to him, for later use), choosing one dating from 1933 that he then adapted from Lento to Andante con moto, modified melodically, and provided with a new text.24 The chorus was turned into a substantial set piece in ABA form, in B♭ major instead of B♭ minor, with the character of a jaunty march, and a text relating the Russian people’s response to the call to arms.25 It contrasted more sharply with the grim opening of the tableau and offered a more buoyant but also blander expression of united will and fortitude.26 Its texture increases with each repetition, until at the final return to the main theme, with note values augmented, the men are suddenly joined by altos and sopranos (the food-bearing peasant women?), leading to a rousing fortissimo ending on a six-part tonic chord in the upper register. Once this chorus was dropped into ‘Borodino’, it sent ripples to the extreme ends of the opera (which were yet to be composed): its main theme featured prominently as the opening and closing melody in the Overture (which was probably another suggestion of Shlifshteyn’s, since its slapdash sequence of themes does not conform to Prokofiev’s usual level of craftsmanship), and it served as a structural pillar in the finale, ‘Smolensk Road’. The new theme thus framed the Overture, the war tableaux of Part 2, and the opera as a whole. 23

24

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26

Fabian Abramovich Garin (ed.), Izgnaniye Napoleona iz Moskvï (Moscow: Moskovskiy rabochiy, 1938). The text has minor changes, with verbs changed to the plural form. RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 286, l. 4ob. This was also based on soldiers’ songs from 1812, shaped by Mendel’son from sayings found in Garin such as ‘Prishyol Kutuzov, bit’ frantsuzov’, a line Prokofiev originally (in the scenario) planned to include in another chorus at the end of the scene. The A section of the original chorus was partly preserved in the first part of the B section of the new chorus, in the ten bars that separate the new A section from the original B section (from fig. 281), which Prokofiev kept with one minor change: the bass line now ascends the scale. The similarity of the A and B sections of the original is such that together they serve as a middle part in the new chorus. However, it is related motivically to the B minor theme of ‘War’ that opened the tableau. This theme is very similar to ‘Teutonic knights in Pskov’ from Alexander Nevsky.

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As a result of this administrative intervention, the composer had clearly become aware that his treatment of war might not correspond to official objectives and could require additional reworking, and he anticipated further input from Shlifshteyn. On 1 May 1942 Prokofiev posted a letter to the KDI, requesting that Shlifshteyn be sent to Alma-Ata instead of Tbilisi, since he wanted permission to travel there in order to work with Sergey Eisenstein on Ivan the Terrible.27 On 10 May 1942 he sent a telegraph directly to Khrapchenko that repeated these requests, and stressed that his first priority was for the opera and its swift performance, even if this would require further revisions to ‘War’: ‘[i]f necessary I am willing to revise the national scenes. In view of an accepted obligation I am forced to travel to Alma-Ata, where I ask you to send a list of desired revisions, or better still a colleague for discussion.’28 Leaving for Alma-Ata on 29 May, he worked on the orchestration en route, although postponing that for the three war tableaux until he had a response from the authorities.29 The piano score had been sent to Moscow in April 1942, and the audition by the KDI took place in May. Prokofiev waited impatiently until August for their comments, which arrived in the form of two letters, one from Khrapchenko, limited to general observations, the other from Shlifshteyn, a lengthy and highly detailed criticism of the music.30 Both suggested that the second half of the opera ought to be rewritten, since it was insufficiently heroic: it needed to inspire the Russian people in their defence against the German invaders, and therefore superfluous episodes and genre details were to be removed, the nation was to be presented as a unified mass through a more extensive use of the chorus, and the familiar historical characters were to be highlighted as symbols of the national struggle and victory. Khrapchenko insisted that more space be devoted to the three national tableaux, that they should emerge emphatically as the outcome of the drama and be ‘organically connected’ to it. He thought the history of Natasha and Andrey was ‘deep and artistically convincing’, but isolated from the second part of the opera. In his view, the action should lead to 27 28

29

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RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 327, l. 13. RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 327, l. 14. His request was granted, and Shlifshteyn was sent to Alma Ata to assist with revisions. Vladimir Vasil’yevich Perkhin, Deyateli russkogo iskusstva i M. B. Khrapchenko (Moscow: Nauka, 2007), p. 600. Letter to Myaskovsky, 29 June 1942, in Sergey Sergeyevich Prokof’yev and Nikolay Yakovlevich Myaskovskiy, S. S. Prokof’yev i N. Ya. Myaskovskiy: Perepiska (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompozitor, 1977), p. 459. The following summary is drawn from the publication of the letters in Medvedeva, ‘Istoriya prokof’yevskogo avtografa’, pp. 216 39.

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a culmination that would link the personal drama to the general fate of the nation (as in Susanin and grand opera generally). He insisted on a ‘nationalmusical drama’, appropriate to ‘the spirit of the epoch’ and possessing a weighty, epic tone, supported by powerful musical themes and their development. The focus was to be on the fate of the nation and its people, not merely ‘the personal experiences of individual heroes’; in Prokofiev’s ‘War’, ‘an extraordinary amount of attention is devoted to everyday details’. Shlifshteyn supported Khrapchenko’s views with a long list of criticisms, mainly to do with the colloquial language and genre episodes, which ‘could possibly have served, but only in a very limited dosage, in the capacity of a genre-colourful supplement to the musical sketching of the nation, but by no means as the foundation of its characteristics’. In his criticism of the ‘everyday’ he compared the opera with Kotko, the opera he had formerly supported.31 Recognizing the intended humour in some of the scenes, he observed disapprovingly that these were surely intended to amuse friends in the musical world (he was well placed to perceive this error since he himself was such a friend). The composer must address his opera to the general public, not to such elite musicians. Shlifshteyn stated that the characters representing the Russian nation (Denisov, Vasilisa, Kutuzov) should embody the strongest possible message of heroism, and that they could potentially resemble particular figures from contemporary war films. He stressed the significance of the subject matter, and affirmed that the opera was to serve the purposes of victory, encouraging Prokofiev’s cooperation with the promise of increased stature.32 Both Khrapchenko and Shlifshteyn supported their arguments through reference to Tolstoy’s authority. Khrapchenko stated that the novelist ‘was drawn repeatedly to the theme of the moral superiority of the Russian nation’, while Shlifshteyn wrote that the dramaturgy of the opera should be ‘correct not to the letter of Tolstoy’s work, but to its spirit’. The demand for the removal of the genre episodes was a departure from the ideals of Tolstoy as (more accurately) understood by Prokofiev; for both author and composer ‘truth’ was to be found in such ‘unnecessary’ details. (Again, it is revealing that the first criticisms of the opera echoed those that had been made against Tolstoy’s novel in the early years of its reception in Russia and abroad: the lack of overall unity, a plot made up of two distinct, unconnected parts, an abundance of irrelevant and unnecessary details, incidents, and characters – in addition to the ‘absent centre’ and the lack of an ending.33) 31 32 33

Medvedeva, ‘Istoriya prokof’yevskogo avtografa’, p. 229. Medvedeva, ‘Istoriya prokof’yevskogo avtografa’, p. 231. See Morson, Hidden in Plain View, Chapter 2, ‘Formal Peculiarities of War and Peace’, pp. 37 70; and Morson, Hidden in Plain View, p. 147.

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Moreover, music of gravity and solemnity of the kind the KDI was searching for is rare in Prokofiev’s output, certainly in his operatic work. Nor at any point in his opera career did he adapt his principles for the sake of immediate success, with the result that most of his completed projects failed even to reach the stage. A personal interpretation of the novel and adherence to his own aesthetic preferences, however, was out of the question under the circumstances, since official demands were supported by the urgency of the war.34 With these explicit instructions, Prokofiev set to work in Alma-Ata on more far-reaching revisions (after his plans had received the approval of the KDI’s deputy chairman),35 now with additional input from Eisenstein. Together they sought to augment the image of a heroic Russian people, removing several episodes of individual activity and expanding ariosos and choruses. The opening of ‘Borodino’ was subjected to further changes. Matveyev and Vasilisa were given solo parts within a new chorus of Smolensk refugees, who appear at the bastion describing the destruction of their city (fig. 271). Denisov, whose dialogue with Andrey had been in Sprechstimme that echoed the beat of an onstage side-drum, now spontaneously erupts into arioso as he outlines his plan for partisan warfare (fig. 269). In ‘Moscow’ the comic scene of illiterate peasants struggling with the text of a posted decree was cut,36 and a new genre scene of French actors fleeing their burning theatre was added, on the suggestion of Eisenstein (fig. 460). The director also had the idea for the cinematic effect of the blizzard at the beginning of ‘Smolensk Road’. Prokofiev’s swirling, surging music, with piercing orchestration (piccolo) and juxtaposition of common-tone-related minor and major triads, captures the ferocity of the storm (‘Tempestoso’, fig. 498).37 The original plodding theme and two of the three pairs of retreating French soldiers were deleted to make room for it, thus 34

35

36 37

As accustomed as we may be to treating the interference of the Soviet authorities as deeply regrettable and injurious to art, at this time the country was involved in a terrible war, and so the insistence that the opera communicate a clear and direct expression of brave resistance through heroic content and an elevation of tone was, one could argue, legitimate. The years 1941 and 1942 were extremely bleak ones for the Soviet Union, as the country was rapidly overrun by an enemy intending (without exaggeration) to erase Russian culture and enslave her inhabitants. Aleksandr Solodovnikov, in August. Medvedeva, ‘S. S. Prokof’yev i S. I. Shlifshteyn v perepiske 1940 x godov’, pp. 194 and 199. It was later returned, at fig. 404. According to Mendel’son, the composer found it difficult to complete the orchestration, just as he had once ‘got stuck’ working on the orchestration of the ‘moonlit night’ in Kotko. In this case he wanted the blizzard to ‘squeal’, as if ‘devils rushed through the air’. Mira Abramovna Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, O Sergeye Sergeyeviche Prokof’yeve. Vospominaniya. Dnevniki (1938 1967) (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2012), p. 161.

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moving the focus away from the despondency of the enemy forces to the major national symbol of the Russian winter, which in the previous autumn (of 1941) had saved Moscow from the Germans just as it had devastated Napoleon’s retreating army in 1812. Genre scenes of the partisans’ preparations to attack the French troops were replaced by a greatly expanded chorus (fig. 520) and a reprise of Denisov’s new arioso (fig. 523+6). Prokofiev returned to Moscow at the end of November 1942 for the opera’s second audition. He met with Samosud, now musical director of the Bolshoy Theatre, who recommended additional revisions for the new production.38 Samosud’s high official standing at the Bolshoy and experience as conductor of the premieres of both The Quiet Don and Ivan Susanin no doubt allowed him to offer unique insight into what was required. First, the humorous address of Kutuzov to his troops at the end of the opera had to be removed; Prokofiev transferred this section to Denisov’s appearance earlier in the same tableau. Second, he was told that the theme of Kutuzov’s arioso from ‘Borodino’ (figs. 312–13) ‘must go through the entire opera, appearing, expanding, and confirming with yet greater strength’.39 Third, the opera needed a large final chorus. Prokofiev responded to this last suggestion by composing a number with brisk rhythms and melodic material more instrumental than vocal in design (a chorus in Kotko had been criticized for just this fault); a broad theme emerges at the end, but the chorus had no thematic connection to the rest of the opera, with the exception of a heroic theme first sung by Andrey in ‘Borodino’ that here is played by an onstage marching band (from fig. 556), providing an active element in what was otherwise static (continual action remaining a Prokofievian idée fixe).40 By 3 April 1943 the opera had been revised and the orchestration was complete. Productions began both at the Bolshoy and at the Kirov, and the piano score of this second version was published later in the year.41 The production at the Bolshoy would have been 38

39

40

41

The Moscow audition, played and sung by the composer at the piano, took place in December 1942, and Samosud arranged for an additional performance for the Bolshoy staff shortly before Prokofiev’s return to Alma Ata on 19 January 1943; Brown, ‘Prokofiev’s War and Peace’, 305 6. Samuil Samosud, ‘Vstrechi s Prokof’yevïm’, in Sergey Prokof’yev: Stat’i i materialï, ed. I. V. Nest’yev and G. Ya. Edel’man, 2nd edn (Moscow: Muzïka, 1965), pp. 123 73 (130). The theme’s opening motif was added to the vocal lines of Murat’s adjutant (fig. 351+5) and Prince Yevgeniy’s adjutant (fig. 358+9) in ‘Shevardino Redoubt’. This first attempt at a final chorus is included as an appendix at the end of the complete edition, Voyna i mir (partitura), in Sobraniye sochineniy, 6, pp. 306 25. It has been recorded once, by the Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and soloists conducted by Artur Rodzinsky, in a live recording from the Teatro Comunale di Firenze on 26 May 1953 (ANDRCG 5022). Voyna i mir, Muzfond, 1943.

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broadcast to a mass audience on the radio, a medium that was realizing its potential during the war.42 Suddenly, when the premiere was coming together, Samosud was dismissed from his position – the main point against him was that he had clashed with the Bolshoy’s prestigious singers (beloved of Stalin himself) – and War and Peace was subsequently abandoned by both companies.43 When Samosud was recruited from MALEGOT in 1936, his mission had been to bring Soviet opera to the nation’s greatest stage, its temple of national art. But the project had stalled. In 1943 Kabalevsky’s war opera V ogne: Pod Moskvoy (In the Fire: Near Moscow) was subject to lengthy scrutiny by the KDI before being rejected.44 The response to the war from opera composers had not produced an immediate success, and their work remained at what seemed an experimental stage. The new director, Ariy Pazovsky, would return to the classics, Prokofiev wrote to Eisenstein, just as Susanin in 1939 had displaced the already failing Soviet opera project.45 In 1943 the revised War and Peace had the rare potential to meet official expectations. For the first time Prokofiev was receiving the official honours with which Shlifshteyn had tempted him: in May he won his first Stalin Prize (Second Class, for the Seventh Piano Sonata), and later he was given the prestigious title of Honoured Artist of the Russian Republic. However, although his stature was increasing, due to the evolution of Party policy the opera’s chances of acceptance would henceforth decrease.

3.3 Second Revision, Part 1 In the spring of 1945, the Moscow Philharmonic Society, with the support of the KDI, decided to back Samosud in a professional concert production of War and Peace.46 During rehearsals for this, Prokofiev, who had recently been taken ill with hypertension after suffering a concussion, followed 42

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See James von Geldern, ‘Radio Moscow: The Voice from the Center’, in Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia, ed. Richard Stites (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 44 61. Tolstoy’s novel, then selling in huge numbers, was itself read by actors over the radio during the period. In a letter of 3 December, Khrapchenko recommended to Molotov that Samosud be removed for ‘striving for a creative monopoly in the theatre’. RGALI f. 962, op. 3, yed. khr. 1122, ll. 1 5 (5). Marina Frolova Walker, ‘The Soviet Opera Project: Ivan Dzerzhinsky vs. Ivan Susanin’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 18/2 (2006), 195: ‘by all accounts the KDI’s deliberations left it severely weakened’. Prokofiev’s letter to Eisenstein, 7 March 1944, in Sergey Prokof’yev: Stat’i i materialï, p. 349. On 7, 9, and 11 June 1945, conducted by Samosud with the State Symphony Orchestra and the Chorus of the Republic, and soloists from the Bolshoy and Stanislavsky/ Nemirovich Danchenko Theatres. The first performance presented the new Epigraph

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Samosud’s advice to extend the arioso of Kutuzov in ‘Borodino’, which he accomplished by inserting an adapted version of his earlier arrangement of the folksong ‘Green Jug’, one of his Twelve Russian Folksongs, Op. 104 (1944) (figs. 314–16). While the concert performance did not persuade the major companies to produce the opera, Samosud, when approached by MALEGOT to become their musical director, made it a condition that they take up War and Peace.47 In preparation for this he proposed the addition of an entirely new tableau based on the chapter at the ball where Natasha and Andrey dance together. Such a showcase would not only be entertaining in itself, but would fill the gap in the development of the romance. Samosud’s radical solution for accommodating the expanded length was to divide the opera in half and perform it over the course of two nights; in practical terms this meant over two seasons. At a meeting of the KDI in January 1945, the status of opera as a high art was emphasized once again, and the administration explicitly put forward the view that Soviet operas should be modelled on Russian classics.48 The glittering spectacle of the ball would certainly meet this requirement, although it was contrary to Prokofiev’s aims. In 1942, according to Mendel’son, he had paid no heed to Eisenstein when the latter ‘complained that Seryozha omitted the pages dedicated to the ball and the meeting of Natasha and Andrey’.49 Prokofiev was just as reluctant in 1945. It has been claimed that he willingly went ahead with the new tableau, but the evidence suggests otherwise.50 According to the producer Boris Pokrovsky, ‘the composer was not very captivated by the idea of a “banal opera ball with polonaises, waltzes, and mazurkas”. (Oh, gosh, these producers!)’51 When Samosud asked him for a waltz in the style of Glinka’s ‘Valse-fantaisie’, ‘the composer was not pleased!’52 In a letter to Samosud of 11 July 1945 Prokofiev protested, ‘is the ball tableau really necessary?’53 He was

47 48 49

50 51

52 53

along with tableaux 1 5, 7, and 9 11. Brown, ‘Prokofiev’s War and Peace’, 311. Tableau 9, ‘Moscow’ was cut from the second and third performances. Taruskin, ‘War and Peace’, pp. 1100 5. See Frolova Walker, ‘The Soviet Opera Project’, 209 10. Mira Abramovna Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, in Sergey Prokof’yev: K 50 letiyu so dnya smerti. Vospominaniya, pis’ma, stat’i, ed. M. P. Rakhmanova (Moscow: Deka VS, 2004), pp. 5 226 (155). Brown, ‘Prokofiev’s War and Peace’, 313. Boris Alexandrovich Pokrovskiy, Ob opernoy rezhissure (Moscow: Vserossiyskoye tea tral’noye obshchestvo, 1973), p. 56. Pokrovskiy, Ob opernoy rezhissure, p. 57. ‘Kak nashi dela s postanovkoy “Voyna i mir”. Nuzhna li bal’naya kartina.’ [‘How are things going with the production of War and Peace? Is the ball tableau really necessary?’] RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 265, l. 5.

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rewarded for his eventual cooperation with a generous contract (dated 19 September) of 40,000 rubles for the full production of both parts.54 Work progressed slowly, however, because of health problems and the composition of the large new tableau, and the production was not ready by the stipulated date of 1 December. When the stage premiere of Part 1 took place at MALEGOT on 12 June 1946, however, it went on to become a record-breaking popular success. Prokofiev himself was very satisfied with the production, including the conducting of Samosud, who, along with Pokrovsky and Tat’yana Lavrova (Natasha) – but not Prokofiev – later received highly prestigious Stalin Prizes First Class for their involvement (on 7 June 1947).55 The opera had a prominent role to play in the celebration of victory, and in proclaiming to the world the level of contemporary Soviet artistic achievement. In the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1947) its performance was one of only three musical events in a list of significant dates.56 The score and libretto, nevertheless, were the subject of much debate among critics and musicologists, at what was the beginning of a difficult time for the arts and for scholarship. The summer of 1946 saw the most overt expression of the leadership’s intention to reassert authority in the cultural sphere, reining in the intelligentsia after the relaxed conditions that had prevailed during the war. The beginning of the Zhdanovshchina was marked by the publication of resolutions in August and September 1946 that set out supposed failures in the fields of literature, film, and theatre, denouncing ‘formalism’ and Western influences and demanding a turn to contemporary subject matter and broad public appeal.57 While music was not given a direct reprimand until 1948, musicians responded immediately in an attempt to conform to the new prescriptions. The Orgkomitet of the Composers’ Union held a plenum in Moscow on 2–8 October 1946 (that Prokofiev attended), 54

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RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 804, ll. 28 28ob. The first performance of the first part was to take place on 1 December 1945, and the second part was scheduled for January or February 1946. The fee was to be paid in four instalments, the last upon a full performance of Part 2. Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, pp. 23 4 and 57. Nikolay Nikolayevich Kulikovich, Sovetskaya opera na sluzhbe partii i pravitel’stva (Munich: Institut zur Erforschung der UdSSR, 1955), p. 127. The other two events were the foundation of RAPM and the production of The Quiet Don. The Central Committee’s Resolutions on literature, theatre, and film were as follows: that on literature was published as ‘O zhurnalakh “Zvezda” i “Leningrad”’, Pravda, 21 August 1946, on theatre as ‘O repertuarye dramaticheskikh teatrov i merakh po yego ulushcheniyu’, Bolshevik, 16 (1946), and on film, ‘O kinofil’me “Bol’shaya zhizn”, Kultura i zhizn’, 8 (10 September 1946).

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during which there were repeated references to the Central Committee resolutions.58 This was followed by a meeting called to consider their specific applicability to opera and ballet (which were closely related to the other narrative arts) on 19–21 December 1946. War and Peace was at the centre of attention but received a mixed response, with particularly negative assessments from the most powerful voices: Vladimir Surin, deputy chairman of the KDI, the musicologist Aleksandr Shaverdyan, and the composer Viktor Belïy.59 Surin, the chairman of the meeting, spelled out general problems in Soviet opera: ‘the absence of large-scale symphonic development, of broad song-like melody, of gripping emotionality, of clear and particular musical characterizations and their logical development; also not yet solved is the problem of the treatment of operatic ensembles’.60 Shaverdyan made a case for the people’s love of the ‘high’ and ‘classical’ in opera, ‘purified of the shallow, humdrum, [and] everyday’, and their particular appreciation for ‘great outbursts of human feelings’.61 Like many others he emphasized Verdi as a model alongside Musorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and Glinka. Both Shaverdyan and Belïy linked Prokofiev with Western modernism, claimed he did not make use of his talent for melody, and criticized the influence of Musorgsky’s Marriage.62 Shaverdyan believed that Prokofiev’s ‘inclination to recitative’ and his ‘favoured principle of structural organization of musical-dramatic action’ rendered impossible the desired ‘monumental architectonic unity’ and ‘the epic, grandiose, and powerful in operatic art’.63 Surin concurred, claiming in his concluding statement that Prokofiev’s music lacked depth and should not be an example for others:

58

59 60 61 62

63

Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 42. The proceedings were published in Sovetskaya muzïka (October 1946). The proceedings of the All Union Meeting on the Questions of Opera and Ballet were published in Sovetskaya muzïka (January 1947). Belïy was also a member of the Orgkomitet. Vladimir Surin, Sovetskaya muzïka (January 1947), 8. Shaverdyan, Sovetskaya muzïka (January 1947), 16. ‘It is fair [to say] that he is close to Musorgsky, the author of Marriage, but in lesser measure is he the disciple of Musorgsky, the author of Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina’. Shaverdyan, Sovetskaya muzïka (January 1947), 21. ‘Has talent for melody that he does not display to the full. Connected to modernist dogma. Close to Musorgsky’s Marriage, a brilliant experiment that does not make use of broad melody.’ Viktor Belïy, Sovetskaya muzïka (January 1947), 48. Shaverdyan, Sovetskaya muzïka (January 1947), 20 and 21. Shaverdyan found errors, for example, in ‘Borodino’: ‘the weak sketchy depiction of Kutuzov and Denisov; the nation is displayed principally through the genres of soldiers’ songs; the generalization of the national figures is absent’. Shaverdyan, Sovetskaya muzïka (January 1947), 20.

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‘If we direct our composers only towards the creative method of Prokofiev, this will extremely limit and restrict our operatic art.’64

3.4 Second Revision, Part 2: Kutuzov’s Victory Shlifshteyn’s references in 1942 to ‘numerous heroes’ in the opera and images of real-life figures from contemporary war films corresponded to a transformation in the relationship of the people to the regime that took place during the first years of the war. When the country was being overrun and the army decimated, the Stalin cult had gone into hibernation, retreating from public view in order not to be associated with defeat. In its place a homespun sort of heroism emerged, involving ordinary people and individual bravery. Public discourse was focused much less on the mythical leaders themselves, and instead emphasized themes that would connect with people’s most deeply held values and inspire their resistance against a brutal enemy: their emotional bonds with families and friends, and the idea of the Russian nation past and present. According to Jeffrey Brooks, ‘[j]ournalists early in the war developed a narrative of family and private life in which suffering was embodied in individual loss and personal relationships.’65 During these years there was much greater freedom of action and expression, something that was also true for most creative artists. In early 1943 the war had turned decisively in favour of the Soviet Union with the victory at Stalingrad (where the Germans surrendered on 2 February). Around the world this was immediately recognized (as it has been by historians since) as the turning point in the war, which was confirmed in July after the battle of Oryol–Kursk. As a consequence of this, concessions came to an end, the relaxation of restrictions on free expression was reversed, and public discourse shifted from real-life experience back to myth as the leader cult returned with a vengeance. ‘When the tide of battle turned from defeat to victory, Stalin reasserted his public persona, and another narrative of the war arose’, one that credited Stalin, rather than the actions of soldiers and citizens, with liberation from the enemy.66 Even though the Germans might well not have advanced as far as Stalingrad had 64 65

66

Surin, Sovetskaya muzïka (January 1947), 60. See Jeffrey Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin!: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 181. As Brooks writes, ‘[t]he plurality of narratives and actors, however, was a casualty of success. While the end was in doubt, participants could promote victory partly in their own way, but as the war was won, Stalin and his government reasserted the primacy of a narrative in which they alone held pride of place.’ Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin!, pp. 193 4.

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it not been for Stalin’s meddling in tactical matters, ‘the press praised his military genius and hailed “the Stalinist school of military thought”’.67 In the 1930s the emergence of the leader cult had been supported by images of great figures from Russia’s past. As David Brandenberger has described, the Party hierarchy rejected its earlier programme of idealist and internationalist socialist propaganda and began a more pragmatist and populist campaign, in which such figures would serve to legitimize the regime and encourage public mobilization.68 By the late 1930s the pantheon included cultural and political leaders – Pushkin, Glinka, Peter the Great – but consisted mainly of pre-revolutionary military heroes such as Aleksandr Nevsky, Minin and Pozharsky, Dmitri Donskoy, Suvorov, and Kutuzov, whose legendary feats were celebrated in history books, films, plays, and opera (Minin and Pozharsky, for example, replaced the Tsar in the revised Susanin). Upon its re-emergence in 1943 the cult was amplified, reaching its zenith after the war, when credit was given to Generalissimo Stalin as the Great Military Leader and genius tactician, who now surpassed other luminaries. Mobilization gave way to commemoration and Stalin’s role in the victory. The delays in the production of War and Peace led to a failure to respond to new ideals as they emerged, in a political climate that was rapidly changing as the Red Army pressed on towards Germany.69 Once the process of celebrating victory began, it was the image of Kutuzov in particular that had to be adapted. The earliest advice to Prokofiev from Shlifshteyn, Khrapchenko, and Samosud included suggestions to enhance the role of Kutuzov (along with other historical characters) in line with prewar practice. But now Kutuzov was singled out in order to match up to the new extremes of the leader cult. If a focus on ordinary Russians, and an irreverent Kutuzov, were problematic in 1942, they were strikingly inappropriate by the time Part 2 of the opera was due to reach the stage. The composer had altogether avoided a monumental scale in his original version, and by 1946, even after much prodding, had not done enough to move the work in that direction. In a letter of 17 July 1945 Shlifsteyn had 67 68

69

Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin!, pp. 185 6. David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931 1956 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). The leaders had been planning the reconstruction of Soviet society ‘ever since the Germans’ defeat outside Moscow’ (in 1942), according to Juliane Fürst, ‘Introduction: Late Stalinist Society: History, Policies and People’, in Late Stalinist Russia: Society between Reconstruction and Reinvention, ed. Juliane Fürst (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 1 19 (2).

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written to the composer to ask whether Prokofiev would not consider, besides adding the new ball scene, to ‘surprise everyone’ by also ‘throwing in’ something for Kutuzov – ‘another version of the plug-in aria or just new music’.70 The following month (26 August) he repeated the request: ‘Then did you invent anything for Kutuzov? This is highly desirable not only for the theatre, but also in connection with the upcoming concert performance of the opera, which this time will be especially solemn, as it is timed to the opening of the Philharmonic season.’71 Prokofiev’s reply at that time was negative: ‘I do not intend to change the music of Kutuzov’s aria, but of course I want to re-orchestrate it.’72 One year later, Samosud added his weight to this proposal, while also expanding its scope, pressuring Prokofiev yet again during the preparation of ‘War’ by suggesting the addition of still another tableau, based on the war council at Fili, which was called by Kutuzov after the Battle of Borodino to discuss with his generals whether to defend Moscow or retreat behind it. Referring specifically to Ivan Susanin and Prince Igor, Samosud described the need for a ‘dramatic . . . culmination in the development of the “War” of the second part . . . in which the fate of the war is decided’.73 It may have been in direct response to the recent resolutions that the savvy Samosud pressed further: Mendel’son remarks that it was in September 1946 that he, ‘full of ideas’, spoke repeatedly with Prokofiev about composing ‘Fili’.74 This was the third time that he had recommended an augmentation of Kutuzov, who was now to become the central hero in line with those of Russian epic opera. No longer would he be one of a group of recognizable military figures modelled on historical fact, on Tolstoy’s novel, or on contemporary war films: he was to stand alone as a heroic embodiment of the nation. A reinterpretation of Kutuzov’s role at the war council at Fili had already begun in pre-war historical writing. The account by Yevgeniy Tarle can be considered standard.75 In his Napoleon, Tarle states that at this meeting 70

71

72

73 74

75

RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 505, ll. 10 11, quoted in Medvedeva, ‘S. S. Prokof’yev i S. I. Shlifshteyn v perepiske 1940 x godov’, p. 209. RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 505, ll. 12 19. In Medvedeva, ‘S. S. Prokof’yev i S. I. Shlifshteyn v perepiske 1940 x godov’, p. 212. 30 August. VMOMK f. 538, yed. khr. 22, l. 1 1ob. Medvedeva, ‘S. S. Prokof’yev i S. I. Shlifshteyn v perepiske 1940 x godov’, p. 214. Samosud, ‘Vstrechi s Prokof’yevïm’, p. 155. Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 41. ‘Professor Tarle, a great historian exiled in the course of the Socialist Offensive, was invited to glorify Kutuzov and the magnificent performance of the Russian nation in 1812.’ Ronald Grigor Suny, The Structure of Soviet History: Essays and Documents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 191.

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Kutuzov ‘categorically decided to save the other half [of the army] and give up Moscow without a new battle’.76 This decision was presented as a masterstroke of military cunning. Tarle referred to it elsewhere as ‘the ingeniously conceived and brilliantly executed tactical march towards Tarutino, one of the Field Marshal’s greatest achievements’.77 During the war this representation found its way into the theatre and cinema. One example is the film Kutuzov, directed by Vladimir Petrov in the summer of 1943 (soon after the victories at Stalingrad and Oryol–Kursk).78 Tarle himself is named as a ‘consultant’ in the opening credits, and the film was awarded a Stalin Prize First Class in 1946. Along with a number of plays – V. Solov’yov’s Field Marshal Kutuzov, I. Bakhterev and A. Razumovsky’s Military Leader Kutuzov, and Sel’vinsky’s Field Marshal Kutuzov79 – Petrov’s film may have made an impression on Samosud, who had himself invited Tarle to act as a consultant at the Bolshoy back in 1939.80 In Tolstoy’s account of the council at Fili, Kutuzov ‘knows that the discussion is nonsense, because somehow, at some time, for some reason, the decision to abandon the city has long been made’:81 he is aware that numerous factors beyond his control have made it necessary to retreat. In Petrov’s film, however, after the generals Barklay de Tolli and Benigsen have debated whether to fight the French or retreat behind Moscow, Kutuzov, shot in a close-up and bathed in reverent light, simply raises his hand and with a solemn voice pronounces his firm resolution: ‘With the power given to me by His Majesty, I order a retreat. Russia is not only Moscow. If we lose Moscow and preserve the army, all is not lost. If we lose the army, then we shall save neither Moscow, nor Russia. The responsibility for this I take upon myself.’ The Fieldmarshal (played by Aleksey Dikiy) is clearly above the petty dispute between the generals; indeed he pays no 76

77

78 79

80 81

Kutuzov ‘kategoricheski reshil spasti druguyu polovinu i otdat’ Moskvu bez novego boya’; Yevgeniy Viktorovich Tarle, Napoleon (Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo akademii nauk S.S.S.R., 1940), p. 261. Yevgeniy Viktorovich Tarle, Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia, 1812, trans. G. M. [no full name given] (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1942), p. 148. Another heroic representation appears in Mikhail Bragin, Fel’dmarshal Kutuzov, trans. Joe Fineberg (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1944). Kutuzov (Mosfil’m, 1943). This film was released in February 1944. According to Richard Stites, during the war ‘[p]lays about Kutuzov dominated the historical genre with the parallels heavily underlined’. Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 107. Perkhin, Deyateli russkogo iskusstva i M. B. Khrapchenko, p. 513. Morson, Hidden in Plain View, p. 221. Morson states that in Tolstoy’s novel ‘the War councils were all send ups’ (p. 223).

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attention to it, but sits apart, head in hand, absorbed in his own thoughts. When he speaks it is as a supreme commander with no doubt whatever in the correctness of his decision. Prokofiev was very reluctant to compose ‘Fili’, and gave in only after a show of resistance that ‘lasted several months’.82 Then, numerous attempts at the central aria (as many as eight) were rejected by Samosud, until Prokofiev delivered an ersatz folk theme borrowed from Ivan the Terrible.83 Previously, Kutuzov’s role in the opera was limited to two brief appearances. Now an entire tableau, forming the crucial turning point of the work as a whole, is devoted to a presentation of his military strategy, upon which he then reflects in his extended aria. Kutuzov announces his decision to retreat and predicts the outcome of the war: an exact parallel to the image presented in other media. Even before the aria itself, the heroic stature previously belonging to the people and the army is transferred, in thematic terms, to the Fieldmarshal. A major element in the musical basis of ‘Fili’ was ‘Incomparable people’, Kutuzov’s arioso from ‘Borodino’ that related to the resilience of the fighting forces. When the theme reappears in ‘Fili’, however, it has been transferred to Kutuzov, bestowing on him the heroic dimension. It is heard (in horns and tuba) as he presents to his generals the alternatives of engagement or retreat, where his language already suggests that he favours the latter (fig. 371). After the debate between the officers, it returns as he gives his verdict that ‘by abandoning Moscow’ they ‘will prepare a certain death for the enemy’. From a stable C major, through a brief hint of B at ‘death’ (where a fragment of the ‘War’ motif appears in the lower strings and tuba in its original key), the theme makes a momentous return in the military-heroic key of B♭ major, and in both voice and orchestra, precisely at Kutuzov’s announcement of his decision: ‘By the power given to me by His Majesty, for the good of the country I order a retreat’ (fig. 375+7, Example 3.3). Thematically and harmonically this is the climactic moment of the first half of the tableau. The ‘Incomparable people’ theme appears again as the last section of the long aria that is the tableau’s second half (ABACD (fig. 387)), forming a frame around it. The strong link between the commander and his troops is severed as a result, while the connotations of the overall war effort have been reduced, with attention given instead to Kutuzov’s singular foresight and strength of will. The aria as a whole is incongruous for its length and tone of solemn introspection, bearing even less correspondence to the style of the original opera than any of the previous additions (figs. 379–89). It is 82 83

Samosud, ‘Vstrechi s Prokof’yevïm’, p. 154. Samosud, ‘Vstrechi s Prokof’yevïm’, p. 157.

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Example 3.3 War and Peace, final version, Part 2, tableau 10, Kutuzov’s order to retreat

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Example 3.3 (cont.)

in direct imitation of central monologues from the nineteenth-century Russian models suggested by Samosud, and through it Kutuzov attains the stature of a Susanin or Igor, embodying as they do a national struggle against a formidable foreign enemy. This representation was diametrically opposed to that of Tolstoy, for whom Kutuzov’s decision was the only option in the circumstance – and therefore no decision at all, as the war council in the novel presented the impossibility of individual action to shape history. Instead the character was brought into line with the portrayal by contemporary historians, biographers, filmmakers, and playwrights (Solov’yov’s Field Marshal Kutuzov, which was awarded a Stalin Prize, had in fact undergone similar revisions84). 84

According to Harold B. Segel, ‘it was principally in the delineation of the character of Kutuzov that Solovyov introduced the most significant revisions . . . the heroic stature of Kutuzov is magnified by the total elimination or reduction of those scenes devoted to the politics behind Kutuzov’s appointment and the old soldier’s doubts surrounding the formulation of his strategy’. Harold B. Segel, Twentieth Century Russian Drama: From Gorky to the Present, 2nd edn (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993),

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Later in 1947, the main melody of Kutuzov’s aria was chosen as the basis for an entirely new final chorus. This continued the pattern of development of the last tableau, which became a static series of set pieces, while its new thematic connections delivered a radically different message.85 The most prominent reminiscence material was originally the chorus of militiamen (see Table 3.2). In the brief ending, it had reappeared with the commander’s praise of the efforts of soldiers and partisans (Example 3.4): ‘Glory to the Russian soldier! Russia will not forget you. Glory to the Russian people!’86 This theme had already been eliminated from the tableau by 1943. Kutuzov’s entry with the soldiers is marked by the return of ‘Incomparable people’ as he thanks the assembled crowd for their good service (fig. 548), but, as we have seen, since the addition of ‘Fili’ this theme had become connected with Kutuzov himself, an association that receives powerful confirmation in the final scene. Its treatment at his entrance is directly foreshadowed in the last section of his ‘Fili’ aria, with which it shares the key of A major. Additionally, it provides the basis for a lengthy transitional passage in the middle of the new final chorus (fig. 554), modulating from B♭ major to A major. The massive final chorus itself is a reprise of Kutuzov’s aria, together with an emphatic return to B♭ major (figs. 550–9).87 Lasting approximately ten minutes in performance, the chorus is self-contained in form, static and removed from the action, and addressed to the audience. Kutuzov’s aria was his reflection on the decision to retreat behind Moscow; when its melody became the foundation for the final chorus, it implied the whole nation’s meditation on that crucial moment. Credit for victory is assigned to Kutuzov himself, as the text praises him above the army and the people: the last words in the opera are ‘Glory to our sacred country, glory to the Russian army, glory to Fieldmarshal Kutuzov, hurrah!’ In most productions he stands centre stage, surrounded by the army and partisans. Part 2 of the opera, ‘War’, was now not framed by two appearances of the chorus of militiamen, but instead by the thunderous Epigraph (added by Prokofiev in September 1942 as a new opening to the opera after

85

86 87

pp. 299 300. A more detailed description of the play and the revisions to it appears on pp. 300 3. The revised version of the play is published in Vladimir Solov’yov, Istoricheskiye dramï (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye izdatel’stvo, 1960). Overall it became more like an oratorio, at a time when the oratorio was taking over from opera as the most prestigious musical genre (Frolova Walker, ‘The Soviet Opera Project’, 203). RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 36, l. 27ob. The return of B♭ is intensified by having two of the chorus’s six sections in keys adjacent by semitone, B major (figs. 550 3) and A major (figs. 554 5).

Second Revision, Part 2: Kutuzov’s Victory

Example 3.4 War and Peace, original version, Act V, tableau 11, conclusion of the opera

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Table 3.2 Revisions to tableau 11, 1942–52, with thematic reprises April 1942 (first version)

Theme

1. Introduction. Three pairs of French soldiers retreat 2. French with prisoners, including Pierre and Karatayev 3. Tikhon on the lookout 4. Denisov, Dolokhov, and partisans 5. The partisans attack

Theme

1. Introduction (Snowstorm). Ramballe and Bonnet retreat (fig. 498) 2. No changes (fig. 508)

A, B, A C

6. Pierre and Denisov

7. Tikhon, Fyodor, partisans, and prisoners 8. Pierre and Denisov 9. Chorus of partisans 10. Kutuzov’s appearance

April 1952 (final version)

A

Deleted Deleted 3. Revised (fig. 511) 4. Chorus of prisoners (fig. 520) 5. Revised (fig. 521) 6. Denisov’s arioso, and humorous section added (fig. 523+5) 7. Revised (fig. 530)

8. No changes (fig. 533) 9. No changes (fig. 538) D, C, D, C 10. Kutuzov’s humorous dialogue with B, A the partisans moved to Denisov’s part in Scene 6 (fig. 546) 11. Final chorus (fig. 550)

C E F, B

D, C, D, C

G, D, E, G

Themes: A: Chorus of militiamen B: Chorus ‘In the old way, like Suvorov’ C: ‘Victory’ D: ‘Incomparable people’ E: New chorus of prisoners F: Denisov’s arioso from ‘Borodino’ G: Kutuzov’s aria from ‘Fili’

complaints that it began with a lyrical scene, but later moved to the second half 88) and the grandiose final chorus. In the original version of the opera the three main war tableaux shared a thematic and narrative unity and provided a symmetrical form for the second half. When ‘Fili’ was added, 88

He had decided to include the Epigraph in lieu of another (heroic) tableau, ‘in view of the impossibility of introducing in the beginning one tableau more than eleven’. Letter of 10 September 1942. VMOMK f. 538, yed. khr. 28, ll. 1 1ob, in Medvedeva, ‘S. S. Prokof’yev i S. I. Shlifshteyn v perepiske 1940 x godov’, p. 194. Shlifsteyn replies that this is a wonderful idea. RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 505, ll. 8 9, in Medvedeva, ‘S. S. Prokof’yev i S. I. Shlifshteyn v perepiske 1940 x godov’, p. 198.

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and its themes became the dominant element at the end of the opera, this balance was upset. In this sense the opera had surpassed the models of Ivan Susanin and Prince Igor recommended by Samosud: neither uses the hero’s central aria as the foundation for the final chorus as War and Peace does. In the apotheosis, Kutuzov becomes fully depersonalized as the saviour of Russia and an individual symbol of victory. The message of a heroic Russian people was simultaneously displaced, in a way comparable to the lack of compensation offered to an expectant Soviet army upon their return from the front in 1945. After genre scenes and dialogue were excised, an audience would no longer have established familiarity with the partisans. The impression of variety and immensity in Prokofiev’s ‘War’, within which personal dramas unfolded, following the multiple perspectives found in Tolstoy, was considerably diminished, replaced by an ostentatious mass celebration of a leader figure. Thus the message of ‘War’ had been turned upside down. If before the opera ended with Kutuzov congratulating the Russian people and the army with their musical themes, now the people and soldiers sang Kutuzov’s praises to his theme. This reversal was parallel to the suppression of the many narratives conveying the bravery of ordinary people in the war by the single one of Stalin’s victory. Official involvement in revisions had begun by requesting greater heroism in the portrayal of the nation as a whole, in order to inspire audiences in the early days of the war, and ended by demanding an enormous enhancement of the central role of Kutuzov, in order to glorify Stalin.

3.5 Prokofiev’s Defeat The revised Part 2 was performed at a closed dress rehearsal in July 1947 and at a second hearing in October (although ‘Fili’ and the new final chorus were not yet complete and thus not presented at this time). The opera was criticized and the production postponed yet again, with objections now focused on ‘Shevardino Redoubt’ and ‘Moscow’ for their treatment of Napoleon and the French soldiers.89 Developments in official attitudes were again working against the opera: the post-war crackdown on Soviet society hardened in 1947, and the extreme xenophobia of the period meant that any neutral portrayal of Russia’s enemies was intolerable.90 A typical 89

90

Samosud, ‘Vstrechi s Prokof’yevïm’, p. 164. This was not the first time that the portrayal of Russia’s enemy had been criticized, although ‘Shevardino’ was cut from the 1945 concert performance and ‘Moscow’ was cut from the second and third performances, so they had had only a very limited hearing. ‘1947 seems to have been a significant turning point both economically and ideologically.’ Fürst, ‘Introduction: Late Stalinist Society’, p. 2.

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contemporary example of Russian heroism and foreign villainy is the two-part epic film The Battle of Stalingrad (1949–50), in which the director Vladimir Petrov and the actor Aleksey Dikiy – the very pair who had created the image of Kutuzov in the 1943 film – produced an exalted image of Stalin himself as Supreme Commander of the Soviet army.91 In between spectacular battle scenes, Stalin is seen in his office examining maps and detailing tactical manoeuvres to his colleagues, often only Aleksandr Vasilevsky, who is on hand mainly to offer obsequious approval of everything proposed by the vozhd’ (‘Very bold, Comrade Stalin!’ or a humble ‘Absolutely right, Comrade Stalin’). Plans are then put into practice at the front (often after a direct telephone call from Stalin), with unfailingly successful results. As the evil enemy, Hitler’s behaviour provides the sharpest possible contrast to Stalin’s wise composure: he is consistently hysterical with fury, and shrieks abuse at his generals. This had become the standard presentation, and in this context Prokofiev’s opera, with personalized French characters as in Tolstoy, could not be acceptable. According to Mendel’son, MALEGOT had almost fully prepared the production of Part 2 in the Autumn of 1947, but ‘official authorization was still not received, and there were complications’.92 In the meantime it had been replaced in the repertory by Vano Muradeli’s Velikaya druzhba (The Great Friendship), a work of purported political merit being staged in a number of Soviet theatres after its premiere in September, and intended to be performed as part of the celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. Its rejection by high-ranking officials after the performance at the Bolshoy was used as justification for a severe attack on music in the famous Resolution printed in Pravda on 11 February 1948, which denounced leading Soviet composers, including Prokofiev, for ‘formalism’.93 Nevertheless, consultations on War and Peace were ongoing. Mira entered in her diary for 12 or 13 February 1948 that ‘Today Seryozha went to the Committee on Artistic Affairs in connection with earlier discussions about revisions to War and Peace, in order that the second part of the opera would receive authorization 91

92

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Stalingradskaya bitva (Mosfil’m, 1949). Dikiy had successfully played Stalin on the stage and in the film The Third Strike (Tretiy udar, dir. Igor Savchenko), for which he received the Stalin Prize Second Class in 1949. For his performance in The Battle of Stalingrad he received the Stalin Prize First Class in 1950. Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 87. Dated 25 November 1947. ‘Ob opere “Velikaya druzhba” V. Muradeli: Postanovleniye TsK VKP(b), ot 10 fevralya 1948g.’, published on the front page of Pravda on 11 February and subsequently in Sovetskoye iskusstvo (14 February) and Sovetskaya muzïka (January Febuary issue).

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for production.’94 The composer had hoped to smooth its journey to the stage after the July 1947 audition by beginning a new opera, Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke (The Story of a Real Man), based on a best-selling novel of a real-life tale from the recent war. The two operas were auditioned together by the Kirov on 3 and 4 December 1948. This was the first hearing for Real Man and the last, as it turned out, for both; Real Man was ridiculed while War and Peace was given a mixed response.95 In January 1949 Prokofiev received a letter from well-meaning friends and fellow composers Nikolay Myaskovsky and Lev Knipper that outlined in explicit terms how he ought to approach (Soviet) opera. Knipper offered eleven specific recommendations in point form (opera should utilize a poetic ‘Pushkin-like’ text, include arias, duets, choruses, and full cadences(!), and avoid ‘complex ensembles’ and counterpoint), while Myaskovsky simply stated that ‘Opera must be written as Verdi wrote Traviata. It is necessary to understand that opera is first of all about song.’96 Because of poor health, Prokofiev was unable to work with his former consistency, and yet while occupied with other projects he continued to try to improve War and Peace, above all Kutuzov’s ‘Fili’ aria, retouching it many times between 1947 and 1952. Other revisions brought the theme of this aria into other tableaux, and introduced numbers such as the duet between Natasha and Sonya in tableau 1 and a new chorus of Russian resistance in ‘Moscow’ (figs. 413–21 and 434–6). MALEGOT hoped to stage the opera in spring 1950, but Prokofiev was told at another meeting with the KDI in February of that year that, in Mendel’son’s record, At present there are no hopes of obtaining permission for a production soon. Evidently Seryozha became very agitated, because he asked ‘what on earth shall I do, burn the opera?’ . . . They assured him that War and Peace will go on after productions of several operas on contemporary subjects were realized.97

The government continued to commission operas, for example announcing generous funding in early 1949 for twelve new works at the Bolshoy, 94

95

96

97

Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 105. RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 621. ‘Protokol zasedaniya v Malom opernoy teatre s obsuzhdeniyem 2 y chastï operï “Voyna i mir”, pokazannïy v kontsertnom ispolnenii’ (4 December 1948). The contributors included critics, singers, and bureaucrats, and there were strong views on both sides. The overall result was again negative, however, and on 5 December Prokofiev proposed a severely reduced version of the opera, known as the fourth version. His plan was published in the 1958 score, pp. 5 7. RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 126, ll. 1 2. ‘Zapis’ vïskazïvaniy N. Ya. Myaskovskogo i L. K. Knipper ob opere’ (28 January 1949). Diary entry of 10 February 1950. In Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 167.

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but none of these was produced.98 The Soviet opera project had ground to a halt, as had film in what was known as the malokartin’ye (‘film famine’), under the severe restrictions of late Stalinism. In spite of all efforts, War and Peace failed to reach the stage during the composer’s lifetime in a complete performance. A number of theatres staged the work in incomplete form during the five years following the composer’s death in 1953.99 The opera in its final version at last received an administrative stamp of approval in 1958 by its publication as part of the complete works, and by the subsequent spectacular production by the Bolshoy in 1959. Containing all revisions and longer than the original by one hour (totalling almost four hours: see Table 3.3), this has been the standard version ever since.100

3.6 Critical Reception In spite of all the interventions made during its composition, there has been little controversy over the final version of War and Peace. This is probably due to change, since debate will presumably open up now that the first version has been performed and is due to be published. But it remains the case that there has been hardly any critical defence of it as an independent work, even by scholars aware of the potential existence of an authoritative edition. A substantial study was published in 1976 by the Russian musicologist Anatoliy Volkov, who had examined all the manuscript materials held in Moscow archives.101 A major focus of Volkov’s book is the impact of revisions on the structures of single tableaux and the opera overall. His central claim is that they improved balance and symmetry. However, it is not convincing that the examples he presents are desirable either in themselves or preferable to the symmetrical forms of the original opera they replaced. His arguments on behalf of large-scale blocks of thematic statement and restatement appear arbitrary, since in almost every case he states a preference for the final version over the original, claiming in his summary that

98 99

100

101

Vlasova, ‘The Stalinist Opera Project’, pp. 169 70 and 174. Malcolm Brown, ‘Prokofiev’s War and Peace’, 332. Brown calls the fifth version ‘Prokofiev’s final statement’. The timings are from the more or less complete recording by Valery Gergiev with the Kirov Chorus and Orchestra from 1991. The liner notes do not mention revisions, claiming instead that ‘the present recording stands in essence exactly as Prokofiev planned the work’. Philips Classics Productions 434 097 2, 1993. Volkov, ‘Voyna i mir’ Prokof’yeva. Perhaps not inappropriately, the cover of Volkov’s book features an image of Kutuzov surrounded by his aides.

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Table 3.3 Final version of War and Peace, 1952 Tableau Part 1

Overture Tableau 1 Tableau 2 Tableau 3

Part 2

Tableau 4 Tableau 5 Tableau 6 Tableau 7 Epigraph Tableau 8 Tableau 9 Tableau 10 Tableau 11 Tableau 12 Tableau 13

Garden and home of the Rostov family Ball at the home of a grandee from Catherine the Great’s time In the hall of Prince Bolkonsky’s mansion Party in the home of the Bezukhovs Dolokhov’s study A room in Akhrosimova’s mansion Pierre’s study A bastion at the field of Borodino Shevardino Redoubt during the Battle of Borodino A hut at Fili A street in Moscow, occupied by the French A dark hut at Mïtishchi Smolensk Road TOTAL

Duration (min sec) 4 58 11 03 19 55 11 00 10 11 10 20 20 45 10 52 4 57 31 59 10 19 18 07 32 11 13 27 20 23 230 27

[m]ost often the result of revision was greater solidity, definiteness, and completeness of musical structure. In a number of examples such a result is connected with the [composer’s] adoption of a traditional scheme. This was achieved by the establishment of new (and by the strengthening of previous) thematic, intonational, harmonic, and other connections, and sometimes also compositional re planning . . . Most important for the strengthening of the musical construction are the new thematic reprises and tonal connections.102

His overall conclusion is that ‘the final version is richer in song, surpassing its predecessor in stability of musical form. In practice up to now it has been preferred and probably will continue to be preferred, according to the wellknown principle that opera is a musical work first of all.’103 For Volkov, traditional numbers and formal schemes were self-evidently superior to, more ‘musical’ than, Prokofiev’s method of connecting shorter numbers and episodes. Writing during the nadir of Brezhnevite stagnation, Volkov makes no mention of the ideological content of the revisions and the resulting thematic links. Yet his prediction has proved correct: no critic seems willing to contradict the accepted view that the revisions resulted in a better work. 102 103

Volkov, ‘Voyna i mir’ Prokof’yeva, p. 112. Volkov, ‘Voyna i mir’ Prokof’yeva, p. 121.

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Caryl Emerson argues on behalf of the final version from the perspective of Tolstoy’s aesthetics, suggesting that ‘as Prokofiev revised his opera, he realised more of the Tolstoyan potential in it’.104 She ‘seeks to keep the whole of Tolstoy in view’, looking primarily through the lens of his late treatise What Is Art?, which promotes ‘infectiousness’ of feeling as the most important criterion for art.105 With its arias, choruses, and dances, and popular appeal, Emerson believes the final version would have been enjoyed by the author himself (‘Tolstoy would have loved it.’).106 In one of the chapters of War and Peace Tolstoy famously lampooned the artificiality and pretentiousness of opera, but Emerson does not wish to be limited by the aesthetic, political, or philosophical views set forth in the novel. This is a necessary step for her, for to judge on the basis of the novel would make very difficult any separation of politics from aesthetics in an assessment of the opera.107 However, since opera is the domain of the composer, Tolstoy’s views are probably relevant only insofar as Prokofiev sought to adopt them – and he clearly followed the novel itself. The evidence regarding Kutuzov’s role that Emerson provides in support of her arguments is misleading, since she does not distinguish between his appearances in earlier and later versions of the opera. First she claims that Kutuzov is ‘the guiding spirit of Part Two’, and a ‘mirror-equivalent’ to the role of Pierre in the first half, stepping in to rescue Russia by expelling Napoleon and the French just as Pierre defends Natasha’s honour.108 This is accurate only for the revised version: in the original opera the Russian people themselves are seen to save Russia; Kutuzov is merely on hand to convey the nation’s gratitude. Second, Emerson proposes that ‘Kutuzov has nothing to do’ and is therefore in line with Tolstoy’s characterization (here she contradictorily returns to the novel and its philosophy of history for support).109 But ‘Fili’ was added by Samosud for the opposite reason, precisely in order to show Kutuzov taking decisive action that determines the outcome of the war. This intention, I have argued, is driven home in both text and music. 104

105 106 107

108 109

Caryl Emerson, ‘Leo Tolstoy and the Rights of Music under Stalin (Another Look at Prokofiev’s Party Minded Masterpiece, War and Peace)’, Tolstoy Studies Journal, 24 (2002), 1 14. Emerson, ‘Leo Tolstoy and the Rights of Music under Stalin’, 3. Emerson, ‘Leo Tolstoy and the Rights of Music under Stalin’, 2. Emerson, ‘Leo Tolstoy and the Rights of Music under Stalin’, 6. Recognizing that Kutuzov became a ‘Stalin surrogate’ as the opera was revised, she accepts that the opera goes against Tolstoy’s political views. A link between the presentation of Kutuzov and the image of Stalin in the final version of War and Peace has also been recognized by Taruskin, ‘War and Peace’. Emerson, ‘Leo Tolstoy and the Rights of Music under Stalin’, 4 and 5. Emerson, ‘Leo Tolstoy and the Rights of Music under Stalin’, 9.

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Others who have stated a preference for the revised version of War and Peace include Yuriy Kholopov and Levon Hakobian.110 The consensus is that the first version suffers from a ‘lack of singing’. But it has been too hastily dismissed, and a debate on the relative merits of potentially competing versions should be encouraged. The final version suffers at the very least from eclecticism. No matter what one makes of the added tableaux, numbers, or thematic reprises themselves, these insertions are heard as insertions: they fail to blend into the musical fabric and disturb an otherwise carefully controlled structure and dramatic momentum. Most revisions (especially later ones) were almost haphazardly pasted in, as if the composer in frustration were highlighting the violence being done to his work. Unity and uniformity were disrupted, but the KDI’s Wagnerian, ‘symphonic’ ideal was also never achieved, or even attempted, since the opera was not recomposed but ‘improved’ bit by bit. Many revisions produce a jarring effect: in ‘Borodino’, the account of the Smolensk refugees is followed immediately and rather insensitively by the jolly chorus of militiamen; in the same tableau the extension of Kutuzov’s arioso is far too long and very clumsy; and the two lengthy reminiscences of the B-minor waltz from ‘Ball’ in both ‘Borodino’ and ‘Mïtishchi’ are oddly, even absurdly, out of place. The jolts are not only the result of the revisions’ crude placement, but their basic inappropriateness to the idiom of Prokofiev’s original. The revisions represent a different approach and attitude towards continuity, timing, and expression, to the treatment of the voice and the handling of thematic returns. Dances, duets, arias, and choruses replace vivid genre scenes and stall the action. The waltz as representation of the love between Natasha and Andrey recalls Traviata and Onegin, and the duet of Natasha and Sonya (which added four minutes to tableau 1, half its original length) is a copy of the one in Act I, scene 2 of Pikovaya Dama (indeed it is based on another part of the same original text, Vasiliy Zhukovsky’s elegy ‘Evening’ [Vecher] of 1806).111 While Prokofiev undoubtedly softened his attitude to tradition in his later years, he always maintained an absolute 110

111

Kholopov calls Kutuzov’s aria ‘inspired’, comparing it to other examples that use triadic harmony to represent peacefulness, purity, etc. Yuriy Kholopov, Sovremennïye chertï garmonii Prokof’yeva (Moscow: Muzïka, 1967), p. 34. Hakobian considers Prokofiev’s original to be ‘rather monotonous’, and instead praises ‘the magnificent hymn like aria of Kutuzov, one of Prokofiev’s happiest melodic inspirations’. Levon Hakobian, Music of the Soviet Age, 1917 1987 (Stockholm: Melos Music Literature, 1998), p. 193. Samosud added the singing parts to their dance during rehearsals, causing Prokofiev to react with shock and anger until he realized he was not in a position to resist. Samosud, ‘Vstrechi s Prokof’yevïm’, p. 147 8.

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opposition to epigonism (of the kind that was actively promoted under socialist realism), and to bland universalism over the subtlety and complexity of individual experience. The eclecticism of the final version was a result of the involvement of numerous contributors, including a musicologist, a film director, and a conductor, with the KDI operating behind the scenes. Collaboration was the preferred norm for Soviet opera, as inexperienced composers were expected to draw on the expertise of established and approved librettists and theatre directors.112 But eclecticism manifested a central tendency of socialist realism at a deeper level. Studies of socialist realism have revealed its roots in the transformative goals of the artistic avant-garde and the influence of Nietzsche.113 The Bolsheviks held that the society they were building was ‘post-apocalyptic’, that they were in a position to judge the great from the decadent in previous cultures, and in creating suitable forms for Soviet culture could draw on preferred models from the history of world art.114 In practice it was Tolstoy’s aesthetics of ‘infectiousness’ from What Is Art? that informed socialist realism: the idea that the proper role of art is the communication from creator to audience of ‘feeling’, for which the Party substituted ideology.115 This points to a further lapse in the logic of Caryl Emerson’s main argument – ‘as Prokofiev revised his opera, he realised more of the Tolstoyan potential in it’ – since the work not only departed further from the novel, but in becoming more ‘infectious’ it realized instead more of its Stalinist potential. Owing to the nature of the mass audience as well as the tastes of their leaders themselves, the creation of the new society (formerly the goal of the avant-garde) and a new human being (the dream of Nietzsche) was to be accomplished via a blend of Great Russian classics with folk and popular styles. It would be a mistake simply to read the revised War and Peace as a retrospective summary of nineteenth-century Russian opera without acknowledging that it corresponded to a general cultural regression that was intended to prop up the Party. As discussed in Chapter 2, an accord between the regime and an emerging middle class in the 1930s had led to the introduction of bourgeois aesthetic 112

113

114 115

Similarly, works of literature ‘were rewritten so many times in response to instructions issuing from a variety of sources that they lost their individual authorship’. Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism, p. 71. On the former, see Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism; on the latter, see Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalin (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002). Rosenthal, New Myth, New World, p. 48. See Richard Taruskin, ‘Molchanov’s The Dawns Are Quiet Here’, Musical Quarterly, 62/1 (1976), 105 15, for a discussion of Tolstoyan aesthetics and its Soviet adaptation.

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values. Opera, the supreme bourgeois high art, was perfectly poised to bear the standard for the new superpower, packaged now for an aspirational audience (recently peasants or proletarians). Once socialism had been achieved and the state had proven itself in the war, celebration of national triumph and promotion of patriotism was the prime objective. While the revised War and Peace did not meet with official approval or appear on the stage during the period, in manner and magnitude the opera epitomizes late Stalinist taste, and, like official portraits by Aleksandr Gerasimov or the new Moscow skyscrapers (1947–53), is representative of a ‘ponderous, monumental philistinism [meshchanstvo]’.116 In spite of Prokofiev’s talent and high standards, the opera’s excerpted numbers – especially the dances in ‘Ball’ and Kutuzov’s aria, so beloved of audiences and critics – bear comparison with these examples of Stalinist kitsch. The final version of War and Peace suits the larger and more conservative theatres in the West, where it remains popular enough that there would seem to be no commercial interest in considering any other version, while within Russia it fits with current nostalgia for the strong national power that Stalin once built.117 Although I do not attempt to make an argument for a single set-text of the opera, Prokofiev’s original should be considered a legitimate alternative. The critical edition of the original 1942 version which will soon become available should at least function as an aid to directors who wish to make substantial cuts with a freer hand, and, following the example of the Welsh Opera premiere, may also encourage performance in smaller theatres that at present would not be able to take on the opera’s extreme demands. For those sensitive to Prokofiev’s music, the final version of War and Peace will probably be unsatisfactory, a failed compromise. To those aware of the historical circumstances behind its numerous revisions, it must certainly sound jingoistic. There is a strong case to be made for the more intimate and nuanced work that Prokofiev, perceptively reading Tolstoy, sought to create. If the original version were eventually to hold the stage, it could return individual voices to those characters who were overshadowed by Kutuzov’s epic stature, and reestablish the composer’s own voice, which was overwhelmed by regulation of the mass arts under Stalin. 116

117

Vera S. Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 22. These other examples are my own. On this final point compare Frolova Walker’s comments on the recent production of Ivan Susanin. Frolova Walker, ‘The Soviet Opera Project’, 215 16.

4 The Story of a Real Man and Late Stalinist Subjectivity By 1947 Prokofiev had been a leading figure in Soviet musical culture for over a decade. As a composer of opera he had considerable experience, and after enduring varying degrees of intervention by the state in the composition and production of his previous three operas he should have gained an understanding of what the authorities (and audiences) expected from the genre. Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke (The Story of a Real Man, 1947–8), Prokofiev’s fourth, last, and most ‘Soviet’ of his Soviet-period operas, was a setting of a recently published and already popular and celebrated novel (1946) by journalist and youth writer Boris Polevoy. Real Man represents Prokofiev’s genuine attempt to comply with the authorities, and is the most self-effacing in compositional terms and in the plea that it represented for acceptance of his work, in particular the stalled production of War and Peace. Despite or perhaps because of the ongoing difficulties with that opera, he turned again to a high-profile tale of heroism, set in this case during the war from which the Soviet Union had just emerged victorious. A major difference from War and Peace is that the narrative of Real Man concentrates on the inner life of a single individual character, but regardless of this, there was plenty of opportunity to draw on the lessons from the reception of his other operas, relating in particular to his treatment of heroism on both individual and national levels. The Story of a Real Man is closely bound up with historical events, contemporary politics, and parallel works of art. Because of its subject matter and style it may appear as a mere artefact of the period, and its reception strengthens this impression, since the complete rejection that followed its audition in December 1948 effectively froze the opera in time; apart from a temporary defrosting for performance and publication during Khrushchyov’s Thaw, it remains, certainly in the West, a forgotten remnant of Stalinism and the early Cold War. Real Man was composed at the most difficult moment for Soviet opera; Prokofiev began work on it in the autumn of 1947 and completed it in the spring of 1948. In between these dates was the infamous official crackdown on composers, with meetings led by Zhdanov and the publication of the Resolution on music condemning the work of the elite group of internationally respected composers.1 1

[162]

‘Postanovleniye Politburo TsK VKP(b) ‘Ob opere “Velikaya druzhba” V. Muradeli’, in Vlast’ i khudozhestvennaya intelligentsiya: Dokumentï TsK RKP(b) VKP(b), VChK OGPU NKVD

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This was partially intended to restart the official opera project, but instead it effectively cancelled it, and during the following years productions of Soviet operas would decrease almost to zero. Prokofiev’s choice of such a well-known text, soon to be made into a popular and Stalin Prizewinning film, added an extra compositional challenge, as did the setting in the very recent past. From 1948 onwards any opera was going to be put under the microscope as never before, especially one based on a celebrated socialist realist novel, dealing with a familiar story of heroism from the war, written by a composer who had just been singled out for the sharpest criticism. In this context, and following Prokofiev’s lack of an acceptable response to the Resolution either in his creative work or in his conduct towards his peers and ‘managers’, Real Man was dismissed, and his opera career effectively finished; this marked the beginning of the final and least positive phase of his career (one could even call it a ‘postscript’, the word Eisenstein used at this time to describe the end of his own creative life2). Although the opera was intended to be an expression of his eagerness to achieve the status of, as it were, a Real Soviet Composer, it had the opposite effect. In my assessment of Real Man, I focus on one of its central themes, subjectivity. This is also appropriate as an angle of approach to the cultural and political contexts that surround the work. The struggle to overcome existing limitations and develop a new breed of human being was a major concern of ideology, myth, and ritual throughout the Stalin era. The focus on individual psychology, which was typical of Stalinism, increased during the 1930s and especially in the post-war period, once the New Soviet Man had proven himself in the war and returned home to address national problems. The opera deals with such themes as physical and psychological recovery, identity, will, body and mind, self and other, and love. Polevoy’s subject was taken from real life – the biography of the aviator Aleksey Mares’yev, who lost his lower legs yet overcame all obstacles in pursuing his seemingly impossible goal to fly and fight again. The novel describes the hero’s personal relationships and his devotion to the nation and to state goals, and is primarily concerned with his inner drives and emotions.

2

o kul’turnoy politike. 1917 1953, ed. Andrey N. Artizov and Oleg Nikolayevich Naumov (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnïy fond ‘Demokratiya’, 1999), pp. 630 1. After his first heart attack in 1946 he told Prokofiev: ‘Life is over all that remains is a postscript.’ Mira Abramovna Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, in Sergey Prokof’yev: K 50 letiyu so dnya smerti. Vospominaniya, pis’ma, stat’i, ed. M. P. Rakhmanova (Moscow: Deka VS, 2004), pp. 5 226 (104). Eisenstein had a second heart attack and died on 11 February 1948 (the same day that the Resolution on music was published).

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I suggest that the opera’s rejection was due to a failure to represent Soviet subjectivity in officially acceptable terms. This can be seen in two senses, both of which indicate that the composer held a fundamentally different idea of subjectivity, which corresponded to a liberal, post-Enlightenment understanding such as that which had governed Romantic aesthetics.3 The first of these is that a problem persists in this opera (just as in Semyon Kotko and War and Peace) with the achievement of Staliniststyle individual heroism in music and drama. Prokofiev remains concerned with traditional values of opera, concentrating again on the love story as the crux of the drama. In doing so, the opera fails to accord with the standard socialist realist narrative, and it suffered in comparison with both novel and film. The second sense, which I discuss in conclusion, is that of Prokofiev’s own attitude and actions in seeking to maintain creative autonomy, thus demonstrating that he himself had failed to develop into a Soviet subject. (This connects with the conclusion of the chapter on Kotko, partly because both operas address specifically Soviet history and themes.) In the case of Real Man there was scarcely any consultation with the arts administration during its creation, and no contemporary reception beyond its immediate dismissal at the audition. In comparison with War and Peace, therefore, much less material exists that would allow an assessment of the history of its composition and production.4 My investigation is based on the original piano score of Real Man (with markings for orchestration), which is held at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in manuscript form.5 This document is indispensable for any interpretation of the opera, since the published edition (1962) contains many revisions to both music and text that were made years after Prokofiev’s death.6 My account 3

4

5 6

For one major study of this topic, see Andrew Bowie, Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche, 2nd edn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). Just as Prokofiev might have been expected to be familiar with official demands for opera by 1947, at this point in this book we have also gained a clear idea of what those demands were, and I will not return here to the documentary evidence discussed in previous chapters. This is due as well to the limited relevance of reception, since my focus here is more interpretative. Furthermore, the Russian musicologist Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lobachyova has summarized much of the basic factual information on this opera in her book ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva: 60 let spustya (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2008). RGALI f. 1929, op. 1, yed. khr. 20 2. The opera was revised by Mira Mendel’son and performed on 8 October 1960 at the Bolshoy Theatre, conducted by Mark Ermler. There were cuts, a new three act arrange ment, and many changes to the text that eliminated Stalin era vocabulary and turns of phrase. A studio recording with further cuts was made in 1961 (Chandos 10002), and a piano score of the revised version was published in 1962 (Moscow: Sovetskiy kompo zitor, 1962).

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of Real Man includes comparisons with Polevoy’s novel and especially with Aleksandr Stolper’s film, which was released only two weeks before the audition. The problems that undermined the opera might have been predicted, taking into account official pronouncements going back to the 1930s. There was growing evidence that the song opera, folk song references, and lyricism in general no longer constituted the acceptable standard. Instead opera had to measure up to Ivan Susanin’s image of heroic self-sacrifice, generating powerful drama around this theme. Characters on the operatic stage were to be representatives of the nation, not absorbed in private passions; this had also been put to Prokofiev many times over during the reception of Kotko and the revisions of War and Peace. The other element that had been amply demonstrated to be essential was the monumental celebration of the victorious nation as a whole. This was certainly obligatory in the years after the Great Patriotic War, and something for which opera, after all, offered unique possibilities. As we shall see, due to the compromises made by the composer in attempting to create a socialist realist opera, Real Man not only lacks heroism but also suffers from an inconsistent aesthetic identity. Finally, Prokofiev himself remained an outsider, only partially understanding the rules of the game, but attempting nevertheless, through his own individual agency (his compositional efforts), to overcome impediments to his work. Before coming to a discussion of the opera itself, I begin with a brief discussion of Soviet subjectivity, to set up issues relevant to the novel, film, and opera, and their historical contexts.

4.1 Soviet Subjectivity Subjectivity remains a complex topic, one that is approached and even defined in different ways across and within a range of disciplines. The issue of subjectivity has become established as an important topic both in opera studies and in Soviet history.7 Since the 1990s, interdisciplinary opera studies have followed other humanities and social sciences disciplines in identifying subjectivity as a cultural construction, while also considering new ways of conceptualizing voice as a bearer of subjectivity. In Soviet history, after the revisionist rejection of the old ‘totalitarian’ view of individuals lacking autonomy and agency, scholars working on the 7

See, for example, the overviews by Lawrence Kramer (opera) and Lewis H. Siegelbaum (Soviet history), both of whom present subjectivity as one of three main current topics in their respective fields, in Lawrence Kramer, Opera and Modern Culture: Wagner and Strauss (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, ‘Whither Soviet History?: Some Reflections on Recent Anglophone Historiography’, Region, 1/2 (2012), 213 30 (216).

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Stalin era in particular have explored the ways in which Soviet subjects actively constituted themselves in relation to the state.8 The ‘postrevisionist’ generation of historians, many of whom were trained at Columbia in the 1990s under Stephen Kotkin, have addressed the theme of the normative self, or ‘illiberal Soviet self’, applying the theories of Michel Foucault.9 Jochen Hellbeck has studied personal narratives as they were recorded in diaries and memoirs, revealing the effects of ideology on the processes of Soviet citizens’ self-construction and individualization; Igal Halfin has investigated the Party’s attempts at surveillance over the inner lives of members and its procedures of inclusion and exclusion; and Oleg Kharkhordin has examined the individual’s relationship to the collective and the practices of self-disclosure and public penance.10 They have emphasized that state power and discursive practices created an alternative version of modern subjectivity. Sheila Fitzpatrick, the leader of the other, ‘neo-traditionalist’, school, based at Chicago, has focused on practical methods of survival and the performance of public life by citizens concerned with meeting material needs.11 She does not deal with ideology, and prefers the term ‘identity’ to ‘subjectivity’, as well as a corresponding methodological approach, believing that historians do not have access to the internal workings of subjects in the past. In the study of literature and opera, on the other hand, access to the inner lives of (fictional) subjects is possible, and my discussion of Real Man makes reference to both identity and subjectivity, with the intention of contrasting their representation in Prokofiev’s opera and setting this against norms of late Stalinism. To clarify the terms as I use them, I make a distinction between identity, relating to 8

9

10

11

See the review essay by Choi Chatterjee and Karen Petrone, ‘Models of Selfhood and Subjectivity: The Soviet Case in Historical Perspective’, Slavic Review, 67/4 (2008), 967 86. Stephen Kotkin made a particular impact with Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), as well as through his influential seminar at Columbia. Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Igal Halfin, From Darkness to Light: Class, Consciousness, and Salvation in Revolutionary Russia (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000); Igal Halfin (ed.), Language and Revolution: Making Modern Political Identities (London: Frank Cass, 2002); and Oleg Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999). Fitzpatrick’s important publications include ‘Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Russia’, Journal of Modern History, 65/4 (December 1993), 745 70; Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times. Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); and Tear off the Masks!: Identity and Imposture in Twentieth Century Russia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

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a public self of persona, social role, and duty, and subjectivity, relating to a private self of experience, memory, and desire. I will claim that the opera fails to bind these together sufficiently. I will also suggest that, in combination with the self-revelations of his operatic characters, the persona and actions of my historical subject, Prokofiev, also reveal something about his assumptions concerning the nature of human subjectivity, and this helps to explain the prejudice against him and his work. In order to consider these matters from a wider perspective, it will be useful to point to a distinction between theories of subjectivity, drawing on the following summary by Nick Mansfield: The theories of subjectivity that have dominated the second half of the twentieth century fall broadly into two categories: those that attempt to define the nature or structure of the subject (its ‘truth’), and those that see any definition of subjectivity as the product of culture and power. The former is associated with Freud and psychoanalysis, and the work of Jacques Lacan; the latter the work of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 1900) and Michel Foucault (1926 84). Both these models may seem surprising to those coming from outside the discussion. Where is the image of the subject as autonomous and free, as authentic and naturally occurring the subject of Rousseau and of Romantic poetry; the thinking, feeling, agent making its way through the world, giving expression to its emotions and fulfilment to its talents and energies? In short, despite the fierce antagonism between the different theories in the debate around subjectivity, they agree in seeing this older form of the subject the ‘individual’ as a mirage or even a ruse, either of language’s symbolic order or of power.12

Prokofiev held to the ‘older’, liberal, humanist idea of the self, the free and autonomous ‘individual’, and I suggest that Real Man expresses this form, as did Prokofiev’s manner of composing it and then defending it against criticism. The opera at certain points also reveals shadings of both a Freudian conception of subjectivity and the notion of subjectivity as produced by normative discourse, but these are far outweighed by its humanist outlook. My argument is that the work and the composer conveyed ideas related to subjectivity that conflicted with official ideology. A major feature of Soviet socialism – arguably its most crucial and distinctive feature – was the intention to construct the New Soviet Person, who would be the basic unit of a new society and lead the drive to bring industrial and agricultural capabilities up to the standards of the

12

Nick Mansfield, Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway (New York: New York University Press, 2000), p. 51.

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twentieth century.13 Russia, long regarded in the West as a backward nation, was indeed a long way behind much of Europe in terms of modernization, with a population consisting largely of a culturally primitive peasantry. For the Marxist, a member of the oppressed working class needs to become aware of his exploitation, but the Bolsheviks, as the vanguard of the revolution and in the absence of a capitalist economic system, did not wait for this awareness to materialize, but instead attempted to impose their own brand of consciousness on the population.14 From the beginning they sought to eliminate ‘bourgeois egoism’ and develop a ‘specific collectivist individual’.15 There is some debate over whether the Soviet Union was an (extreme) outcome of the Enlightenment, and presented an alternative modernity. It is evident that the Bolsheviks borrowed ideas originating in European thought, such as German Romantic ideals of selfdevelopment, but they applied these in an idiosyncratic way. In public statements they combined Marxist concepts with forceful slogans adopted from Nietzsche, sharing with the latter the notion of an embodied subjectivity and promoting the idea of a socialist superman whose primal and creative forces were to be directed by the Party and serve the state. The focus on the individual is most closely associated with the Stalin era, when there was a movement away from an idealized collective identity to an emphasis on consciousness, willpower, and the internalization of state priorities – from the mechanism to the human, as Vladimir Paperny 13

14

15

‘The whole Soviet experiment was a great experiment with human nature.’ Alexander Etkind, ‘Soviet Subjectivity: Torture for the Sake of Salvation?’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 6/1 (Winter 2005), 171 86 (174 5). According to Mikhail Agursky, ‘Lenin dreamed of creating a Russian homo novus: his idea of social revolution was inseparable from his idea of a cultural revolution which would purge the new, perfect society of old human types that were unfit for the future. Not man as such should be overcome, according to Lenin, but specifically Russian man. The contemporary Russian people was merely raw material for the future, a Nietzschean bridge for the process of national reconstruction for which no moral criteria were needed. To Lenin, the remaking of Russia was more a problem of cultural anthropology than a problem of class struggle in the Marxist sense.’ Mikhail Agursky, ‘Nietzschean roots of Stalinist culture’, in Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary, ed. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 256 86 (259). In the account of Andrey Sinyavsky (translated by Cheng), ‘Bukharin once proposed that the goal of the revolution was to “alter people’s actual psychology” and that “one of the priorities for scientific planning is the question of the systematic preparation of the new man, the builders of socialism”.’ Andrey Sinyavskiy, Osnovï sovetskoy tsivilizatsii (Moscow: Agraf, 2001), p. 115, quoted in Yinghong Cheng, Creating the ‘New Man’: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), pp. 23 4. The push to kul’turnost’ in the 1930s, discussed in Chapter 2, was a later aspect of this. Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia, p. 190.

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argued.16 In their overview of historical work on the Soviet Union, Alter Litvin and John Keep declare in no uncertain terms that ‘the Stalinist state tried harder than virtually any other, then or since, to shape the way its citizens thought and acted’.17 The arts were fundamental to this transformative goal, indeed their primary function was to mould the Soviet mind. Sarah Davies and James Harris state that ‘the function of the arts in the Soviet state was to contribute toward the building of socialism by what [Stalin] called the “refashioning of the human psyche”’.18 Literature in particular, and the novel above all, was to aid the creation of the New Man and Woman, providing a manual for Soviet subjectivity (aimed especially at the youth) through the thoughts and actions of prototypical ‘positive heroes’.19 As the purpose and content of socialist realism was confirmed in the early 1930s, writers were famously encouraged by Stalin to act as ‘engineers of human souls’. The master plot of the socialist realist novel, based on existing literary exemplars, was a historical allegory of the achievement of consciousness – not the Enlightenment consciousness of universal rationality, nor even the Marxist consciousness of class struggle, but a transformation of received values through a Nietzschean redirection of basic impulses towards the building of socialism.20 This was accompanied by the representation of a roster of spectacular heroes, real-life models worthy of emulation – Stakhanovite labourers, polar explorers, border guards – 16

17

18

19

20

Vladimir Paperny, Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture Two, trans. John Hill and Roann Barris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). See also Peter Fritzsche and Jochen Hellbeck, ‘The New Man in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany’, in Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared, ed. Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 302 41 (317). Alter Litvin and John Keep (eds.), Stalinism: Russian and Western Views at the Turn of the Millennium (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 131. Sarah Davies and James Harris, Stalin’s World: Dictating the Soviet Order (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 250. ‘Socialist Realism was designed mainly to produce heroes for podrazhanie that is, heroes that the readers would be able to imitate and with whom they could identify. This was a pedagogical endeavor to promote the emergence of the New Person.’ Malte Griesse, ‘Soviet Subjectivities: Discourse, Self Criticism, Imposture’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasion History, 9/3 (Summer 2008), 609 24 (618). While it is commonly assumed that the Soviet Union represented an extreme outcome of the Enlightenment, the result of excess rationality, that is to miss its Nietzschean, anti Enlightenment aspect. Kim Atkins points out that ‘[o]ne of Nietzsche’s most important criticisms of Enlightenment thinking is his denial that progress is made by increasing our level of consciousness. He thought that consciousness, with its emphasis on universal rationality, was bringing about a degeneration of human creativity and individuality to a common, herd like way of living.’ Kim Atkins, ‘Commentary on Nietzsche’, in Self and Subjectivity, ed. Kim Atkins (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), p. 72.

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whose extraordinary achievements were due to maximum strength of will.21 According to Kendall Bailes, aviators (‘Stalin’s falcons’) in particular were ‘prime exhibits of the “new Soviet men” whom the authorities wished to create’,22 and Slava Gerovitch reminds us that in April 1934 seven pilots were the ‘first Soviet citizens to be awarded the newly established title of Hero of the Soviet Union’.23 Many biographies of heroic Russians of the recent past also appeared at this time, and multimedia art forms, notably film but also opera, were recognized for their particular capacity to magnify these heroes, and provide further support for the narratives presented in socialist realist literature. But the project to create the New Soviet Person could never have been a complete success, and its results were decidedly mixed.24 Indeed, the Stalinist hierarchy, despite its consolidation of power by the mid 1930s, was aware that its lack of legitimacy and the empty claims of its propaganda could be perceived and disseminated, hence the Great Terror of 1936–8, and, after the relative freedom of expression during the war, the strict return of discipline in the post-war years.25 The state may have proven itself in victory, but the regime had felt particularly vulnerable during the war; aside from celebration, severe problems remained, and there was fear of future conflicts. The period of late Stalinism was a time of intense nationalism and xenophobia, with defences set up against the rest of the world as the Cold War began, and campaigns were established to eliminate any perceived internal dissension, while the Zhdanovshchina put the arts 21

22

23

24

25

‘“Nothing is impossible” and “Man can triumph over nature”’ are ‘thirties slogans’. Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 192. Kendall Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917 1941 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 391. They ‘had distinguished themselves during the Arctic rescue of the crew of the stranded icebreaker SS Chelyuskin.’ Slava Gerovitch, Soviet Space Mythologies: Public Images, Private Memories, and the Making of a Cultural Identity (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), p. 50. In his critique of work by Hellbeck and Halfin, Alexander Etkind has stated that ‘What is obvious is that Soviets who were enthusiastic about Soviet power internalized various projects of subjective self transformation, while others did not.’ Etkind, ‘Soviet Subjectivity’, 179. According to Etkind, ‘Soviet Subjectivity’, 185, and Griesse, who writes ‘Not only did imposture flourish in society; the regime could also easily be perceived as counterfeit and usurpatory. If we fail to understand this existential angst and vexing doubts in the face of blurred and denied reality, the launching of the brutal Terror in the 1930s remains inconceivable, in particular because it happened at a time when the regime seemed entirely consolidated, powerful, and monolithic.’ Griesse, ‘Soviet Subjectivities’, 620.

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under renewed pressure. The goal was to reach further into every aspect of society and to control Soviet subjects as never before: Juliane Fürst states that ‘[b]ehind these campaigns was an attempt to control the elusive “Soviet mind”’,26 and Alexander Werth, who lived in Russia during the period, describes them as manifestations of ‘that totalitarian regimentation of thought which was one of the main characteristics of the last years of Stalin’.27 Literature of the 1940s continued with themes familiar from the 1930s, but also developed the psychological trend that had been favoured during the war, and gave new emphasis to ‘the interrelation between one’s individual, private world and one’s public life and duties’.28 Victory was associated with the unique capacity of the New Soviet Man, whom writers were again called on to represent in all his glory (for example by Zhdanov in his post-war intervention). To encourage a positive outlook, socialist realism came to adopt two principles, beskonfliktnost’, ‘absence of major conflict’, and lakirovka, ‘glossing over reality with a bright smile’.29 As Katerina Clark writes, ‘although life in the Soviet forties was decidedly grim, the response of literature was to become “gayer”’. A particular incentive in all this was to address and inspire the youth, since there were many among the war invalids who needed to be motivated to reenter society in a productive way.30

4.2 Polevoy’s Povest’ Polevoy’s novel stands out as a work that exemplifies these features, and was among the most prominent contemporary expressions of heroic Soviet subjectivity. Set during the war, the novel ties personal identity to military capability, which is dependent on recovery from physical impairment. Polevoy was a youth writer, and his novel was surely intended for younger readers, focusing on camaraderie, love relationships, and the fulfilling of 26

27 28 29

30

Juliane Fürst, ‘Introduction: Late Stalinist Society: History, Policies and People’ in Late Stalinist Russia: Society between Reconstruction and Reinvention, ed. Juliane Fürst (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 8 9. Alexander Werth, Russia: The Post War Years (London: Robert Hale & Co, 1971), p. 201. Clark, The Soviet Novel, p. 194. Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society Since 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 119. Quoting from Zhdanov’s statement in the Resolution of the Central Committee, 14 August 1946, ‘The aim of literature . . . is to help the State to educate the youth . . . and its purpose is to portray the Soviet Man and his qualities in full force and completed ness’. Marc Slonim, Russian Theater: From the Empire to the Soviets (London: Methuen & Co, 1963), pp. 335 6.

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potential in the service of the nation. After being shot down by the Germans behind enemy lines and breaking his feet in the crash, Aleksey endures eighteen days in the forest before being picked up and cared for by kolkhozniks. Eventually airlifted to a hospital, his lower legs have to be amputated. He overcomes deep dejection by means of encouragement from a commissar he meets in his ward, and, as he begins his long process of rehabilitation, learning to walk on double prostheses, he regains his desire both to return to action and to preserve his relationships (particularly with his girlfriend Olga), which he feels are jeopardized by his disability. In his attempt to recoup his flying skills and get back to the front, he then faces a struggle with the bureaucracy (another common theme of the 1940s). Finally convincing military doctors and higher-ranking officers of his remarkable determination to fly again – partly by learning to dance during his stay at a sanatorium – he is able to return to training and to combat, and the novel ends with his strike on German aircraft during the battle of Oryol–Kursk. He is a national hero and an inspiration to others, which is confirmed at the end of the story through his relationship with a younger comrade at the front, as he himself takes on the mantle of the father figure. The representation of one of the most highly idealized types in Soviet culture, the intrepid airman, striving for self-realization through fulfilling his normal function in the face of extreme difficulties, serves, of course, as an analogy to the nation’s recovery from its war wounds and the rebuilding of its military and industrial capacities. Typically for a Soviet war novel, much of the story deals with the experience of psychological trauma (albeit in a superficial manner since Aleksey’s thought processes remain bound up with formulaic ideas). The novel is also an ‘outstanding later example’ of a genre of ‘journalistic mythology’, in which ‘an extraordinary event, taken from life . . . is recorded in literal detail’.31 While its main character and its theme were common in the post-war period, the setting of the novel during the war gave the author the opportunity to include vivid and indeed exciting moments – such as the two battle scenes that frame the narrative – which were often missing from later Soviet novels. It was also unusual in its form, which unites literary trends of high Stalinism and late Stalinism, dividing almost evenly in half: the first part recalls the 1930s emphasis on heroic feats, while the second part conforms to the 1940s focus on interiority as

31

The Story of a Real Man is an ‘outstanding later example of this Soviet genre’. Rufus W. Mathewson, The Positive Hero in Russian Literature, 2nd edn (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975), p. 190.

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well as the overcoming of official obstacles.32 As part adventure story and part psychological tale, the novel moves from the Nietzschean triumph over nature to the clash with the bureaucracy, from the adventure tale to everyday life, from the cult of the airman to the development of the hero into a leader figure (the nastoyashchiy chelovek of the title is a mature version of the novïy chelovek). The turning point in the novel occurs midway, demarcating the shift from one manner of narrative to the other; this is the standard initiation rite of the socialist realist master plot, when the ‘son’ hero is turned in the right direction through his contact with a wiser ‘father’ hero – achieving ‘consciousness’, renewing his mental state, and then pursuing his goal and inspiring others. The most significant departure from the real-life story is precisely the addition of this event, Aleksey’s encounter with a commissar, which was included by Polevoy in order to fit the formula. It is also notable that the story concentrates on individual identity and on a personal goal, rather than an explicitly community-building one: this correlates with the subjective aspect of heroism that was a theme of the 1940s rather than the 1930s. Povest’ was one of the most celebrated works of post-war fiction, and therefore the bar was set extremely high for an opera on this subject (as it was for War and Peace), while at the same time and for a number of reasons there were particular challenges involved in transposing the novel’s content and form.33 As we saw in Chapter 3, the Resolutions on literature, film, and the theatre affected opera even before the events of 1948, and the opera project had been a failing one since before the war. And then, 1948 was perhaps the least promising year in which to premiere a new opera (especially for a barely repentant ‘formalist’), and choosing a high-profile work of literature did not guarantee success but, on the contrary, invited greater scrutiny. Prokofiev did not enjoy the same ‘spiritual unity between writer and society’ as Polevoy did, since the latter had been involved in the war effort as a prominent war correspondent for

32

33

As Clark explains, ‘The change from heroic to organization man novel is a trend that begins in the late thirties and develops during the forties. Therefore, forties novels were in part organization man and in part heroic. The stock antagonist of forties novels was a bureaucratic opponent.’ Clark, The Soviet Novel, pp. 202 3. The novel had a critical and popular success, and received a Stalin Prize Second Class. For a summary of reviews, see Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva, pp. 18 19. Aleksandr Stolper’s film premiered on 22 November 1948. The film music was composed by Nikolay Kryukov, who also provided music for a radio play, and even wrote a symphony in three movements based on the novel. Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva, pp. 18 19.

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Pravda.34 Opera was also at a disadvantage in comparison with film, which had proven extremely useful as a propaganda tool. For a work on a contemporary topic, it would appear obvious in hindsight that monumental commemoration of the Soviet Union’s victory would have been preferred to an exploration of an individual’s psychological progression and a recapitulation of the horrors of war.35 The trend for static spectacle over narrative in this period led to a preference for the cantata or oratorio, essentially opera-minus-drama – a form we might label beskonfliktnaya opera – that was intended to inspire the audience with patriotic passion.36 Being in effect a ‘chorus opera’, the oratorio could replace the often insipid lyricism of the song opera with ostentatious yet straightforward expressions of national fortitude (hence the continued recommendations for composers to copy early Verdi). Meanwhile, lakirovka also had its contemporary application in music theatre: the popular operetta.37

4.3 Monologic Epic, Dual Styles The subject had been ‘strongly recommended’ to the composer in August 1947 by Vasiliy Kukharsky, a music critic and from 1946 to 1948 the deputy chief of the KDI’s main theatre management.38 Prokofiev followed his advice, having already decided to take up a contemporary subject, no doubt being attracted by the possibility of creating new images for the stage. He recognized there would be difficulties in setting Polevoy’s novel, but he admired its ‘optimism, sharply distinctive characters, patriotism, humanity, heroism and poetic quality’.39 Myaskovsky, a traditionalist in his operatic tastes, had concerns, in particular that there was a lack of 34

35

36

37 38

39

Such writers ‘had earned the trust and respect of the Soviet people by going “through the war as soldiers, officers, commissars, political agitators, and war correspondents”’. Anna Krylova, ‘“Healers of Wounded Souls”: The Crisis of Private Life in Soviet Literature, 1944 1946’, Journal of Modern History, 73/2 (2001), 307 31 (307), quoted in Juliane Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 129. See Fürst, ‘Introduction: Late Stalinist Society’, pp. 5 6. ‘There was the desire to ignore the trauma of the war, and a strong interest in non war related films.’ Elena Zubkova, Russia after the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945 1957 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), p. 35. On the cantata and oratorio, see Marina Frolova Walker, ‘Stalin and the Art of Boredom’, Twentieth Century Music, 1 (2004), 101 24. A conference on operetta took place in December 1943. Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 67. Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 67, 29 September 1947.

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female roles, but Prokofiev pointed out that Anyuta’s role would fill the gap left by the absent Olga.40 He made a firm decision by October 1947, and by the end of the month he had prepared a scenario and completed several sketches. The first section to be composed was scene 4, which he began on 23 October. He signed a contract on 27 November, and devoted himself to composition of the opera from 10 December. He had already (in the scenario) conceived of the ending, when Olga appears on stage just at the moment that Aleksey has achieved his dream of flying and decides to reveal all to her.41 The encounter of the lovers on stage is one departure from the novel, since they never meet in Polevoy’s narrative (an epilogue describes their lives together in the future). Apart from this modification, Prokofiev’s transposition of Real Man was faithful, as ever, to the form, characters, and tone of the literary source.42 This includes its psychological subject matter. As he claimed, ‘In representing my characters I was primarily concerned with disclosing Soviet man’s internal world, his love for the Motherland, and Soviet patriotism.’43 While surely this was another statement intended to assuage the critics, it is also in line with the turn towards greater psychological content – related to heightened lyricism – in Prokofiev’s mature works for the stage. According to Katerina Clark, who draws on distinctions made by Mikhail Bakhtin, the Soviet novel combined the novelistic and the epic, with the genre of the ‘monologic epic’ being favoured.44 This is certainly an accurate description of Polevoy’s novel, and it also fits Prokofiev’s opera, with the focus on a single character and narrative of recovery that is set out like a quest, as in the folk epic.45 Indeed, the transposition to opera 40

41

42

43

44

45

Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 67. Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 76. For a list of texts in the original score alongside Prokofiev’s ‘plan of quotations’ from Polevoy, including their location in the novel, see Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva, pp. 223 33. Taken from an interview in Vechernyaya Moskva, published 30 October 1947, in which Prokofiev discusses Real Man. Italics in the original. Patrick Colm Hogan writes that ‘[a]ccording to Bakhtin, in order for the novel to arise as a dialogic and heteroglot genre, the monologic and monoglot epic and all that which is fixed, sacred, authoritative must in some way be undermined.’ Patrick Colm Hogan, Philosophical Approaches to the Study of Literature (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000), p. 227. See Mikhail M. Bakhtin, ‘Epic and Novel: Toward a Method for the Study of the Novel’, in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 3 40. Vladimir Propp’s famous analysis of folk literature describes this narrative structure in detail (Propp’s work was also a major influence on Clark’s analysis of the Soviet novel). Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, trans. Laurence Scott, 2nd edn (Austin, TX:

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accentuated these features. Apart from the hero Aleksey, all other characters are literally in supporting roles, arriving at different points to aid his progress in various ways. Aleksey appears alone in the forest for approximately the first quarter-hour, is present onstage almost from beginning to end (he is absent in only four of the forty-four scenes), and remains at the centre of the drama at all times. Attention is fixed on him even when the spotlight is temporarily directed elsewhere, and the audience remains aware even of his offstage activity, which is crucial to the plot: practising to walk on crutches (no. 26), resting after his first dance at the ball (nos. 33 and 34), and flying back to the airbase after his heroic exploits in battle (no. 40). Other characters come and go, and the audience perceives them essentially through Aleksey’s eyes and ears – they exist primarily in terms of their relation to him. The main function of his closest comrade, Andrey, to take one example, is to offer reassurance and to encourage him to write to Olga (Andrey eventually takes the initiative himself). There are some apparent exceptions to this, in numbers or scenes which serve to situate Aleksey’s experiences in a wider national frame, or to provide comic relief, or simply to offer contrast within a rounded structure (e.g., ‘Everyone in the world gets married’ placed between dance numbers). But these too connect to the arc of his story and reflect on his condition, while reinforcing the progress from adversity to elation. This opera is thus the counterpart to Kotko: if there the central hero was overshadowed by his colourful cohorts, here the rest of the cast is in the background, almost part of the scenery, associated with Aleksey’s movement from one space – and related psychological state – to the next. This support network is confirmed and acknowledged by expressions of gratitude to those who offer assistance: Aleksey says ‘Thank you, dear one’ to a dead nurse for providing a tin of food (no. 2), and ‘Thank you, babushka’ to Vasilisa for her chicken soup (no. 11); Andrey thanks Granddad on his behalf (no. 14); at the end of the opera, Aleksey exclaims ‘And I say: thank you to you, Granddad Mikhaylo, and to my indominable strict professor and pure-hearted commissar. My friends, my dear country, my dream has come true, I’m happy again – thank you!’ (no. 41). Another overall function of the other characters is a more strictly musical one, in that they provide a patchwork of numbers which contrast with Aleksey’s arioso style. From the very beginning (by the end of September 1947) Prokofiev had decided that he would incorporate a selection of previously composed University of Texas Press, 1968). The traditional genres of folklore, bïlina or starina (folk epic) and skazka (folk tale), had been promoted at the time of the First Congress of the Union of Writers in 1934, with Gorky’s influence.

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Table 4.1 Outline of The Story of a Real Man, with recurring themes and dates of completion of tableauxa Act Tableau I

1 2

3

4 (begun 23 October 1947)

II

5 (completed 4 January)

6 (completed 25 January)

III 7 (completed 9 April)

Scene Introduction 1. Aleksey by the crashed airplane First entr’acte 2. The field of death 3. Olga’s song 4. A cannonade Second entr’acte 5. Scene with boys 6. Seryonka’s tale 7. Arrival of the kolkhozniks 8. Song of the kolkhozniks Third entr’acte 9. Song for trio 10. Scene 11. Arrival of old Vasilisa 12. Granddad’s aria 13. Scene of the approaching plane 14. Appearance of Andrey and departure 15. Aleksey’s delirium 16. The green grove 17. Scene of Klavdiya and the Commissar 18. The Commissar’s ballad 19. Scene 20. Klavdiya’s arioso 21. Scene 22. Kukushkin’s little song 23. Scene 24. Scene of Aleksey and the Commissar 25. Scene in the solarium 26. Duet of Anyuta and Gvozdyov 27. Aleksey’s arioso 28. The Commissar’s death 29. My sweet dream 30. Scene 31. Waltz 32. Scene and dance 33. Everyone in the world gets married 34. Scene and return of the dancers 35. Rumba 36. Departure of the pilots

Theme 1 2 3 4 5 2, 3 6, 7 6, 8, 9 10 10 11 7, 9, 12 8 9, 12 7 4 13 3 14

10 10 4, 2, 15 3, 13, 14 1 5, 16

1, 16 1

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Table 4.1 (cont.) Act Tableau

Scene

8 (completed 25 April) IV 9 10 (completed 11 May)

37. Barcarolle 38. Stalingrad 39. A letter 40. Waiting 41. Aleksey’s return 42. A second letter to Olga 43. Duet of Olga and Aleksey 44. A real man

Theme 4 15, 5 7 1 4 10

a Dates were written in the manuscript piano score. The dates of composition of the first three tableaux are unknown. The date for tableau 10 includes the completion of tableau 9.

vocal works and other pieces, dating back to the beginning of his Soviet career: there are five Russian folk song arrangements (from Opp. 104 and 109), four mass songs (from Opp. 66, 79, and 89), two numbers from film scores (Lermontov and Ivan the Terrible), and the March, Op. 99.46 The monological narrative is therefore overlaid with the structure (and style) of a song opera, with several thematic links between scenes (Table 4.1). Some scenes are dialogue-based, similar to those in his other Soviet operas (a few are entitled ‘stsena’), while others are self-contained numbers: ‘Pesnya kolkhoznikov’, ‘Ariya Deda’, ‘Ballada Komissara’. The supporting characters’ range of song types offered a variety that the opera would otherwise have lacked, including sketches of folk and popular music – rural and urban, tragic and comic. In the tragic category are the spoken narration, with accompaniment, by the boy Seryonka (no. 6), and the two songs by the nurse Klavdiya (nos. 16 and 20), while the comic is represented by Kukushkin’s chastushka ‘Anyuta’ (no. 22) (which in its original form had received second place in a Pravda competition in 1936), and the duet of Kukushkin and Andrey (‘Everyone in the world gets married’, no. 35). Meanwhile, Prokofiev’s usual style of melodic declamation and arioso constitute the medium of subjective expression, associated above all with Aleksey as the only ‘living’ (self-revealing and active) agent, articulating

46

Mendel’son recorded in her diary on 30 September that ‘Seryozha is going to include in his new opera The Story of a Real Man a series of his own arrangements of Russian folk songs.’ She narrates how he played through a selection of them and they together decided on the most appropriate location for each according to tableau. Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, pp. 67 8.

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the fluctuations of his inner life, and becoming more lyrical as he moves closer to achieving his goal. Overall, the musical structure of Real Man is thus something of an eclectic jumble of numbers connected by arioso: a combination, rather than integration, of lyrical monologic drama with mass songs and genre numbers. The numbers serve to complement the drama of Aleksey’s epic quest (partly by becoming less sombre as the opera progresses, to reflect his positive trajectory), but they are also removed from and pause the action. Prokofiev had by this time relaxed his opposition to static and non‘realistic’ singing, and given up the kuchkist conceit that songs should appear only when they could be justified as part of the diegesis (only a few meet this requirement). The arias and ensembles were part of a deliberate attempt to simplify his style, according to Mendel’son; this seems to have been the main lesson that he gained from criticisms of his previous operas.47 It was typical of Prokofiev in his Soviet period to think in terms of ‘two musics’, one of which was composed according to his standards of originality, the other addressed to the widest possible audience.48 The choice of topic and the intended idiom suggest that he was attempting to achieve a compromise between the two, to meet socialist realist requirements by writing a Soviet song opera without entirely relinquishing his individual style. But the genre of the song opera had been a (short-lived) mid-1930s paradigm for Soviet opera; authorities and critics had already rejected it as a model. And while the inclusion of so many numbers in Real Man was atypical of the composer, in other respects the work conforms to Prokofiev’s usual practice, and therefore there is a clash of styles, almost a collision of two different operas.49 The structure of Real Man was a further departure from the type of symphonic drama that had been stipulated repeatedly in assessments of War and Peace. Despite its tighter narrative flow, it is similar to that opera in being structured as an epic, with dramatic peaks and troughs rather than a steady build-up to a main climax. The ‘epic’ tradition – longstanding and prestigious as it may have been within Russian opera – was not favoured by the arts administration due to its lack of an overwhelming sweep towards a final apotheosis. (There are many other similarities with War and Peace in the music, the characters,

47

48

49

According to Mendel’son, Prokofiev was striving for a new musical language, for simpli city, and therefore included arias, duets, and choruses. Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, 14 April 1948, p. 109. See also Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva: 60 let spustya, p. 140. Morrison makes a similar point. Morrison, The People’s Artist, p. 321.

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and some settings, situations, and images, to the extent that it appears as a companion piece to the earlier opera.) The narrative as arranged in Real Man is essentially in three parts, corresponding to Act divisions: Act I (tableaux 1–3), Act II (tableaux 4–6), and Acts III and IV (tableaux 7–10). The first covers Aleksey’s ordeal in the forest and his acquaintance with the kolkhozniks as they bring him back to basic health. The second deals with psychological trauma following the amputation of his lower legs, when he experiences a loss of will and shuts himself off from others until a change in attitude occurs after his meeting with the Commissar. Acts III and IV, composed after the Resolution of 1948, follow Aleksey’s return to full participation in the war effort and restoration of his love life. This structure resembles the three layers of the modern self in Jerrold Seigel’s model, which is indebted to Freud: ‘first, a biological creature marked by material and bodily needs; second, a self that is deeply implicated in the social discourses and cultural codes of its origin; third, a reflexive self who possesses selfawareness’.50 In Act I, Aleksey’s physical survival is in question until he is helped by the kolkhozniks and the doctors. In Act II, the Commissar enjoins Aleksey to apprehend his special status within existing cultural codes. And from the beginning of Act III, Aleksey reflects on his predicament and pursues his hopes for the future. It is also possible to think of the opera as being in two parts, in accordance with the structure of the novel, with a division between tableaux 5 and 6 in Act II. The first part leads up to the turning point in the master plot when Aleksey regains his self-image, and the second begins where he finally appears on his feet (i.e., on artificial legs) and begins on the path to self-fulfilment. In accordance with the traditional features of the literary epic, Aleksey is not only at the centre of the drama, he is also set apart in terms of the straightforward and sincere way in which he articulates his inner life. Eric Naiman points to a core distinction between the novel and the epic, drawing from Bakhtin: ‘A character in the latter genre is completely transparent: “He sees and knows in himself only the things that others see and know in him. Everything that another person – the author – is able to say about him he can say about himself, and vice versa.”’51 Aleksey may be described as Prokofiev’s most self-revealing opera character, since there 50

51

This summary is taken from Chatterjee and Petrone, ‘Models of Selfhood and Subjectivity’, 968. Jerrold E. Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 3 44. Eric Naiman, ‘On Soviet Subjects and the Scholars Who Make Them’, The Russian Review, 60 (July 2001), 307 15 (314).

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is no barrier between what he knows about himself and what he discloses to the audience. He may not be the most affecting or even appealing of Prokofiev’s characters, but he has the most unselfconscious and direct manner of expression, uncoloured by irony, bravado, or sentimentality. He does not exhibit mixed emotions or great intensity of feeling; he is not inwardly torn, or enraptured, or obsessed. His arioso is heightened speech, lacking the repetition of idiosyncratic melodic moulds or rhythms that often suggests caricature in Prokofiev, and also avoiding elevation towards a pure, if generalized, emotion in song. He is not marked by a theme, or tune, because he cannot be so encapsulated. Many of his lines were adapted from the text of the novel, and because of the style of Polevoy’s writing they avoid both extremes of colloquial language and poetic embellishments. In the opera – and more generally within Prokofiev’s mature operatic style – he therefore occupies the middle of the musical spectrum. In this sense too, he is surrounded and balanced by representatives of both ends of the spectrum, characters typified by either coarse speech or pure song. This accords with the structure of the work, in which scenes devoted to Aleksey’s arioso are contrasted with both self-contained numbers and the contemporary vernacular of the dialogue sections. Along with the lack of symphonic development, Prokofiev did not ‘operatize’ this crucial role through powerful arias or heroic motifs.

4.4 Body and Mind: Physical and Psychological Trauma (Acts I and II) In the first part of the opera Aleksey struggles to survive and then to recover, overcoming both physical and mental trauma. As in the novel, the lengthy opening scenes in the forest are among the most gripping and dramatically convincing, and are enhanced in the opera by unusually realistic modern images. The curtain rises on the crash site, in the middle of a forest. Aleksey has been shot down, yet with heroic defiance he relates his exploits, and boasts about his survival. But this is the man before he becomes aware of his injuries. Upon trying to stand, he discovers that his feet are broken, and now, surrounded by a dangerous forest, behind enemy lines, in the cold of winter, lacking food, and in danger of being found by German patrols or wild animals, he must try to reach his comrades. In the first two tableaux, Aleksey makes his agonizing way through the forest and attempts to maintain hope and resilience. Using the novel’s text, and replicating its frank and sober tone, Act I follows Aleksey’s experiences through a series of short sections corresponding to his changing locations and states of mind. Prokofiev’s music is extremely simple and clear, almost

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naïve (was this a ‘youth opera’, corresponding to Polevoy’s style and audience?). Rhythm is matched to Aleksey’s mental state, with compound duple and triple metres for doubt and despondency, and square metres for tenacity and a sense of forward motion. The first number divides in two. In the opening section Aleksey expresses vexation towards the enemy as he relates the air battle, and proudly proclaims that he has remained alive ‘and in one piece’. This attitude is deflated as he tries to stand, where a pair of sharp chords match the gesture and the stabbing pain. The next section is an elegiac arioso as he recognizes his fate (fig. 20, E♭ minor, 6/4, Lugubre). But he must make an effort to move, and a more resilient tone follows in a D♭-major passage (fig. 22) with an assertive common-time march rhythm and a strongly functional bass line, as he attempts to begin travelling ‘to the east’, repeating the word ‘idti’ (‘to go’). A notable feature is that the narrative is closely connected to stage images, which are at least as powerful as the music (assuming a production based on the composer’s stage directions). As is usual in Prokofiev, these images are as realistic as possible, and this, combined with Real Man’s contemporary setting, adds a distinctive appeal to the opera.52 Prokofiev did not hesitate to remind his audience of the physical horrors of the war, even at a time when they were inclined to forget. One example is Act I, tableau 2, scene 2 (henceforth I shall use the form I/2/2), where Aleksey comes across the outcome of a skirmish in the forest, with corpses of Russian and German soldiers lying scattered among destroyed tanks (Aleksey also redundantly describes the scene). Prokofiev’s interest in the typical and telling detail is apparent in Aleksey’s discovery of a tin of food amid the debris (‘Banka konservov!’) and his statement that it will be preferable to the spruce tree bark he has been eating. The representation of physicality and bodily struggle serves the purposes not only of realism but also of the familiar progression from tragedy to triumph. From this (melo)dramatic perspective, the extremes of physical as well as psychological weakness and vulnerability needed to be portrayed in order for the narrative to be compelling. No enemies are present, but there are graphic descriptions of the Germans’ attack on the village in I/3/6 and I/4/11. In Stolper’s film, the scenes of the hero’s travail in the forest are very effective, while grisly details are avoided: there is no ‘field of death’, for example, and little of the kolkhozniks’ village and their story of 52

It has been observed that Real Man borrows structural elements from the cinema, and this is not surprising considering the composer’s well known interest in and experience with film. Other opera projects of the 1940s, especially the unfinished Khan Buzay and Distant Seas, also drew inspiration from film.

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catastrophe, whereas the scene of Aleksey shooting the bear is included (and features a real bear). An important factor in the narrative arc is the gradual ascent in Aleksey’s physical stature, and a corresponding increase in his mobility and personal freedom: from lying on the ground next to his aircraft after the initial crash, to kneeling, crawling, then hobbling on makeshift crutches through the snowy forest, later to lying on a low bed (in the village hut), to lying on a raised bed (in the hospital), to his struggle with prostheses and crutches, then walking, dancing, and – finally! – flying (although the audience is left to imagine this last stage). Aleksey travels through a series of spaces, which, like the supporting characters who are associated with each location, serve to reflect his inner state; his personal progress is paralleled in the settings and the lighting effects that surround him. Beginning in a dark and dangerous forest, he moves to a dark but cosy peasant hut, then to a partially lit hospital ward, to a solarium within the hospital, to a sanatorium in the countryside, and, after pausing for a moonlight idyll on a lake and a moment of solitude in a lamplit room in Moscow, to the bright open landscape of the airfield during battle. There is also a corresponding change of seasons, from winter to spring to summer. As a monologic epic, Real Man has something in common with the monodrama, and indeed some features of the opening scenes – the forest, tense atmosphere, the anguished searching for an absent loved one – are reminiscent of Schoenberg’s Erwartung (1909). There is, however, no narrative ambiguity in the first part of Real Man, and the main character does not remain alone. Act I features two crucial encounters. At a particularly low ebb for Aleksey, he arrives at an impasse, and asks himself ‘Is this really the end?’ But thoughts of his girlfriend arise as he takes out her photograph. He starts the first phrase of a song, only to pause and repeat his question. At this point Olga herself materializes and sings the song to him: she appears on stage ‘as in the photographic image he is contemplating’, a remarkable bit of staging that gives representation to the activity of his imagination (Example 4.1). Olga’s song can be described as ‘metadiegetic’, using a term from film music theory, in that here ‘we are privileged to read [the character’s] musical thoughts’.53 The same applies in visual terms, since the audience is offered an image of what Aleksey sees in the photograph. This is another example of a cinematic effect, and it seems quite striking in opera (it was also a trick by which Prokofiev could achieve his usual goal, to find ways to 53

Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 23.

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Example 4.1 The Story of a Real Man, Act I, tableau 2, no. 3, Aleksey’s vision of Olga TRANSLATION: Olga: Remember, dear, how on the Volga shone the bright pink glow of a June day. We stood silently for a long time, and the passing shadows happily dwindled.

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compensate for static singing). The number is a small-scale ABA form (E♭–E–E♭), with little contrast between the sections. But it has an expressive power that is out of proportion to the simplicity of the music, partly due to its contrast with Aleksey’s arioso style – an example of a number serving as a complement in both musical and dramatic terms. Olga is a paper-thin character, lacking dialogue and the idiosyncracies of caricature. All that she offers is a song, which is conventional and without a hint of passion; she states that she knows Aleksey’s path will be difficult, but that she will always need his love and believes they will be happy in the end. This image of pure love, in other words, takes a typically prudish Stalinist form, but it succeeds in being inspirational because it provides Aleksey with an (imagined) external perspective on his worth and a vision of future happiness (from the text it is clear that Olga receives the same benefit from her own photograph of Aleksey). ‘Olga’ is a part of, and reflects back on, his own subjectivity, and in doing so she serves her plot function of giving him hope when he is in danger of abandoning it. She is his guiding light, prompting the positive change in him, thus setting in motion the next stage in the progress from darkness to light (which indeed is eventually resolved with their reunion at the opera’s conclusion, when, as Olga puts it, ‘anew shines the happiness of [their] star’). In scene 4, ‘A cannonade’, artillery fire interrupts Aleksey’s reverie and he is thrown back into harsh immediate reality, but after his imaginary encounter with Olga he has regained the will to survive. He gains a little mantra – ‘It’s nothing, nothing, comrades; everything will be all right.’ And soon enough (tableau 3), in his second encounter, he is discovered by kolkhozniks, whose plot function is to bring him back to basic physical health, before he is collected by his comrades and taken to Moscow. According to Propp’s analysis of the folk tale, these characters fulfil the role of ‘the donor’, and even appear in the traditional way: ‘The donor is encountered accidentally, most often in the forest (in a hut).’54 The kolkhozniks live in a makeshift village in the forest (their own village having been burned to the ground by the Germans), and tableau 4 provides a retreat to the very traditional Russian operatic setting of a rural dwelling. Aleksey’s recovery allows time for the expression of the people’s suffering, perseverance, and continued commitment to Soviet socialism. There is a loss of drama and of rhythmic vitality throughout these tableaux, as Aleksey is least active and lies quietly in the dark of the hut, drawing strength from the narod. A large full-scale chorus at the end of tableau 3, ‘Story of the Oak’, is an outpouring of collective song, expressing the unity of the people and their faith in the future; the music was 54

Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, p. 84.

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originally that of a mass song, ‘Song of the Motherland’, Op. 79, No. 1. Its allegory of an oak tree’s recovery after damage by a lightning strike obviously relates symbolically both to Aleksey and to Russia (the text is taken from the novel). It is followed by a full reprise by the orchestra in the third entr’acte. The chorus slows the pace further, to a standstill, and so just as the connection between the hero and the nation is built up, the dramatic thrust is lost. Nevertheless (and despite its recycled provenance) the chorus – along with its later appearance as a reminiscence theme – is surely an example of Prokofiev ‘getting it right’ in official terms. But mass songs asserting national resilience are few in the opera. More numerous are folk genre songs in which the tone is mournful, and moments of light humour. Prokofiev began composition from tableau 4, with the trio of Varya, Granddad, and Aleksey (who is very much absorbed into their world). This is one of the most folk-like and also old-fashioned numbers, similar to the opening duet in Tchaikovsky’s Yevgeny Onegin (Act I, scene 1), in that one part is sung against more rapid, speech-like declamation in the other voices, while varying figuration in the accompaniment alleviates the repetitive nature of the form (here ABABA). ‘The Song of the Oak’ also recalls the chorus of the serfs that follows the duet in Onegin, bearing witness to Prokofiev’s attempt to take seriously the recommendation that composers should emulate the nineteenth-century masters, especially their references to folk music. His model was Tchaikovsky in both his music (witness the two letter-writing scenes in the latter part of the opera) as well as his public statements. But he never forsook his early operatic idol, Musorgsky, and thus, apart from these examples of impassioned singing, the kolkhozniks also enhance local colour through distinctive caricatures and crude language.55 This is similar to both Semyon Kotko and War and Peace: Prokofiev could not resist returning to his usual tragicomic mix for the lower classes. Vasilisa, an older villager who has lost her family, at first coarsely and angrily refuses to provide Aleksey with chicken soup, because, as we later learn, this would entail killing her beloved German-outsmarting hen, the only member of her household that survived the attack on the village. This is about as ‘colourful’ a detail as might be expected. When she eventually appears with the soup (one is reminded of the scene of food-bearing women that had to be cut from War and Peace), she also delivers a grim tale of the German invasion, and Granddad is given an opportunity to reflect on the special selfsacrificing quality of Russian women, a national stereotype much exploited 55

The villagers also utter a few phrases of Soviet speak, although this comes across as another form of colloquial language ‘realistic’ in contemporary terms. Mendel’son’s later revision removed both the colloquialisms and the Soviet speak.

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in the opera.56 A complementary, comic stereotype is brought to life by Aleksey’s comrade Andrey Degtyarenko, who finally arrives in the village. His ‘strong Ukrainian accent’ (as described in the novel) becomes in musical terms a jolly gopak – Prokofiev even has him perform the dance as he expresses his joy at finding Aleksey (‘Lyoshka’s alive, son of a gun!’).57 As an energetic, positive character, Andrey is the Tsaryov to Aleksey’s Semyon, a more extroverted and outwardly heroic figure. One cannot help but recall here Valentin Katayev’s suggestion during work on Kotko that Tsaryov, as a sailor, should dance the yablochko. At that time Prokofiev brusquely dismissed the idea as hackneyed; he was now open to such compromises. The negative result of his concessions is an eclectic combination of styles, in which folk melody, sorrowful songs, realistic dialogue, and genre numbers are muddled together in order to paint a background of national experience, both historical and contemporary. In Act II, set in the Moscow hospital, things get worse for Aleksey before they get better. After the interlude in the village the viewer is wrenched back to his personal tragedy, which here transforms into a very modern form of psychological trauma. It begins with a harrowing scene, ‘Aleksey’s delirium’, following the amputation of his feet. Prokofiev repeats his trick from Act I, where the apparition of Olga had appeared on the stage: now Aleksey visualizes the surgeons in white gowns and masks stepping out of the darkness to conduct the operation. They tersely discuss the amputation and sever his legs with enthusiasm (‘Give me the left one – That’s it! That’s it!’), before disappearing (Example 4.2).58 Aleksey’s thoughts, described in the novel over many pages, are represented here in a concentrated form, in another metadiegetic moment but one in which the audience witnesses a ghastly stream of (un)consciousness. The scene evokes horror films of the 1920s or 1930s; if the Expressionism of Act I recalled Erwartung, here there is something in common with Wozzeck. The music is built on a spiky chromatic motif played by 56

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In post war literature, ‘[s]tereotypical images of loyal, passive, and gentle women resur faced, notwithstanding women’s active participation in all spheres of military activity.’ Suzanne Ament, ‘Reflecting Individual and Collective Identities Songs of World War II’, in Gender and National Identity in Twentieth Century Russian Culture, ed. Helena Goscilo and Andrea Lanoux (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006), pp. 115 30 (115). Andrey is a partially humorous caricature, and does not, for example, dance a swashbuckling dance like ‘The Half Moon Rises’ in Into the Storm. For more on the figure he represents, see Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, The Cossack Hero in Russian Literature: A Study in Cultural Mythology (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), pp. 166 7. At fig. 115, the original text is ‘Pravuyu nogu’, rather than ‘Rezat’ ne medlya’. In the manuscript ‘Raz!’ has been crossed out and replaced by ‘Vsyo!’ in all three places.

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Example 4.2 The Story of a Real Man, Act II, tableau 5, no. 15, ‘Aleksey’s delirium’ TRANSLATION: Aleksey:

No, not this. Why are my legs tied down tightly? What are these people in white coats, with the awful surgical masks, doing to my feet? First surgeon: The right leg. That’s it! Second surgeon: Give me the left one, the left one. That’s it! Aleksey: My feet, my feet! Aleksey’s mother: Take care of your feet, Alyosha! Don’t catch cold, don’t get your feet wet, Alyosha.

Form of no. 15, ‘Aleksey’s delirium’, according to figures: 112. 113. 114. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 123. 125.

Introduction First section Second section, two Surgeons Mother Olga, section 1 theme 4 Transition, Aleksey New love theme, rounded off with theme 4 Delirium Andrey, delirium Anguish (D minor) ‘Everything will be all right . . .’

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Example 4.2 (cont.)

pizzicato violins that encompasses all six notes within a major fourth (b′–e″) in an otherwise unambiguous F-minor harmony. It is then repeated a semitone higher in F♯ minor: the sequential shift or modulation by ascending semitone, an obvious method of increasing tension, is found at all high points of drama in the opera. This is another example of the ‘naïve’ nature of the score; while the dramatic content is at times Expressionistic, musical effects are created with simple and stereotypical means. The next character to emerge from the darkness is Aleksey’s mother, whose first words (‘Alyosha, nogi’) are tied to his preceding thought. Similarly, when his mother mentions Olga, his thoughts turn to his girlfriend, who then steps into the spotlight at the back of the stage. Olga has the longest and most poignant segment of this scene; its form is another ABA, with two strophes of her song separated by Aleksey’s expression of his love. Finally, Andrey appears to tell Aleksey that his regiment awaits his return. Links between the entries of all characters occur via single words, almost as a demonstration of the technique of free association. The progression between the characters is chronological in terms of Aleksey’s life, from childhood to maturity, but this also hints at a Freudian conception of human psychology, in that it moves from deeper to higher levels of his unconscious mind. At the same time, it points to the

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Example 4.2 (cont.)

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Example 4.2 (cont.)

significance of the bonds of love over ties to the military within Aleksey’s psychic depths. The former relates to his emotions (subjectivity), the latter to his sense of duty (identity). But it is only after regaining his role that emotional healing can begin: Aleksey sings to his mental image of Olga, ‘I love you, I love you very, very dearly, but I no longer have a right to your love.’ Thus the focus on trauma has been transferred from the physical to the psychological realm. The scene edges beyond Expressionism in that it reaches into the unconscious, and there is a Meyerholdian grotesque juxtaposition resulting from the recurrence of familiar music in a radically different, even macabre, context. In the light of this combination it is tempting to describe this scene as an example of surrealism, which as an aesthetic movement was utterly foreign to Soviet art.59 More generally, the Freudian notion of a divided psyche was anathema to the Stalinist concept of subjectivity, and the representation of complex psychology was unacceptable in Soviet aesthetics.60 As Régine Robin explains, 59

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Prokofiev had an interest in the surreal, at least in film. Morrison, The People’s Artist, p. 81. Valery Leibin provides a clear summary: ‘Psychoanalysis, with its methods of intruding into the deepest layers of personality, with its attempts to penetrate beyond the person’s consciousness, posed a potential threat to a political culture that gave birth to a repressive apparatus of massive suppression of alternative thought . . . Under conditions of cruel political and ideological pressure, accompanied by persecution and the physical annihila tion of the heretics, psychoanalysis left the stage of domestic science. During the 1940s it was not mentioned at all.’ Valery Leibin, ‘Freudianism, or the “Trotskiite Contraband”’, in Late Soviet Culture: From Perestroika to Novostroika, ed. Thomas Lahusen with Gene Kuperman (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 177 86 (183 and 185). In the 1930s, as Vera Dunham points out, the power of the prototypical socialist realist hero (in The Tempering of the Steel, 1934) is precisely his lack of psychological complexity. Vera S. Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 62.

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the new man cannot be a problematic individual. He can undergo tragedy (the Reds in The Quiet Don), he can be cut off from the masses and end up all alone; he can find himself in an outnumbered battalion surrounded by enemy forces, knowing he is going to die. He can be cut down by illness; he can experience serious personal failures; he can find himself at the center of conflicts with his loved ones, with the bureaucracy, with his workmates. He may fail to achieve the object of his quest at the end of the novel, he may die a failure, but he cannot be deeply divided, uncertain of himself or his destiny; he cannot be existentially problematic.61

In the narrative of recovery and the darkness-to-light trajectory (of which the ominous glare of the lights of the operating table in an otherwise unlit room also constitutes one stage), Aleksey must pass through the liminal phase of psychic chaos before he can achieve psychic stasis. As K. W. M. Fulford has put it, ‘[s]evere trauma destroys the meaningfulness of a person’s world’, and Aleksey cannot achieve renewal until his subjectivity has recovered its proper direction.62 In his portrayal, Prokofiev was pushing the boundaries of opera, and not just Soviet opera, in revealing the inner workings of the modern mind in a state of distress. Stolper’s film, in contrast, features a solemn but matter-of-fact discussion of the amputation with the doctor (Vasiliy Vasilyevich), and then a scene of surgeons conducting the operation; there are also Expressionist qualities here in the lighting, framing, and perspective (they are shot from a distance, with spotlights from above), but the scene is extremely brief and moreover does not give any insight into Aleksey’s thought processes. Film as a medium has much greater flexibility in terms of duration than music does, since even a single image can create a striking effect. Music requires time to unfold and is more open to ambiguity and interpretation. Opera brings image and music together in powerful ways, and therefore was in a difficult position in Stalin’s Russia; too many things could go wrong when meaning was supposed to be isolated and controlled.

4.5 Identity: The Master Plot (Act II) Having survived and received the necessary treatment, the real test for Aleksey begins. If he is to become a Soviet hero, he needs to define himself and his goal in clear and absolute terms. The novel’s pivotal moment is

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Régine Robin, Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 242. Foreword by K. W. M. Fulford, in Patrick J. Bracken, Trauma: Culture, Meaning, and Philosophy (London: Whurr, 2002), viii.

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Aleksey’s change in outlook from despair to conviction in his effort to overcome his disability, a breakthrough that will then govern his actions through the rest of the story. The film only hints at his dejection. But Prokofiev dwells on it, and it continues to resonate after the scene of delirium, as Aleksey struggles with inner division and uncertainty. In the socialist realist master plot, the turning point upon which the narrative hinges is the encounter with a ‘father’ hero, and Prokofiev accordingly attaches great significance to this event. The senior hero’s function is to impart his wisdom and understanding to the younger hero, whose view of his role in Soviet society is consequently altered. Polevoy added to Mares’yev’s real-life story the character of the sage, avuncular Commissar, who is being treated in the same ward as Aleksey. In the terms used by Propp in his analysis of the folktale, the Commissar is the ‘magical helper’, whose ‘function is to aid the transfiguration of the hero’.63 His role in Aleksey’s epic quest is to confer on him a new identity, or rather reconfirm his old identity. His first appearance in the opera is strongly marked, and Prokofiev is consistent in representing him, as the novel does, as a kind of magician or saint: he is surrounded by a shimmering sonority, a musical halo, analogous to the light that shines on eminent figures, especially Stalin himself, in socialist realist painting (and in film, for example the light on Kutuzov in Petrov’s film, discussed in Chapter 3).64 He is associated with the bright keys of A major and D major, while his 9/8 harp accompaniment and tranquil harmonic rhythm lend a solemn, almost sacred aura (he also has the chromatic ascending line, here in the bass, that connects his music to other important motifs)65 (Example 4.3). His first words are preceded by an introduction by the nurse Klavdiya, who compares him to ‘a sturdy oak’ (no. 16).66 When first approaching Soviet opera in the 1930s and considering its difficulties, Prokofiev had worried about the representation of an official, and specifically a commissar, on the Soviet stage. Nevertheless, this character can be said to be a respectful portrayal, after much trial and error with ‘father’ heroes in Kotko and War and Peace. In no. 18, ‘The Commissar’s Ballad’, his stature is enhanced as he narrates the severe hardship he and his

63 64

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Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, p. 79. Italics in the original. There is a hierarchy of heroes in socialist realism, and the Commissar is more idealized than the other characters. He is a kind of stand in for Stalin, bearing in mind that Stalin was explicitly the ‘father’ and ‘mentor’ for aviation heroes. Clark, The Soviet Novel, pp. 126 7. In Stolper’s film there is a lengthy series of scenes in the hospital with Aleksey and the Commissar. The old man’s aura returns in the next scene (no. 19, at fig. 152) in A♭ major. The original text is ‘He lives on morphine and camphor. Even the mighty weaken with time. The sturdy oak, will it weather this storm?’

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Example 4.3 The Story of a Real Man, Act II, tableau 5, no. 17, the Commissar’s first TRANSLATION: Klavdiya: The sturdy oak, will it weather this storm? Commissar: Is that you, sister? Do not worry so, dear.

comrades endured during the Civil War.67 His ordeal in the desert bears comparison with Aleksey’s in the forest; so the music tells us, too, since the ballad is based on the theme from the first entr’acte. Apart from Aleksey, the Commissar is the only character to quote earlier themes, which may be an interpretation of his omniscient understanding of other people and life in general as portrayed in the novel. At the same time, the heroism of the 67

‘One of the distinguishing features of a “father” in the standard format of the socialist realist novel was that he had fought valiantly in the Civil War, the period when the Bolsheviks’ mettle was tested.’ Clark, The Soviet Novel, p. 128.

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character does not translate fully to the medium of opera, when we consider that for the majority of his appearances he is singing from his hospital bed (the same applies to Aleksey in these scenes). Nevertheless, the crucial scene of Aleksey’s ‘transfiguration’ is musically one of the most powerful in the opera. It proves that Prokofiev had developed some insight into socialist realism since Kotko, perhaps due to the advice and literary expertise of Mendel’son. The ‘Scene of Aleksey and the Commissar’ (no. 24) begins with the Commissar’s halo of tremolo strings in D major. It continues with a harmonic progression that slowly rises chromatically, also carried by the upper strings. Over the sceptical declamatory interjections of Aleksey, the Commissar sings a theme that was firmly planted in the listener’s memory as the ‘Song about the Oak’, the kolkhozniks’ chorus, in I/3/8, but now the words are changed to ‘But you’re a Soviet Man’ (fig. 173, A major) (Example 4.4). He delivers the line three times – the last two are given in the example. Before the Commissar introduces the theme it gradually and effectively emerges in the orchestra, as they discuss a newspaper article about a pilot in World War I who returned to action after losing a leg. Aleksey protests that his situation is different, but he is reminded that previously existing norms of heroism do not apply to him, a Soviet Man, at which point the Commissar’s words and reminiscence of the theme (with the voice doubled by the violins an octave higher) powerfully imply a connection between the Russian people, Soviet heroism, and regeneration. The moment is brief but transformative. Aleksey takes over the phrase with two further repetitions (and two more ascents by a semitone), leading to a harmonic space of his own, F major, which has not yet been heard in the opera.68 Pre-reflective experience of the moment, as revealed in declamation and dialogue, is replaced by a higher level of awareness as Aleksey now begins to sing. He refers to himself as he repeats the Commissar’s words, and thereby perceives and grasps the Soviet Man identity as his own. A very rudimentary technique – mere repetition at a higher level of intensity – is used in this scene to achieve a potent, magical effect. On closer inspection it is clear that no actual reflection is involved, Aleksey is simply overtaken by the theme. The mantra of ‘Soviet Man’, as part of the ‘fundamental lexicon’,69 nonrational and rhetorical, is merely expressed more stridently, and thus overcomes his objections. (Its function is similar to thematic transfer in other 68

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Simon Morrison (drawing on Boris Asaf’yev) has pointed out that in Rimsky Korsakov’s Kitezh F major is ‘aligned with light and ever increasing radiance’. Simon Morrison, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 160 2. Evgeny Dobrenko, ‘The Literature of the Zhdanov Era: Mentality, Mythology, Lexicon’, in Late Soviet Culture: From Perestroika to Novostroika, ed. Thomas Lahusen with Gene Kuperman (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), p. 110.

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Example 4.4 The Story of a Real Man, Act II, tableau 5, no. 24, ‘But I am a Soviet man’ TRANSLATION: Aleksey: Anyone could fly one of those. You don’t need speed or quick reflexes. Commissar: But all the same, you are a Soviet man. Aleksey: But I am a Soviet man. But I am a Soviet man.70

seduction scenes in opera, including that between the Duenna and Mendoza in the revised Betrothal (see the discussion in Chapter 2).) The exchange with the Commissar is a demonstration in a nutshell of the function of propaganda (conceived positively), those endlessly repeated slogans in Stalinist discourse. It represents a moment of indoctrination, one that defines a goal of Soviet 70

In the published version he first repeats the Commissar’s ‘you are a Soviet man’, and follows this with ‘I am a Soviet man’. In the original the line is ‘I am a Soviet man’ on both repetitions.

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Example 4.4 (cont.)

society and the purpose of Soviet art: to create the New Man. The conversion is encapsulated here in the direct and immediate effect on Aleksey; the subject recognizes the identity to which he should aspire, then adopts it as his own.

4.6 Subjectivity: Love Conquers All (Acts III and IV) Tableau 6 is a confirmation of Aleksey’s transformation (and also of the heroic standing of the Commissar, who subsequently dies, in accordance with the master plot’s symbolic passing of the torch). Finally on his (artificial) feet and with a new positive outlook, having regained his identity as a Soviet hero, Aleksey states explicitly, ‘Now I have a purpose in life’. Two scenes with his doctor, Vasiliy Vasilyevich, surround, at a lower dramatic temperature, the scene with the Commissar, highlighting the change from bitter depression to staunch fortitude. The second of these scenes takes place in the solarium – the light now shines on Aleksey as he seeks to re-establish himself in the wider public sphere. The ‘Soviet Man’ theme reappears briefly at Vasiliy Vasilyevich’s words, ‘I know that you’re made of stern stuff.’ Despite his noble mission to return to combat, however, in ‘Aleksey’s arioso’ (no. 27) his thoughts return immediately to Olga, and so does the music: the number (essentially an arietta) is based on her song, with its sections reversed (BAB) and the keys altered (D♭–C–D♭).71 He remains apprehensive about sharing the news of his disability 71

Original text: ‘It is spring. In Kamïshin the brooks are running and it smells of the warm earth, and the breeze from the steppe, smelling strongly of wormwood, blows through the

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Example 4.4 (cont.)

with her, but he is now more optimistic, wondering ‘Do I have a right to her love?’ rather than denying this outright as he did during his delirium. She sticky green buds of the poplar. And she in a multicoloured spring dress, so light, that if only a breeze were to blow it would pick her up in its flight, like light dandelion fluff. And in the silence the ice in the immense river flows past us without a sound. How much happiness seemed to be ahead of us! And now there is suddenly nothing.’

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Example 4.4 (cont.)

provides him with the motivation to return to action, as he has decided that he will wait until after his success in battle to tell her ‘about everything’. When Andrey asks whether he will write to her, he replies that he does not yet have the strength. Here, ‘recovering lost powers’ also includes overcoming his crisis of confidence in relation to Olga. If Prokofiev understood the significance of the ritual climax of the master plot, as it seems to an extent he did, he should also have understood its necessary ramifications. For all the new ideas for the operatic stage seen in the first two acts (some refreshing, some disturbing), the second part of Real Man is relatively conventional, following operatic tradition in that it relies primarily on the love story as the main thread of the plot. Aleksey’s rehabilitation as a Soviet airman takes, as it were, the co-pilot seat to his love relationship, which emerges as most crucial for his happiness and sense of fulfilment. In Stalinist ideology, identity and subjectivity were one and the same. A lack of equivalence between these two aspects of the self would imply a subject who is ‘existentially problematic’. But Real Man maintains a certain tension, or at least a lack of parity, between identity and subjectivity, between Aleksey’s perceived place in the world and his deepest needs for fulfilment. Just as in Kotko, Prokofiev focused on the love story to a greater degree than the source novel/la did, in part simply by excluding

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the bureaucratic scenes. In Real Man Olga is highlighted as the central love interest, whereas in the novel Aleksey flirts with several other young women.72 It is important to stress that this was a possible interpretation of the novel, one that the form of opera, traditionally conceived, would almost seem to have demanded (and so would the genre of the folk epic, with its quest in pursuit of a princess). In contrast, Stolper’s film, although otherwise covering the same plot events, omits the love story altogether, and concentrates entirely on Aleksey’s recovery of his skills as a pilot. It was not only characteristic of opera as an art form to be focused on expressions of love, but also Prokofiev’s tendency in his later dramatic works. As noted above, the reunion with Olga was intended from the beginning as the opera’s final scene. In terms of love music, Real Man does not rise to the same level of invention or poignancy as some of his other works, but nevertheless, once Aleksey has changed his attitude and become determined to overcome obstacles no matter what effort is required, at bottom his motivation is regaining his girl – his return to action is a prelude to and a prerequisite for achieving this goal. The quest for Olga provides the main source of tension, since the drama revolves around the question of whether she will still love him when she finds out about his disability. Act III broadens out to public spaces and a larger community, in the scenes in the sanatorium with dances and soldiers’ choruses (tableau 7), and to the acclamation of the general war effort, in both the strange evening boat trip, ‘Barcarolle’, where a trio share thoughts of their lovers far away, and the full chorus which follows it, ‘Stalingrad’ (tableau 8). Both scenes of tableau 8 consist of a medley of themes, including several that were recycled from earlier works. Olga’s song returns as Aleksey thinks of her, and once again she materializes on stage, providing the link between the scenes by taking up the lyrical melody (borrowed from Ivan the Terrible) that is the basis of the trio. This initiates an extraordinary scenic transformation, with Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘fantastic’ idiom borrowed for the musical transition, as the assembled armed forces suddenly and miraculously appear against a panorama of the front to deliver a rousing marching song. The stand-alone chorus is similar to the ‘Epigraph’ and other choruses in Part II of War and Peace (III/8/38) in both placement and manner of national expression. It also calls to mind the finales of other Soviet operas (Mat’, V ogne, Sem’ya Tarasa, Molodaya Gvardiya, V buryu), as Lobachyova has recognized, but crucially here it is not the finale.73 Its 72

73

As Lobachyova points out, in Polevoy’s novel Olga is ‘almost lost among the other heroines’. Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva, p. 125. Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva, p. 140.

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music was borrowed from one of the folk song arrangements (‘Moskovskaya slavna put’-dorozhka’ [The Glorious Moscow Road], Op. 106, No. 2), while its text is an excessively nationalistic statement of defending the nation (a ‘beacon of humanity’), in particular ‘the city of Stalin’, the ‘glorious Stalingrad’. Prokofiev’s device of turning Aleksey’s thoughts into images is deployed a third time, in this case projected onto a wider collective frame: his reflections are shared with his friends, Olga is joined by the army, and the vision of the front covers the entire stage. Calling to mind the vast canvases of historical paintings of war, this phantasmagoria of the national struggle for victory balances Aleksey’s earlier hallucination and anguish at his personal loss, and connects the narratives of the individual characters to the common effort. Thus the unification of hero and nation is reinforced (with Olga as the catalyst). The contrasts between night and day, between isolated introspection and communal expression, provide for stunning (albeit crudely achieved) effects, mainly visual but also musical. These effects are generated through juxtaposition, in Prokofiev’s typical block-like arrangement, rather than dramatic development, despite the fact that this trait was criticized as a fault in the reception of his earlier operas; it is notable, for example, that the march theme is not heard at any other point in the work. The national dimension, moreover, is not effectively sustained in the remainder of the opera. Act IV retreats to a private space, as Aleksey attempts to express himself to his far-off love. It combines the conclusion of the love story and the return to action in the air, but it begins and ends with a focus on the former, in two letter-writing scenes that surround Aleksey’s flight. They demonstrate that his proficiency as a Soviet airman precedes and enables the love theme, rather than that his love interest facilitates his military triumph, which would have been the norm according to socialist realist practice.74 Act IV, tableau 9 is set in ‘Aleksey’s room in Moscow’ (Example 4.5), and is the only one in the opera that is based on a single number, simply titled ‘A letter’.75 Aleksey is ‘aching’ to return to the front with the other pilots, because of the contribution he ‘should’ and ‘ought’ to make to the war effort: ‘I should be there, I should be in the air fighting the enemy . . . I ought to begin to return to the ranks of real people. 74

75

Clark makes this clear: ‘In the Stalinist novel, however, love is an auxiliary ingredient in the plot. The hero’s love life is not valuable in itself; it serves only to aid him in fulfilling his tasks and in attaining “consciousness.” . . . Love is played down for an additional reason: the well known puritanism of Socialist Realism.’ Clark, The Soviet Novel, pp. 182 3. In the published score this number is moved to III/7/30, before the tableau at the sanatorium (fig. 214, originally fig. 286).

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Example 4.5 The Story of a Real Man, Act IV, tableau 9, no. 30, Aleksey’s first letter to Olga TRANSLATION: Aleksey: Olya, you understand me, you understand me, dear.

On this my whole life depends.’ He is anxious to fulfil his role as determined by cultural codes; however, there is a question whether service to the nation or recovery of his social status is the main motivation. More to the point, the letter is written to Olga, and it is ambiguous to what extent his deeper hope for the future involves his love life, since his next words are ‘Only then I will write you honestly, frankly about my unhappiness, you, dear, will decide.’ The number contains a reminiscence of the theme from ‘Aleksey’s arioso’ (theme 15), but the harmony is relatively unsettled. Only after he has ‘returned to the ranks’ can he regain his life and his love. At the end of the scene he repeats his motto, ‘It’s nothing, comrades, everything will be all right’, reassuring himself now in his attempt to re-establish himself in society rather than fight for survival. In the second letter the perception that love is paramount is confirmed, since Aleksey returns once more to the central question of whether he has the right to Olga’s love (Example 4.6). He now claims to have this right, having proven himself as a pilot: his heroic

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Example 4.6 The Story of a Real Man, Act IV, tableau 10, no. 42, Aleksey’s second letter to Olga TRANSLATION: Aleksey: My far off love, [I gave a pledge to tell you everything once I stood in battle as an equal with others.]

exploits have been the means to this romantic end. A new theme emerges, in a serene, less anxious mood, and the harmony is more stable than before. There is also a hint of his valiant former self, as he proudly remembers the three planes he shot down and the recognition he has earned. The two letterwriting scenes and the earlier ‘arioso’, all of which concentrate on Aleksey’s love for Olga, are the progressive steps through which we observe the process of psychological recovery from doubt to optimism. The primary function of a love relationship in Soviet fiction was to reinforce the narrative of heroism. Prokofiev’s Real Man has it the other way around, in that love is central, the source of Aleksey’s yearning for happiness, which is made possible by his return to action. In retrospect, we can see that the love for Olga has been the main thread of the opera from the beginning. It provides the first offering of hope, when she appears to him in the forest just as he was losing the will to survive. A reference to

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Olga also ends Act 1, where we get the hint in Granddad’s exchange with Andrey that she has been on his mind throughout all his time in the hut: ‘He’s always mumbling about Olya . . . Olya, Olya . . . ’ (earlier in the act Aleksey mistakes Varya for Olga, as one example of this mumbling). In ‘Aleksey’s delirium’, as we have seen, Olga occupies the deepest realms of his psyche, and as soon as he is feeling more optimistic, after his encounter with the Commissar, he is making plans to contact her. Olga’s theme appears again in the scene in the boat (as does the imaginary image of Olga herself), when he reflects on his departure for the front (fig. 279). Aleksey’s subjective idea (internal image) of Olga, encapsulated in her theme, is what motivates him throughout. He is eventually reunited with her after his successful reintegration and return to aerial combat (the recovery of his identity), and at this point she finally arrives onstage in actual physical form (this result is achieved by Andrey’s interference rather than any action taken by Aleksey, who does not manage to send either of the letters he is seen on stage to be writing). The final duet is set up to be the culminating moment of the opera, although it is not a particularly powerful one (it is reminiscent of the love duet in Into the Storm), again relying on the rising chromatic line found at other moments of emphasis (Example 4.7). It does, of course, include Olga’s theme, but its reappearance is not as dramatic as one would expect, and the reunion ends up being rather formal (Olga’s one-dimensional role did not offer a great deal for Prokofiev to work with here). Despite this weak ending, the point is that Aleksey returns immediately and consistently to his typical subjective state (his interest in Olga) once he has overcome his trauma and depression and gained a new optimism and resolve. In other words, he has not undergone the inner transformation that the initiation rite of the master plot was presumed to entail. In the opera, propaganda can influence identity, perhaps, but does not actually lead to a change in subjectivity. There is even a suggestion that the intention to create the New Man will fail in the face of universal human desires. These observations are also supported by the fact that Aleksey does not measure up in the latter part of the opera to the image of idealized Soviet heroism. As we have seen in previous chapters, the creation of a bold, charismatic, and inspiring symbolic hero was a particular challenge for Prokofiev. Like Semyon, Aleksey is mainly a lover (if musically a weak one) and not a fighter, and he lacks a theme of his own (the character of Semyon was explicitly criticized for this: was Prokofiev not paying attention?). The opera’s love theme is shared with Olga: I have referred to it as her theme since it appears along with his visions of her. Like Semyon, Aleksey borrows themes from others, which again reveals a lack of

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Example 4.7 The Story of a Real Man, Act IV, tableau 10, no. 43, Aleksey and Olga’s duet TRANSLATION: Olga: I knew everything long ago. Your friend Andrey wrote to me. Aleksey: You know everything, and not a single letter revealed that you know everything?

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individual heroic integrity. We can go further and state that Aleksey has no heroic music precisely because he concentrates on his love life. The only recapitulation of the ‘Soviet Man’ theme occurs in the final scene (no. 44), not, significantly, following Aleksey’s heroic exploits, where it should have clinched the theme of recovery, but instead at the entrance of the narrator, Polevoy himself, who arrives to puts his journalist’s stamp on the ‘story’ (here is another operatic novelty). This final scene was prompted by the novel’s epilogue, and essentially serves to make clear what was not fully emphasized by the composer and librettists in the music and text – that Aleksey has achieved the distinction of being a true Soviet hero. Olga and Polevoy confer on him the status of a Real Soviet Man, and the reprise of the big theme rounds off the work – but as a conclusion, indeed an afterthought, rather than a climax. Because Prokofiev as usual stuck close to his source (a cause for criticism of both Kotko and War and Peace), the opera ends modestly rather than with a grand choral finale.76 Endings were very important for Soviet opera, and it seems almost inconceivable that an opera on the subject of the recent war would not end with a chorus celebrating victory. There was a necessary link with the tradition of Russian epic opera, in which the Slava chorus confirms the hero’s success and commemorates the nation.77 Real Man did not include such a chorus, and this points to the lack of a compelling connection between the two narratives, and the two forms of opera, that it encompassed. Prokofiev simply favoured understated endings; similarly to the first version of War and Peace, a subdued finale follows the culmination of the love story in the penultimate scene. That opera’s fault of failing to tie the climactic choral number closely to the drama, and position it for maximum effect, is thus reproduced. Also, as in Kotko, the scenes of calamity are far more impressive than those of victory. The opening of Real Man and the scene of hallucination have the greatest power in musical and dramatic terms. The hero–lover imbalance is also manifested in the opera’s images. There are important stages in Aleksey’s gradual return to flight that were not included in the opera. One major omission is the training scene, which carries significant weight in both novel and film. In the opera he has suddenly passed all the obstacles: at one moment he is in his room in Moscow, at the next his comrades are waiting for him to return to base after

76

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The ‘more literary journalistic than theatrical effective’ nature of the ending was recog nized by Georgiy Pavlovich Ansimov, Sergey Prokof’yev: Tropoyu opernoy dramaturgii. Rezhissyorskiye prikosnoveniya (Moscow: GITIS, 1994), p. 172. See Inna Naroditskaya, Bewitching Russian Opera: The Tsarina from State to Stage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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a battle over Stalingrad. Then there are major weaknesses in the scene of Aleksey’s intrepid action in itself, primarily in that no such scene is actually represented on stage, and the audience does not witness him shooting down enemy fighters, which was intended to be both the climax and the conclusion of the narrative. The short scene of no. 41 takes place at the end of the battle: Aleksey has run out of fuel, and suspense builds as his comrades wait for him by the airstrip – they are about to give up hope when he at last appears gliding just above the treetops. Because of the limitations of the theatre of his day, Prokofiev can supply only a shadow image of the plane as it crosses the stage on its way to land. The other pilots then rush offstage to welcome and congratulate the hero. The lack of a powerful visual element here is a disappointment, since the actual flight has to be imagined by the audience – it was possible to see into Aleksey’s mind’s eye when he was thinking of Olga, but not to witness him physically engaged in flying and fighting. The music here is also a serious letdown, and does not match up to this pivotal moment in the drama. The only theme available turns out to be the pilot’s march, a light galop which had been introduced at the sanatorium, and also serves as the basis of the overture.78 Originally the March for Wind Instruments, Op. 99, in Prokofiev’s ‘heroic’ B♭, here it is transposed to D major. The pilot’s theme is earlier heard (in the original key of B♭) when the pilots ‘get excited’ at the announcement of the dance (fig. 218). Their jubilation at Aleksey’s return is thus equivalent to – no greater than – this moment? The theme lacks gravitas and carries virtually zero dramatic power (Example 4.8); as in Kotko, jolly music substitutes for heroic music. The theme also has no real connection to Aleksey, it merely underlines the fact that pilots are present. This lack of importance of ‘identity’ in the conclusion of the drama is emphasized by the character’s own response: he declines his comrades’ invitation to celebrate by having a drink together, and instead rushes off to write his second letter to Olga. It is clear that he does not consider that he has achieved his main goal, and has other priorities – he is immediately thinking of the next step in his quest. Stolper’s film, again in striking contrast, recreates this contemporary image of Soviet heroism with great attention to realistic detail, during the training flight and a lengthy battle sequence, both of which shift from aerial panning shots taken from a pilot’s perspective to close-ups of Aleksey’s face, full of tearful rapture (during training) and steely determination (during battle). The film also features serene string-based music that enhances the 78

It replaced another in E minor, thus enhancing the optimistic tone. This was the only significant revision that Prokofiev made to the score once completed.

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Example 4.8 The Story of a Real Man, Act IV, tableau 10, no. 41, ‘Aleksey’s return’ TRANSLATION: Andrey: Flying! He’s flying! Kukushkin: He! Pilots: He! Colonel: Is flying. Pilots: Is flying. All: Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

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Example 4.8 (cont.)

images of the vast Russian landscape and the expanse of the sky. Real Man is an opera on a major theme of heroism that contains neither striking images nor stirring music to support that theme. It seems to have been an unfortunate choice of subject, when the most important activity – Aleksey successfully returning to air combat and shooting down enemy planes – was precisely that which could not be represented on the operatic stage. We witness him crawling, stumbling, and dancing, have access to his inner

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thoughts as he imagines his far-off love and even as he hallucinates, but are given no satisfactory representation of his flying nor any adequate impression of the powerful emotions involved. In the second part of the opera considerable space is devoted to the scenes of dancing. This was a different sort of contemporary image (related to kul’turnost’ and festivities), and one that was in some sense a perfect match between Polevoy’s story, the medium of opera, and the composer’s capabilities. Like the film, the opera includes the episode at the sanatorium where Aleksey finds a route to rehabilitation and the means to prove his fitness to doctors by taking part in a ball, after putting in the hard work required to learn to dance on his prostheses. The ‘ballet’ scenes are extensive, and turn out to be one of the main climaxes of the opera, reaching a peak level of exuberance and even ostentation, built up through increased dynamics, accellerandi (figs. 234 and 261), and orchestration, which becomes rather bombastic towards the end. These ostensible genre numbers do carry real dramatic weight (again, connected to images rather than dialogue or song), and are essential to the progression of the plot. Dancing may serve as a metaphor for flying; in the absence of any actual flight, the opera was forced to rely on such tenuous links. In the first libretto Prokofiev made a note that there should be ‘a waltz and Western dances’, which became a foxtrot (fig. 245) and a rumba (no. 35).79 Western dances had been popular in the Soviet Union since the New Economic Policy of the 1920s, at which time the ‘urban youth had adopted the foxtrot with a vengeance’.80 These dances remained popular through the war years, becoming even more so in the post-war period, when ‘[a]t any occasion and in any place, young people set up makeshift dance floors and spent their time revolving to the tune of waltzes, foxtrots, and tangos’, whereas Russian dances ‘survived only in the countryside’.81 Dancing was frowned upon for claiming so much of the free time of young people and distracting them from ‘educational’ activities.82 It is fair to assume that on the operatic stage, during the post-war fight against Western influence of all kinds, they would have been controversial, and indeed they were savaged at the audition.83 The opportunity for contemporary verisimilitude had doubtless been an attraction for Prokofiev, but he failed to grasp such a fundamental point. The film serves once more as a revealing 79 81

82 83

RGALI f. 1929, op. 2, yed. khr. 30, l. 31ob. 80 Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation, p. 202. Meanwhile, ‘students fought stubborn battles with the authorities to fill their evenings with exclusively Western dances and ban the ballroom and traditional ones favoured by officials’. Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation, p. 204. Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation, p. 204. ‘Lovers and consumers of Western literature, Western art, and Western science found themselves accused of treason and moral corruption.’ Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation, p. 64.

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contrast. Here there is a brief scene of Aleksey practising a waltz with the nurse Zina, but in his demonstration to the doctors (the equivalent of Prokofiev’s ball), the two dance vigorously to lively Russian folk music in 4/4, with several close-ups of their stamping feet.84 To summarize the above: in the second half of the opera Aleksey’s identity as a Soviet hero and his connection to the nation do not receive sufficient support in the music, text, or images. In terms of the score, the format of the song opera is unsuccessfully combined with the monological narrative. The ‘real’ aspect of dialogue and genre numbers is set against the ‘ideal’ aspect of the songs and choruses, at a time when Soviet opera was expected to project only the ‘ideal’. In addition, the songs themselves are more often tragic than heroic, the choruses too few. It was a poor decision to use existing folk song arrangements as a complement to dialogue and arioso. Real Man has a mixed genre and a mixed style, is neither a proper Prokofiev opera nor a proper Soviet opera, but appears literally as a compromise opera in both music and drama. Neither the song opera nor Prokofiev’s own style measured up to official preferences in 1948 for static celebration and overwhelming sound, that (impossible) Stalinist ideal of heroic/national and symphonic/choral opera (Wagner-plusVerdi-plus-Russian folk song). Thus the ambitious attempt to tackle a contemporary topic did not pay off. If a historical subject was fraught with difficulty, a story set in the war presented even greater obstacles. A major mistake, after the choice of novel, was the composer’s insistence on writing his own libretto; the failure was probably already sealed at this point, since it set up a number of traps into which he subsequently fell. As we have seen, the opera contained many of the ‘errors’ of both Kotko and War and Peace, including ‘naturalism’ and lyricism, and this was again due to his usual fidelity to the source literature. Realism was always problematic on the very conservative Soviet stage, but particularly with this subject matter, and at a time when the public wanted to ignore reminders of suffering and loss. The story dealt with serious trauma, which Prokofiev then gave textual and visual representation of a questionable kind. There are disturbing and even harrowing images, to the detriment of heroic images, and to an extent that would have been extraordinary on the Stalinist stage. There is even a grotesque quality to Aleksey’s crawling and collapsing on the operatic stage (as called for in the score), and later his stumbling on artificial limbs, then dancing in 84

In the film, soldiers sing a Russian song in the background as Aleksey leaves the sanatorium. There is a big choral orchestral theme at the end of the film, although again this is kept short. The film music in general is understated yet effective.

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a sequence of popular numbers. The grim picture of the aviator as he hobbles around is hardly that of Soviet man in all his glory (to use Zhdanov’s phrase). The same can be said of many of the otherwise original images; one imagines they would have seemed comic to a Soviet audience unused to opera as an art form. Despite what I have presented as Prokofiev’s typical proclivities, to include such details in a Soviet opera was a remarkable choice. The dramatic weight in Real Man was given not to national victory but to a monological narrative, in which the old liberal view of an autonomous and free individual prevails, surpassing any sense of an ideologically constructed, or reintegrated, self. Aleksey’s quest deals with his self-fulfilment, the realization of his personal goals, more than it does his re-entry into Soviet structures. It is highly significant that, throughout, his real inspiration is Olga, preceding and preparing the ‘help’ from others, until he is finally able to achieve his double dream – to fly again and to be reunited with her. There can be said to be a conflict in the opera between identity and subjectivity. The novel, in accordance with socialist realism, subordinates the love story to the military mission. The opera, however, fails to connect love sufficiently to heroism, and at the same time, the Stalinist understanding of subjectivity was in jeopardy of remaining unfulfilled, or even being opposed, since it contains Freudian elements not only superficially in terms of its structure but quite strikingly in some of its content. The Stalinist regime sought transformation of the individual, but did not wish to see that process explored through the representation of any genuine inner struggle, ambiguous goals, or competing desires. In this case we are presented not so much with ambiguity, but rather with an incomplete transformation that fails to direct the inner drive of the character appropriately.

4.7 Prokofiev as a Soviet Subject Polevoy’s novel had been recommended by Kukharsky at the time when he, along with Samosud, was offering advice to the composer on the second part of War and Peace.85 Prokofiev had considered a number of subjects over the years, including suggestions by other well-placed contacts during the summer of 1947: Mendel’son records, for example, that Aleksandr Gayamov had proposed Aleksey Tolstoy’s politically safe Peter the First, and Boris Khaykin another novel (actually a trilogy) by the same author,

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Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 67.

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The Road to Calvary (both novels had received Stalin Prizes).86 It is tempting to develop a connection between Prokofiev’s selection of Real Man and his own subjectivity. One could imagine that he was attracted to Polevoy’s story because of its parallel with his own recovery from illness, or his desire to regain full capacity as a composer and to maintain his status, or perhaps his hope of overcoming bureaucratic obstacles. His choice of a politically correct subject may have been an attempt to aid his return to official favour at a time when his star was just beginning to fade, at least in opera. As we saw in Chapter 3, in 1947 there were ongoing difficulties with Part II of the Bolshoy production of War and Peace. Prokofiev had effectively been ‘shot down’ after demonstrating overconfidence in his individual abilities (being forced to revise War and Peace), then received the guidance and advice of his ‘elders’ (Samosud and Kukharsky, among others), had to ‘dance’ for the authorities in order to prove himself (write a socialist realist opera), before he could ‘fly’ once again (receive official approval and revive his prospects for present and future operas). It is true that at the time he began work on Real Man he was enjoying exceptional official and public favour: Marina Frolova-Walker writes that ‘[i]n June 1947, his standing in the Soviet Union was never higher.’87 While he may have been winning awards and honours at this time, none were for opera, the genre most important to him. His awards confirmed his identity as a Soviet composer, but to satisfy his fundamental goals he needed to work his way to operatic performance. Instead, he struggled repeatedly in this field against external factors of administrative meddling, cultural shifts, and even major historical events: the signing of the Nazi–Soviet Pact for Kotko, the beginning of the war for Betrothal, and the war’s various impacts on politics and propaganda for War and Peace. Real Man appears as an impatient attempt to have an opera staged, and perhaps thereby also to increase the likelihood of performance for the other three major works, and of having more operas commissioned in the future. Prokofiev may have believed, along with many others, that the post-war period would bring greater freedom and security; the opposite occurred, certainly for the arts with the launch of the Zhdanovshchina, and by the time of the opera’s audition his reputation had hit rock bottom. There are 86

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Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, pp. 59 60 and 67. Frolova Walker points out that ‘he had just received another Stalin Prize for his First Violin Sonata, and three productions of his works were also so recognized’. Marina Frolova Walker, ‘Between Two Aesthetics: The Revision of Pilnyak’s Mahogany and Prokofiev’s Fourth Symphony’, in Sergey Prokofiev and His World, ed. Simon Morrison (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 452 92 (484).

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further connections between the composer and the opera, which go beyond biographical speculation, and in this final section I take a broader view of Prokofiev’s position as a would-be hero of Soviet composition, and explore how his own actions and attitude as revealed in the composition of this work demonstrate an understanding of the human subject that was incompatible with Stalinism. The topic of the opera was mishandled because of his continued adherence to traditional operatic norms, and, on a deeper level, to a ‘traditional’, liberal, conception of subjectivity. Prokofiev had ignored the concerns of his friends Pavel Lamm and Myaskovsky, who made strong criticisms of the opera when hearing it just after its completion. Myaskovsky wrote in his diary that he found it, ‘as always, extremely interesting, apt, and expressive, but all the same with principles of musical drama that are now extremely unfashionable. I didn’t like the libretto: antics, tricks and no political purposefulness. I’m afraid it will be greeted with hostility.’ Lamm admired the music but also ‘was very dissatisfied’ with the libretto for its ‘excessive realism of scenes, naturalistic images which on the stage of the Bolshoy Theatre (there could not be another more conventional at this time) would have to create a feeling of revulsion.’ According to Ol’ga Lamm, ‘[b]oth of them tried to discourage the author from some of the opera’s episodes (for example, the scenes of the legless pilot, singing an aria while crawling helplessly on the stage [through] the entire first episode of the opera, and then the scenes in the operating room of the hospital). On the other hand, they pointed out the excellent scene of Meres’yev’s dance. Prokofiev stubbornly did not agree to change anything.’88 The scepticism was more widespread: in April 1948 Kukharsky stated that (in Mendel’son’s words) ‘many are reproaching him that he advised Seryozha to write Story, since he may get carried away with the morbid side of the work’.89 Not all of the reactions were negative. On 25 May 1948, at his dacha, Prokofiev played through Real Man for the conductor Khaykin, the producer Il’ya Shlepyanov, and theatre director N. A. Tsïganov. Khaykin appeared enthused, Shlepyanov perhaps bemused, but no revisions were recommended. Khaykin received permission from the KDI to prepare a concert performance, after which officials were to decide whether to invest in a full production. Meanwhile the libretto was requested for perusal by both the KDI and the Composers’

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They heard the opera between 11 May (when the piano score was completed) and 14 May (when Myaskovsky wrote in his diary). Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva, pp. 47 8. Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 109.

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Union (they had repeatedly asked to get acquainted with the opera), to be followed by a play-through of the score by the composer.90 Khaykin’s response (delivered a month after Prokofiev told him of this) was that the request from the Composers’ Union could be ignored, and that a select group would hear the work at a proper audition instead.91 Thus, prior to the Kirov performance on 3 December 1948 in Leningrad, there was little indication of the storm that was about to break (as Shlepyanov would warn Mendel’son during the entr’acte). But this was apparently an extremely poor concert production by uncommitted and under-rehearsed musicians – the composer said afterwards that he failed to recognize the music as his own.92 The opera was subsequently attacked by the assembled group in the harshest terms: as unheroic, ‘unmelodic’, with poor music for both orchestra and voices, and as a ‘parody’, a ‘mockery’, containing ‘grotesque’ scenes and emphasizing ‘naturalistic episodes’, ‘details’, and ‘effects’ over patriotic motifs and ‘ideological meanings’.93 The dreaded label of ‘formalist’ was immediately applied as a blanket term of condemnation. A suggestion has been made that the denunciation was orchestrated in advance from a higher level of the bureaucracy.94 Mendel’son had similar suspicions: they had expected a small group to be present, and wondered afterwards why so many were in attendance.95 While the precise details are unknown, it is not difficult to make certain assumptions about what occurred, as I discuss below. Nevertheless, in the light of ideological flaws and aesthetic inconsistencies that I have pointed 90

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Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, p. 48. Morrison, The People’s Artist, pp. 328 9, the source being a letter to Prokofiev dated 24 September 1948. RGALI f. 1929, op. 3, yed. khr. 375, l. 163. Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, 5 December 1948, p. 120. The responses to the opera were recorded by Mendel’son, who attended the audition and the following discussion (Prokofiev left before the discussion with a severe headache). Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, ‘Vospominaniya o Sergeye Prokof’yeve. Fragment: 1946 1950 godï’, pp. 137 9. According to Kukharsky, the opera did also have a few (in his view, misguided) defenders: ‘After the public preview of Prokofiev’s opera, which was justifi ably criticized at the Kirov Theatre, several critics such as Glikman and Vaynkop, and Sviridov, who unfortunately still sides with them, proclaimed with actual defiance their appreciation for the music, which is clearly formalistic and fundamentally flawed.’ Quoted in Yekaterina Sergeyevna Vlasova, 1948 god v sovetskoy muzïke: Dokumentirovannoye issledovaniye (Moscow: Klassika XXI, 2010), p. 377. Ol’ga Lamm, ‘Vospominaniya. Fragment: 1948 1951 godï’, in Sergey Prokof’yev: K 50 letiyu so dnya smerti. Vospominaniya, pis’ma, stat’i, ed. M. P. Rakhmanova (Moscow: Deka VS, 2004), p. 249. See Morrison, The People’s Artist, p. 329.

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out, the sharp criticism was justified in terms of what was expected from Soviet opera. The failure might have been predicted, on account of the matters raised by Myaskovsky and Lamm (Ol’ga Lamm also found it ‘naturalistic’).96 As in the case of Kotko, the criticisms were consistent with official guidelines, vague and even impossible to meet as these may have been. A further difficulty was that the audience at the audition was already familiar with the real-life story (one of the attendees was Aleksey Mares’yev himself), with the novel, and possibly the film, and thus would have perceived a significant contrast in the operatic representation. Soviet critics often tended to make comparisons with literature when viewing opera, as we have seen in the reception of each of Prokofiev’s previous works in the genre. In this case there were criticisms, for example, of the use of Polevoy’s text, and the absence of the folk songs mentioned in the novel, ‘Tonkaya ryabina’ and ‘Chubariki, chubchiki’.97 Khaykin tried to downplay the response, saying the reception would improve once he took the production to Moscow. But it turned out that he too had had misgivings about the work, and in fact had written to the KDI two days before the audition to warn about problems with the opera; he had failed at any point to communicate his doubts to the composer.98 Kukharsky, meanwhile, sought to distance himself from accountability by publishing a scathing article in January. The composer was thus betrayed by both of his ‘insider’ associates, who were deflecting responsibility. It was Prokofiev’s nemesis, Tikhon Khrennikov, however, who led the reproofs, being now in a position as General Secretary to vent his animosity without restraint. He followed up the public humiliation with two critical articles in leading newspapers.99 He also called the older composer in for a meeting at the Composers’ Union – for health reasons, Mendel’son had to attend in Prokofiev’s place – during

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Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva, p. 47. Which Kryukov’s symphony did include. Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem chelo veke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva, p. 39. Mira Abramovna Mendel’son Prokof’yeva, O Sergeye Sergeyeviche Prokof’yeve. Vospominaniya. Dnevniki (1938 1967) (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2012), p. 374. Khaykin was probably hoping to protect himself from any subsequent criticisms. He later regretted that the performance was not postponed. ‘Na plenume pravleniya Soyuza kompozitorov’ (Vechernyaya Moskva, 28 December 1948) and ‘Sovetskaya muzïka na novom etape’ (Pravda, 4 January 1949). These were extracts from Khrennikov’s address given at the meeting of the leadership of the Composers’ Union held on 21 December 1948, which was called to appraise works written since the February Resolution, ‘Tvorchestvo kompozitorov i muzïkovedov posle Postanovleniya TSK VKP(b) ob opere Velikaya druzhba’. The whole address was also printed in Sovetskaya muzïka (January 1949), 23 37.

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which he ridiculed the choice of topic and quality of the libretto. Mendel’son left believing that he was doing his best to keep Prokofiev’s operas out of the theatres.100 Real Man would probably not have been received more positively had it been granted a full production, when we consider the awkwardness of some of the images. Yet, without the visual dimension, much was lost as well, since this is such an important part of the work, including its representation of optimism and heroism. As a work that is closer to film than to the emerging ideal of oratorio-opera, it must be staged to be fully appreciated. In any case, the stipulation that a concert version first be heard, followed by the poor performance given by the musicians, points to a lack of commitment to the work in advance of the audition. Officials were right to be sceptical about an opera by Prokofiev on this subject matter, but at the same time it would seem that outright rejection was almost inevitable in 1948, which was perhaps the most difficult year to premiere a new work, especially an opera, and above all by a ‘formalist’ composer. Under the circumstances, the opera itself fulfils only part of the story of rejection. The larger picture must be the censure of Prokofiev’s attitude – his perceived arrogance – and his lack of dedication to the cause of Soviet music, which was highlighted in the Resolution. As described by Kiril Tomoff, the Resolution was an admonishment of the elite group of composers and their sponsors, who dominated the governing and funding bodies of the professional musical world and enjoyed increasing privileges and benefits which were highly unusual in the post-war period.101 The desire to shake up this state of affairs, coming from above, was gratefully taken up by lesser lights such as Khrennikov, Marian Koval’, and Vladimir Zakharov, who were free to express their bitter resentment in the wake of Zhdanov’s crude injunctions. An acute sense of inferiority led them to welcome this opportunity to turn the tables on their more esteemed colleagues, in a manner reminiscent of the exposure of class enemies, which was so fundamental to Stalinist society.102 The conference in 1948 had exposed the antagonism that existed towards Prokofiev personally, and the actions of the music world after the 100

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He may also have sought to eliminate a major competitor in opera, as he was then composing a comic opera, Frol Skobeyev (1945 50). Kiril Tomoff, Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939 1953 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), pp. 122 51. Of course a fundamental reality of Soviet socialism was precisely ‘[b]rutality against class enemies . . . [and a] ruthless proletarian morality.’ Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalin (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), p. 202.

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Resolution indicate that it persisted and even grew, since he remained the most conspicuous representative of the practices that caused greatest offence. The dismissal of Real Man was a continuation of the negative feeling towards the composer, since he had yet to reform. And so we must look into the issue of modes of professional conduct, and the ways in which Prokofiev’s behaviour and his public response to the Resolution did not conform. For all the petty interests it exposed, the Resolution also presents an example of the Soviet conventions of criticism and self-criticism. Alexei Kojevnikov has explored the practice of ‘games’ in ‘intraparty democracy’ and the function of criticism and self-criticism in ideological discussions.103 According to the rules of this game, Prokofiev failed to engage in proper Soviet creative activity by remaining aloof from his peers. One major criticism of Real Man was explicitly that he had not submitted his work for review by others (including nonmusicians).104 He was alone amongst Soviet composers in his insistence on writing his own librettos, even though his closest confidante advised him against it: at the meeting with Khrennikov, ‘Mira replied that she encouraged Prokofiev to collaborate with others on his librettos, but he always refused, preferring to write them with her at the same time as the music.’105 The Resolution was part of the process by which certain composers were humiliated in order for them to be subsequently rehabilitated after proving their allegiance. But this did not happen for Prokofiev; instead we have further evidence of his outsider status, his failure to integrate and to ingratiate himself with

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Alexei Kojevnikov, ‘Rituals of Stalinist Culture at Work: Science and the Games of Intraparty Democracy circa 1948’, The Russian Review, 57/1 (1998), 25 52. For assessments of Prokofiev’s work and his conduct, see Boris Yarustovskiy and Izrail’ Nest’yev, ‘Sovetskaya muzïka no novïkh putyakh’, Kul’tura i zhizn’, 21 December 1948, 3; Vasiliy Kukharskiy, ‘Vazhnaya zadacha sovetskikh kompozitorov’, Izvestiya, 13 January 1949, 3; and Tikhon Khrennikov, ‘O sostoyanii i zadachakh sovetskogo opernogo tvorchestvo’, Sovetskaya muzïka (January 1952), 11. The point was made clearly by Konstantin Dan’kevich in his introduction to the meeting of the Composers’ Union leadership, when he stated that ‘the unfortunate incident with his opera’ could have been avoided, if Prokofiev had taken ‘a severely critical attitude towards his art, if he understood that such a summit as the creation of Soviet opera could not be reached alone, and if he had not shown such aggressive disregard towards the collective.’ Dan’kevich, Sovetskaya muzïka (January 1949), 46. Quoted in Morrison, The People’s Artist, p. 337. ‘Prokofiev is the only Soviet composer who writes his own librettos’. Sergey Prokofiev Prokof’yev o Prokof’yeve, p. 187.

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his peers and the administration. His public response to the Resolution was defensive and somewhat haughty: he stated that he would be able to address the criticisms, that he believed he was already on the right track, and that Real Man would make this clear to his detractors. As Frolova-Walker has pointed out, this was the incorrect response, in that he sought to justify himself with rational argument as well as through his creative activity.106 Even after the rejection of the opera at the audition, Prokofiev wrote again to the Composers’ Union to vindicate his work and his overall approach, and finds an excuse not to have submitted the opera for perusal (all the material was required in Leningrad for rehearsals, ‘the production having been delayed by several months’).107 He also blames the Kirov troupe for the poor performance, adding that they ‘failed to project the dramatic sections and brought out some weaker colloquial parts so that they stuck out to epic proportions’.108 It is evident that he was unable to find the appropriate tone for apology, just as he could not achieve the required mode for heroism in opera. Shostakovich, who lived the whole of his professional life in the Soviet Union, had a much better understanding of the game, and responded in the expected manner, not attempting to argue with the substance of the reproach, but merely offering bland apology; he had also made the decision to give up on opera after the condemnation of Lady Macbeth in 1936.109 Prokofiev’s choice of a major work of Soviet heroism strongly suggests that he was not aware of his limitations in opera as perceived by his critics. The way in which he handled the Resolution – his attempt to pre-empt criticism – did not help his case, for Real Man or in general; on the contrary, his actions and written response did little to assuage his critics, but actually increased and prolonged the antagonism towards him. As we have seen, he sought a compromise with socialist realism, but this ended up incomplete, a neither–nor solution, which still included many of his typical mannerisms and ‘faults’. Indeed, we must conclude that he did not seem to understand what was expected from Soviet opera. In his letters of self-defence, he still focused on such features as simplicity and 106

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See Marina Frolova Walker (with Jonathan Walker), Music and Dictatorship: Russia under Stalin, Newly Translated Source Documents (New York: Carnegie Hall, 2003), pp. 20 2, which includes a translation of Prokofiev’s ‘Letter to Polikarp Ivanovich Lebedev and Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov’, originally published in Sovetskaya muzïka (January 1948), 66 7. Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva, p. 54 Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva, p. 55. Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva, p. 54.

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accessibility, melody, folk content, and inspiration from nineteenthcentury Russian forebears; he had not grasped that overwhelming effects, a large-scale dramatic sweep, and spectacular images together constituted the new model. The alternative possibility is that he deliberately chose to interpret the official statements according to his preferences, and to adapt only as much as suited his interests. The idea that the opera represents both a compromise and an adherence to Prokofiev’s principles may seem paradoxical or contradictory. But the point is that he sought such a compromise of his own volition and on his own terms, that instead of serving the needs of the regime, the opera was created solely through his agency and effort and was intended to serve his own career goals. This demonstrates his insufficient awareness as much as the opera does. Prokofiev’s willingness to appease his critics was limited, even when the pressures on him increased, considering that the second half of the opera was composed after the Resolution. In a way similar to his lack of an adequate response to historical events after the German invasion in 1941, when he made practically no changes to his War and Peace scenario, he did not alter his plans for Real Man in 1948 (‘Stalingrad’, for example, was included in the original plan of the libretto, and thus was not – as it might seem, and did seem to foreign critics – a concession to satisfy the censors110). Prokofiev wanted to be seen to conform without actually doing so on a fundamental level; his attempt to adapt was superficial, in that it did not involve a real change of priorities or acceptance of his role. In their subsequent repudiation of Real Man, Prokofiev’s peers were also (explicitly) denouncing his failure to transform his own activity and even his subjectivity as a Soviet composer. This too he failed to comprehend, since he started considering other comic subjects soon after: Taymïr Calls You (quickly abandoned) and Distant Seas (unfinished at the time of his death). He relied on his own initiative and attempted to retain creative autonomy. He felt that the freedoms and privileges he had enjoyed were in accordance with his world-renowned talent and achievements. But these were precisely the freedoms and privileges that were now proscribed. Prokofiev was supposed to have been ‘taught’ the Soviet practice of composition by committee through his experience with War and Peace. Kukharsky condemned Real Man for being ‘removed from real life’.111 This reflects also on the composer himself. The charge of ‘formalism’ was not merely or primarily an aesthetic judgement, directed at works of art. It referred to a lack of genuine personal engagement with, of sufficient 110 111

Lobachyova, ‘Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke’ S. S. Prokof’yeva, p. 141. Kukharskiy, ‘Vazhnaya zadacha sovetskikh kompozitorov’.

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political dedication to, the ideals of socialist realism.112 Prokofiev’s critics understood that he had not been through the same process of Soviet subjectformation as others had, and his years spent abroad were still counted against him. The communities that he belonged to throughout his life were elite ones: he was a coddled only child(-prodigy), a star pupil at the Conservatoire, and an associate of Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Koussevitzky et al. while in France; even upon his return to Soviet Russia he socialized with a narrow group of friends and supporters. Prokofiev still considered himself, and was seen by others, as an international figure, of greater talent and stature than his peers. He did not succeed, or even fully attempt, to fashion a ‘usable self’, in Fitzpatrick’s term, unlike the apparently more pragmatic Shostakovich.113 He was too naïve, too proud, too stubborn, or all of these, but essentially he was just himself, in his person and in his music. He persisted in composing operas, and writing them for the most part in his usual style. And this reveals something deeper too, related to Prokofiev’s subjectivity, his way of viewing and understanding the world and his place in it. He remained a liberal subject, seeking autonomy in order to pursue his own interests. He was one of a very limited number of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia with such a high profile in Stalinist Russia. Indeed, a liberal order was at all times extremely limited in Russia, as Laura Engelstein has demonstrated – emerging very late, during the fin de siècle, and then only partially, because of the ‘absolutist context’, whilst also being restricted to a tiny stratum of society.114 The fact that Prokofiev could have felt betrayed by two supporters of the opera is proof of naïvety on his part, his lack of insider knowledge.115 Upon hearing from Mendel’son the news of the rejection of Real Man, he ‘repeated “I just don’t understand” over and over again’.116 This is very revealing. His inability to comprehend the wider reasons for the disapproval of his work was due to a fundamentally opposed cultural perspective. His conflict with the regime was not only due to differences in aesthetics. The authorities gave no value to the individual creative voice, while Prokofiev gave it the highest value. He held to the ideal of freedom, in accordance with modern Western liberal thought: ‘the basic philosophical claim of “bourgeois” philosophy . . ., the notion central to the 112

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Alexander Werth points to this: ‘What is “formalism”, as understood by the Soviet authorities in 1948? The answer, as we now know, is this: “formalism” is, in fact, an insufficiently wholehearted attitude towards Soviet communism. It is no longer an aesthetic, but a political concept.’ Werth, Russia, p. 366. Fitzpatrick, Tear off the Masks!, p. 152. Laura Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in fin de siècle Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992). See Morrison, The People’s Artist, p. 331. 116 Morrison, The People’s Artist, p. 330.

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self-understanding and legitimation of the bourgeois form of life [is] the free, rational, independent, reflective, self-determining subject’.117 Prokofiev was a child of the Enlightenment, who sought an ordered existence within a rational universe. The episode is a demonstration of Hannah Arendt’s point that ‘common sense trained in utilitarian thinking is helpless against . . . ideological supersense, since totalitarian regimes establish a functioning world of no-sense’.118 Recent research has revealed one important expression of Prokofiev’s outlook, his belief in Christian Science, which has been described as an extreme form of philosophical idealism, with emphases on individuality, free will, the avoidance of disease, and the power of love.119 For Prokofiev it offered a systematic means of overcoming health and other problems through rational thought. Simon Morrison argues that Prokofiev sought in his later career to combine socialist realism with the precepts of Christian Science.120 It does seem possible that Christian Science provided the philosophy behind Real Man, which is governed by the themes of physical recovery (specifically mind over matter), and especially love. One might extend the claim to suggest, along the lines pursued by Hellbeck, that he was working out a way to incorporate ideology into his existing worldview.121 But Real Man also simply represents Prokofiev’s adherence to conventional operatic norms, in which the drama revolves around the love narrative. This was less widespread in the Russian traditions, however, considering for example those epic or tragic works celebrated by the Stalinist regime. In the state-approved exemplar Susanin, love is a secondary consideration, which is explicitly set aside until the welfare of the nation has been secured. Real Man is Russian and contemporary in its characters and images, but remains ‘universal’ in its central theme and concept of self-fulfilment. When Prokofiev strives for powerful effects in his later dramatic works, it is usually romantic love that is the 117

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In Robert Pippin’s description of bourgeois philosophy, its ‘highest value’ is freedom. Robert Pippin, The Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 1 and 5. Quoted in Robert Pippin’s chapter ‘Hannah Arendt and the Bourgeois Origins of Totalitarian Evil’, in his The Persistence of Subjectivity, p. 152. Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). ‘In his wartime and post wartime statements, Prokofiev fashioned the discourse of Christian Science to accord with the discourse of Socialist Realism.’ Morrison, The People’s Artist, p. 250. On this see also Nataliya Savkina, ‘The Significance of Christian Science in Prokofiev’s Life and Work’, Three Oranges: The Journal of the Serge Prokofiev Foundation, 10 (November 2005), 18 24. Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind, p. 12.

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source. He refused to turn his art into a vehicle of propaganda. His inability to generate heroic rhetoric became even more problematic in the context of national aggrandisement following victory, and the demand for art on a massive scale. The turn from the broad canvas of momentous historical struggle in War and Peace to explore the details of psychological turmoil and the rejuvenating power of love was in the exact opposite direction to that taken by late Stalinist culture.

Conclusion

Prokofiev returned to Stalinist Russia in order to launch the full-scale opera career that was his greatest creative goal. This may appear as a tragic miscalculation, in a career filled with ambitious plans and disappointing failures. And clearly, on a personal level, the Soviet years were difficult, if not as disastrous for him as for others around him. But the question remains whether Prokofiev’s compositional output benefited from proximity to Russian literary and operatic traditions, or even whether official demands for accessibility forced him to accept his more traditional strengths. His interactions with modernism in the West had, after all, frequently led to creative crises. In respect to opera, at least, the advantages of his return seem indisputable. Opera was struggling and would continue to struggle in the West, while the Soviet state-sponsored project was gaining momentum. Prokofiev took full advantage of the growing interest and the resources available, carrying out, as it were, a parallel project of his own. What might his prospects in opera have been if he had stayed in Europe or moved to the United States? How many operas could he have written? What subjects would he have chosen? It may be tempting to mull over such questions. But Prokofiev was a composer steeped in the Russian traditions, and most notably so in opera. Despite his cosmopolitan experience, and vast knowledge of the musical literature, he maintained the essential characteristics of the Musorgskian dialogue style throughout his career, enriching it in later years with Tchaikovskian classicism. There is the possibility that not only state funding but also his reacquaintance with these traditions (including Russian singers and a Russian audience) motivated the composition of his late operas, each of which develops Russian practices in a new direction. Prokofiev was a lover of literature and had a keen appreciation for the rich subtleties of language and characterization. His imagination was also activated by images – those described in novels and plays or seen on the stage and on screen. The variety of features in the four operas were partly the result of the composer’s usual desire to achieve faithful transpositions, as well as his interest in exploring new kinds of dramatic action and visual effects, in some cases derived from the cinema. Ultimately, his Soviet career has enhanced the repertoire with three genuinely outstanding works of music theatre, and one which is visually intriguing, even if musically less satisfying. [225]

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Conclusion

Prokofiev’s last four operas date from the most important and intense period in Soviet opera, from the late 1930s to the effective end of the project in the late 1940s. And throughout this period he was the most prominent composer of opera, despite all the criticisms. The increased investment in opera production under Stalin also entailed official involvement, as well as intense critical scrutiny of completed works – especially in the case of a high-profile figure of international fame, for whom expectations were higher (and doubts more severe). But at the time when Prokofiev’s decision was made, the extent to which opera would be circumscribed by political objectives was not yet fully evident. While it is fair to claim that he was overly optimistic to have thought that he would be left alone to compose as he wished, especially since we know he was not naïve about the realities of the Soviet regime, he could never have predicted the Great Terror, World War II, and the Cold War, or the effects that such upheavals would have on musical culture. While he eventually found that he was held in check by the ideological impositions of a totalitarian state, as a traditionally minded composer he also held on to the established values of his art, and would not relinquish creative independence. As a result he did not always choose acceptable subject matter, or develop his themes correctly, or take heed of the advice of colleagues and peers, or even altogether avoid what now appear to be blatant errors. Official demands on opera have emerged as relatively consistent throughout the period in question, notwithstanding the various stages in the Soviet opera project, fluctuations in political priorities, and the influence of historical events. From 1936, just as Prokofiev returned, the Russian nineteenth-century classics were promoted as models, not least for their use of folk song, to support a growing nationalism; there were recommendations for composers to imitate Verdi and Wagner and other nineteenth-century operatic masters, to engage the audience by drawing on the most powerful resources available to the art form. When the revised version of Glinka’s Ivan Susanin was premiered in 1939, this supplied an ideal (and indigenous) prototype. During the 1930s and 1940s, socialist realist norms for opera were also affected by comparisons with the adjacent arts of literature, theatre, and film. This often led to differing and even contradictory demands, leaving works vulnerable to any number of objections in reception. The project eventually proved a failure in terms of managing available talents. It began by ruining Shostakovich’s career in the genre, and ended with crushing Prokofiev’s. The collaborative approach may have been prudent for those less experienced, but works by ‘professionals’ were undoubtedly damaged by too much administrative involvement; Kabalevsky’s In the Fire is an example along with War and

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Peace. The authorities encouraged individual creativity but at the same time expected artists to serve the state. In opera, at least, this led to failure, since it was impossible to balance all the various elements and contradictory demands, and for those few Soviet composers who were capable of creating great works for the stage to sacrifice their artistic personalities on the altar of political correctness or relinquish their individual styles to produce a pastiche of Romanticism. This book has examined Prokofiev’s Soviet operas from different angles that take account of a range of characteristics: their genres, links to operatic history, their relationships to their literary sources, and connections to contemporary culture and society. I have proposed that these operas are not only key works in Prokofiev’s oeuvre and in the history of Soviet music, but are also important to the wider cultural history of Stalinist Russia. In accordance with this perspective, I have observed four distinct encounters between composer and state, most often in the form of confrontations that were the consequence of contrasting aesthetics, uses of traditions, and conceptions of history and humanity. In my summary here, I divide the four operas into two pairs, which are related in musical style and theatrical qualities, and also, to some extent, in terms of the topics that they have suggested. In Chapters 1 and 2, I considered Semyon Kotko and Betrothal in a Monastery as reinterpretations of classic genres of the theatre – melodrama and opera buffa. The two operas are complementary in many respects, since both are ensemble pieces featuring stock characters and were intended to be suitable for a popular audience. They balance sharp humour with light lyricism, and give attention to local colour. In these works the composer developed new ways of coordinating music and drama, enabling a combination of rapid action with clear and balanced forms. I have argued that for both Kotko and Betrothal it is also their particular genres, and Prokofiev’s handling of them, that explain their reception with officials and critics, since these genres had come to function in particular ways within Stalinist culture. Semyon Kotko is a vivid work of Soviet musical theatre that derives its content and style from the classic stage melodrama, and also incorporates the Russian operatic tradition of Gogolian comedy (including elements of folk music). Katayev’s novel was attractive to Prokofiev for its theatrical features: its quick pace and colourful descriptive passages. I have suggested that the particular stimulus behind the work was the collaboration with Meyerhold, and their shared interests and goals for the reform of opera. However, by the late 1930s both melodrama and the works of Gogol had been adapted into vehicles for Stalinist propaganda, and therefore the composer was not free to interpret them as he wished. Kotko was criticized

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severely enough that it was taken off the stage after one season. At issue was its lack of compelling heroism and robust national expression (in this case, celebration of the binding together of Ukraine and Russia), which were not present as components of the classic melodrama from which Prokofiev drew, but had become essential aspects of high Stalinist art. Betrothal in a Monastery was composed almost immediately after Kotko, and belongs to the tradition of classic opera buffa. Prokofiev reinvigorates this genre in an original way, through the pervasive use of (Mozartian) dance topoi – already basic to his style – for character representation. The short themes and motifs, associated with movement and gesture, continued the structural and theatrical principles developed in Kotko. Since the themes dominate the score, returning with the characters they represent, they create a unique form, in the manner of Prokofiev’s mature ballets. While Betrothal is generally assumed to have been a ‘retreat’ following Kotko’s negative reception, I have suggested that it was instead a complement to that opera, following from the influence of Meyerhold and the specific characteristics of Stanislavsky’s theatre. Furthermore, rather than an escape from the cultural practices of Stalinism, Betrothal should be seen within a network of contemporary values related to refinement, entertainment, and distraction, and as an example of the return of the (foreign) classics and comedies in the Soviet theatre during the second half of the 1930s. In the end this pure comedy was preferred to the mixed melodrama of Kotko, also as it allowed the composer to play to all his strengths simultaneously. Chapters 3 and 4 depart from the focus on genre as the central issue in the relationship with Stalinist culture. War and Peace and The Story of a Real Man have emerged as a second, complementary pair nevertheless, albeit in ways that are less immediately apparent. They were in fact his first operas to have both Russian characters and Russian settings. Both are historical, set during the country’s two most significant wars. The source for each opera was a famous and popular novel that explores individual psychologies against the backdrop of tumultuous events. Both of these works also engage closely with the officially favoured traditions of Russian opera – those of the nineteenth century and the Stalin era itself (the song opera). Turning away from the classic forms of the European theatre, they are versions of the Russian epic. Both also assimilated novelistic and cinematic means to create new musical structures and dramatic images. War and Peace and Real Man possess a wide range and depth of emotional content, and give a sense of a broad historical sweep, but were found lacking in ‘heroic uplift’ and nationalist aggrandizement. In terms of my critical interpretation, the two final chapters are more narrowly focused on

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the demands of ideology during and after the Great Patriotic War and on the associated issue of creative compromise. War and Peace was bound up with contemporary history in remarkably direct ways. I have explored the series of revisions that were imposed by officials on Prokofiev’s original score, against the background of a changing political and ideological landscape. Having been recognized for its potential significance to the war effort, and later as a vehicle for the representation of exceptional leadership and victory, the opera was gradually turned from an intimate and dramatic work, closely tied to Tolstoy, into a spectacle glorifying Stalin. My conclusion is that critics have been misguided in favouring the final version, and that the original work is due for re-evaluation; there will finally be opportunity for this following the recent new production and the publication of a critical edition. In the final chapter, I have suggested that Real Man began as a response to the composer’s experience with War and Peace; compromise, in this case, was built into the work from the beginning, albeit on Prokofiev’s own terms and without the expected element of collaboration. The composer apparently believed that incorporating elements of the song opera such as the mass song and folk song would allow him otherwise to continue with his usual declamatory style. But the combination did not lead to satisfactory results, least of all in comparison with post-war extremes of nationalism, since the opera did not include monumental effects. Together with a consideration of the crucial category of subjectivity within Stalinist ideology, my assessment of the opera’s musical style and visual content has shown that Prokofiev’s treatment of the narrative of trauma and selfdoubt was inappropriate and insensitive to the subject matter. Realistic images and a focus on the love story detracted, once again, from heroism. The reception of Real Man was also affected by the repercussions of the 1948 Resolution, including Prokofiev’s lack of an appropriate response to the sharp criticisms he received. Despite their disparate topics and themes, these chapters are unified by their investigation of a persistent conflict between aesthetic priorities. An overall picture has emerged of a fundamental clash between the composer’s operatic identity and style on the one hand, and the artistic administration’s ideals for opera on the other: in terms of the use of models, we have seen a creative response to tradition rather than the imitation of various Romantic composers; in terms of transposition, a faithfulness and sensitivity to the chosen literature instead of enhancement of heroism at all costs; in terms of form, a focus on balance and symmetry, in contrast to symphonic development towards an apotheosis; and in terms of scale, a close attention to details and nuances

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of character and action, forsaking overwhelming effects and ‘heroic uplift’. We can perceive threads connecting Prokofiev’s various points of reference: Russian operatic traditions, the theatre of Meyerhold, opera buffa, folk song, and film. As a group these four works appear as a varied and balanced collection, almost like a suite: a melodrama, a comedy, a nationalistic epic, a monologic epic. If one were to chart an overall trend or progression across the four, one could point to the incremental development from stock characters and stage action to staticity and psychological realism, and from ensemble casts in Kotko and Betrothal towards a kind of monodrama in Real Man. This was the opposite direction to the increasing demand for nationalist spectacle as the ideal for Stalinist opera, especially after the war. There are certain tendencies and techniques that unite the four operas, in spite of their variety. Chapters 1, 3, and 4 have dealt with the composer’s failure to create heroic characters. It is no coincidence that Betrothal and the first part of War and Peace – which include no heroic content – were the only ones of his later operas to enjoy success on the Stalinist stage. During the course of this book it has become clear that Prokofiev’s mature operatic style was lacking precisely the elements that were expressly demanded by his Soviet patrons. His music possessed many features that may have been compatible with Stalinist aesthetics: clarity and simplicity, classicism, lyricism, propulsive energy, and an optimistic mood. It is generally free of those kinds of emotional indulgence – the mournful and the mawkish – that were most controversial to official ears. Prokofiev avoided tragedy, which did not suit him; he preferred happy endings. But his music was similarly devoid of other properties of what we can vaguely term Romanticism that had become vital components of Soviet art during the 1930s: idealized heroism and mythical nationalism. He could not abide in music or drama precisely those types of expression that officials and critics considered essential. He abhorred bombast, being guided by more refined criteria, and also never managed to eliminate his irreverent streak. To serve the state as expected, he would have had to sacrifice individuality – humour, the ‘grotesque’, colourful details. The two features that I have highlighted as most characteristic of the later operas as a group were also those that were found most problematic in reception (Betrothal excepted): comic caricature and romantic lyricism. While in other vocal or narrative genres, such as cantatas, oratorios, song cycles, and film scores, he would adapt official guidelines to varying degrees, he was far less willing to yield in opera, his favoured medium. In my account, Prokofiev’s late operas have emerged as particularly significant and revealing examples of that central theme of Soviet music,

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the struggle between creative independence and subservience to state demands. Soviet opera was expected to represent and enhance the glory of the Stalinist state, not demonstrate the talent or increase the status of an individual creative artist. But Prokofiev maintained his principles and attempted to pursue his own artistic goals, holding on to an ideal of autonomy, and indeed to a Western, ‘bourgeois’ concept of art. A profound cultural divide separated him from Stalinism and socialist realism, one which can be perceived at a level deeper than the sonorous and visual surfaces of his works themselves. It may be that Prokofiev failed to comprehend the expectations for Soviet opera, or that he understood but resisted these demands. It would appear that both are true – there was a degree of misunderstanding as well as avoidance. He did not respond to the abundant messages he was given, generate the qualities that were required, or renounce those elements that were most controversial. He was reluctant to allow official interference or the involvement of colleagues in his work, and resented it when it was forced on him. It is, in the end, remarkable that Prokofiev, through his obstinate dedication to the genre, managed to complete these four operas, which may appear in some ways to transcend their origins. For the reasons I have given, it is the case that, despite the creation of these works in Stalin’s Soviet Union, the severe restrictions this involved, and the negative reception they received, they nevertheless belong to the wider history of Western opera, as twentieth-century masterworks in the distinguished Russian tradition. While overall they failed to captivate contemporary Soviet audiences or satisfy officials, the composer’s ultimate achievement is to have composed works that have universal appeal. This is not equally true, of course, of all four works. In terms of their later reception they can be divided, again, into groups of two. Betrothal and War and Peace, now more frequently performed outside of Russia, may appear as autonomous works on literary classics. Kotko and especially Real Man, on the other hand, are less familiar, and have been understood thus far only in terms of Soviet contexts and Stalinist art. The tendency is that appreciation of the former pair is combined with their detachment from history, whereas the other two are tied exclusively to their source novels and socialist realism. As Prokofiev receives proper recognition for his contribution to opera, and (one may hope) his Soviet operas advance their positions in the repertory both in Russia and in the West, audiences, critics, and scholars alike should be encouraged to consider the turbulent history that lies behind all four, and the aesthetic tensions that permeate each one.

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Index

Aleksandrov, Grigoriy, 103 Tsirk, 60 Arendt, Hannah, 223 Bakhterev, Igor’, 146 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 175, 180 Balukhatïy, Sergey, 42 Beaumarchais, Pierre, 71 Belïy, Viktor, 142 Berg, Alban Wozzeck, 5, 187 Bizet, Georges Carmen, 5, 20 Blok, Aleksandr, 27 Blyum, Vladimir, 102 Bolshoy Filial Theatre, 116 Bolshoy Theatre, 7, 8, 13, 104, 111, 138, 139 Borodin, Aleksandr Knyaz’ Igor’ (Prince Igor), 145 Brecht, Bertolt, 30 Brooks, Peter, 26, 42 carnivals and festivities, 106 7 Central Committee Resolution (1932), 5 Central Committee Resolution on music (1948), 13, 14, 64, 154, 162 3, 218 19, 221 Central Committee Resolutions on literature, theatre, and film (1946), 141 Chapayev, Vasiliy, 58 Chkalov, Valeriy, 58 Christian Science, 223 cinecomedy, 103 Committee on Artistic Affairs (Komitet po delam iskusstv) (KDI), 12 ‘workshop’ method of opera composition, 52 1939 conference on opera, 8 control of opera project, 8 9 criticisms of Soviet opera, 9 establishment of, 5

[250]

first meetings on opera, 7 January 1945 meeting, 140 de Vega, Lope, 105 Diaghilev, Sergey, 14, 15, 222 Dikiy, Aleksey portrayal of Kutuzov, 146 portrayal of Stalin, 154 Donskoy, Dmitriy, 29, 58, 144 Dovzhenko, Aleksandr, 21 Shchors, 21, 60 Dunayevsky, Isaak, 103 Dzerzhinsky, Ivan Podnyataya tselina (Virgin Soil Upturned), 9 Tikhiy Don (The Quiet Don), 7, 22, 63 Eisenstein, Sergey, 140, 163 on Prokofiev’s composing for film, 75 Five Year Plan, First, 5, 32, 104 Five Year Plan, Second, 103 Foucault, Michel, 166, 167 Freud, Sigmund, 167, 180, 192 Frunze, Mikhail, 58 Gay, John The Beggar’s Opera, 71 Gayamov, Aleksandr, 213 Gerasimov, Aleksandr, 161 Glinka, Mikhail, 111, 140, 142, 144 Ivan Susanin (Soviet version of A Life for the Tsar), 11, 14, 23, 30, 58, 111, 136, 139, 144, 145, 224 Gogol, Nikolay, 104 Soviet reception of, 33 Taras Bul’ba, 33, 58 Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan’ki (Evenings on a Farm Near Dikan’ka), 21, 33, 58 Goldoni, Carlo, 105 Gorky, Maksim, 27 Gorodinsky, Viktor, 52

Index Great Retreat, 104, 109, 119 Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 141 Griboyedov, Aleksandr, 104 Grinberg, Moisey, 64 Hitler, Adolf portrayal in film, 154 Kabalevsky, Dmitriy V ogne: Pod Moskvoy (In the Fire: Near Moscow), 139, 226 Kalashnikov, Yuriy, 114 Katayev, Valentin, 187 Ya, sïn trudovogo naroda (I, Son of the Working People), 20, 60 adaptations of, 31 plot of, 31 2 Kerzhentsev, Platon, 104, 133 article on Meyerhold, 25 comparision of opera and the cinema, 12 Khachaturyan, Aram, 64 Khaykin, Boris, 213, 215, 217 Khrapchenko, Mikhail, 53, 133 Khrennikov, Tikhon, 217, 218 as a member of Stalinist cadres, 65 V buryu (Into the Storm), 22, 52, 63 as polar opposite of Semyon Kotko, 55 ending of, 60 limited success of, 54 official support for, 54 political correctness of, 58 Khrushchyov’s Thaw, 162 Khubov, Georgiy, 10, 59 criticism of Semyon Kotko, 57 support for Khrennikov’s Into the Storm, 53 Kirov Theatre, 138 Kirov, Sergey, 58 Knipper, Lev, 53, 155 Kotovsky, Grigoriy, 58 Koussevitzky, Sergey, 222 Koval’, Marian, 218 Krenek, Ernst Jonny spielt auf, 5 Kreytner, Georgiy, 53 Kukharsky, Vasiliy, 114, 174, 213, 215, 217, 221 kul’turnost’, 109 11 Kutuzov, Mikhail, 58, 144

251 Lacan, Jacques, 167 Lamm, Ol’ga, 215 Lamm, Pavel, 215 Lavrova, Tat’yana, 141 Lavrovsky, Leonid, 105 leitmotif, 90 Lenin, Vladimir, 2, 60 interest in Wagner, 10 on the cinema, 11 on the New Soviet Man, 168 Leningrad Small Opera Theatre (MALEGOT), 8, 139, 141, 154, 155 Linley, Thomas, the elder, and Thomas Linley, the younger, 72 Little Russian comedy, 21, 34 Lomonosov, Mikhail, 58 Lunacharsky, Anatoliy, 2, 5, 27 interest in Wagner, 10 on comedy, 102 on melodrama, 27 Makarov Rakitin, Konstantin Ya sïn trudovogo naroda, 59 Mares’yev, Aleksey, 163, 217 melodrama, 25 6 in Stalinist aesthetics, 27 9 Mendel’son, Mira, 67, 123 Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 21, 111 arrest of, 31 on gesture, 40, 41 on Semyon Kotko, Act 3, 46 on simplicity, 22 on the singer actor, 24 persecution of, 25 Minin, Kuz’ma, 29, 58, 144 Moguchaya kuchka (kuchkist), 35, 179 Molière, 105 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 54, 63, 98 Moscow Chamber Theatre production of Sheridan’s The Duenna, 116 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 67 Don Giovanni, 79 Le nozze di Figaro (Marriage of Figaro), 69, 94, 104 Muradeli, Vano Velikaya druzhba (The Great Friendship), 13, 64, 154 Musorgsky, Modest, 15, 34, 99, 142, 186 Boris Godunov, 115

252

Index Musorgsky, Modest (cont.) Marriage, 142 Sorochintsï Fair, 35 Myaskovsky, Nikolay, 54, 64, 155, 174, 215 Nazi Soviet Pact, 51 Nemirovich Danchenko Theatre, 52 Nemirovich Danchenko, Vladimir, 23 Nest’yev, Izrail’, 53, 60 Nevsky, Aleksandr, 29, 58, 144 New Economic Policy, 5, 211 New Soviet Man, 163, 167 71 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 160, 167, 168 opéra bouffe, 88 operetta, 106, 113, 174 oratorios and cantatas, 174 Oryol Kursk, Battle of, 143, 172 Ostrovsky, Aleksandr, 104 Bespridannitsa (The Dowerless Girl), 105 Panchekhin, Nikolay, 57 Petrov, Vladimir Kutuzov, 146 representation of Kutuzov, 146 7 Stalingradskaya bitva (The Battle of Stalingrad), 154 Pixérécourt, René Charles Guilbert de, 25 Pokrovsky, Boris, 140 Polevoy, Boris, 162 Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke (The Story of a Real Man) form of, 172 3 plot of, 171 2 Popov, Gavriil, 53 Pozharsky, Dmitriy, 11, 58, 144 Prokofiev, Sergey, 179 aesthetics of opera, 15 16 affection for opera buffa, 69 affinity for comedy, 99 as a Soviet subject, 221 4 association with Meyerhold, 24 5 attitude towards propaganda, 98 conflict with socialist realism, 14 15 conflict with Stalinist aesthetics, 18 connection to Russian opera traditions, 225 creative autonomy of, 2, 13 14, 122 3, 167, 230 1 five ‘lines’, 16 17

‘grotesque’ style, 17 Honoured Artist of the Russian Republic, 139 late operas, 17 late style, 16 modes in the music of, 36 musical notebooks, 78 ‘new simplicity’, 22 official standing, 214 professional conduct, 219 20 return to Russia, 1 simplification of style, 16 Stalin Prize for Seventh Piano Sonata, 139 works of Betrothal in a Monastery (Obrucheniye v monastïre) anti Semitism in, 85 7, 107 8 as a ‘retreat’, 96 101 audition of, 113 ballet divertissement in, 88 carnival elements in, 106 comparison with Romeo and Juliet, 90 5 comparison with Semyon Kotko, 99 100 composer’s statement on Sheridan’s The Duenna, 67, 70 composer’s statements on, 74 composition of, 67 cuts in performance, 119 dance topoi in, 74 88 dramaturgy of, 95 6 form of, 91 6 idea for, 67 Meyerhold’s influence on, 100 numbers in, 72 3 plot of, 70 revision of, 114 18 success of, 113 suitability for the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre, 100 1 tone of, 73 4 Boris Godunov, 24, 45 Cinderella (Zolushka), 75, 112, 124 Distant Seas (Dalyokiye morya), 182, 221 Fiery Angel, The (Ognennïy angel), 15, 16, 24, 99 Gambler, The (Igrok), 15, 16, 24, 99

Index Ivan the Terrible (Ivan Groznïy), 135, 147, 178, 201 Khan Buzay, 182 Le pas d’acier, 92 Lermontov, 178 Love for Three Oranges, The (Lyubov’ k tryom apel’sinom), 24, 74, 99 planned revision of, 106 March, op. 99, 178 Music for Gymnastic Exercises (Muzïka dlya fizkul’turnïkh uprazhneniy), 24 Overture on Hebrew Themes (Uvertyura na yevreyskiye temï), 85 Peter and the Wolf (Petya i volk), 28 Romeo and Juliet (Romeo i Dzhul’yetta), 16, 90 first performance of, 111 sketchbook for, 78, 80 Semyon Kotko comic elements in, 58 comic relief in, 49 comparison with Ivan Susanin, 37, 44 5 composer’s involvement in rehearsals of, 40 1, 42, 45 composer’s statements on, 20, 23, 53 composition of, 25 film like qualities of, 50 first performance of, 53 folk song elements in, 35 6, 43 gesture in, 46 Gogolian qualities of, 34 6 key symbolism in, 37 lack of heroism in, 55 local colour in, 21, 33 melodrama as basis of, 26 melodramatic features in, 41 50 modal spectrum of, 36 physical gesture in, 39 40 realism of, 30 1 reception and criticism of, 50 61 Tïshler’s stage design for, 31, 49 Ukrainian setting, 61 3 Ukrainian symbols in, 49 ‘Song of the Motherland’, Op. 79, No. 1, 186 Story of a Real Man, The (Povest’ o nastoyashchem cheloveke) Aleksey as epic character, 180 1 as a monologic epic, 175 6

253 audition and reception of, 216 18 ballet scenes, 211 challenges of subject matter, 173 4 choice of subject matter, 174 5 comparison with Stolper’s film, 182 3, 193, 201, 210, 212 compromise with socialist realism, 220 1 Expressionism in, 187 92 folk genres and colloquialisms in, 186 7 folk tale elements in, 185, 194 impression on Prokofiev’s friends and colleagues, 215 16 lack of heroism in, 205 13 love narrative in, 198 201, 202 5 musical structure and style of, 176 9 narrative structure of, 180 original piano score of, 164 Prokofiev’s letter in defence of, 220 published edition of, 164 recycling of earlier works in, 176 8, 201 simplification of musical style in, 179 socialist realist master plot in, 194 8 stage images in, 182 5, 212 13 Taymïr Calls You (Vas vïzïvayet Taymïr), 221 Twelve Russian Folksongs, 140 War and Peace (Voyna i mir) ‘absent centre’ of, 124 ‘absent ending’ of, 132 1946 review of, 142 3 1948 audition of, 155 altered structure and tone of revised opera, 144 53 audition of Part 2, 153 critical reception of, 156 9 eclecticism of final version, 159 60 February 1950 meeting with KDI, 155 final revisions of, 155 genre scenes in, 125 6 idea for, 123 4 KDI’s advice on, 135 6 key symbolism in, 130 libretto of, 124 8 premiere of original version, 121 2 publication and performance of final version of, 156 reception of, 122 reluctance to add ‘Ball’ tableau, 140

254

Index Prokofiev, Sergey (cont.) reluctance to compose ‘Fili’ tableau, 147 reminiscence motifs in, 124 revisions of, 133 5, 137 8 revisions to ‘Fili’, 147 9 revisions to final chorus, 150 Samosud’s advice on, 138 Shlifshteyn and Samosud’s advice on Kutuzov, 144 5 Shlifshteyn’s earliest advice on, 133 5 willingness to revise, 135 Yevgeniy Onegin, 81 Puccini, Giacomo Gianni Schicchi, 69 Tosca, 5 Pushkin, Aleksandr, 144 centenary of, 108 Razumovsky, Aleksandr, 146 reminiscence motif, 91 Revolution of October 1937 anniversary of, 8 Rimsky Korsakov, Nikolay, 34, 196, 201 Rossini, Gioachino, 67, 91 Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), 69, 100, 104 Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM), 5 Samosud, Samuil, 8, 104, 113, 114, 133, 138 dismissal from Bolshoy Theatre, 139 Schoenberg, Arnold Erwartung, 183 Sel’vinsky, Il’ya, 146 Shakespeare, William, 105 in the Soviet repertory, 109 The Merchant of Venice, 108 Shaporin, Yuriy Dekabristï (Decembrists), 9 Shaverdyan, Aleksandr, 57, 142 Shepilov, Dmitriy, 64 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 67 The Duenna sources of, 71 Soviet production of, 116 tradition and form of, 71 Shevchenko, Taras, 61 Zapovit (Testament), 48

Shlepyanov, Il’ya, 215 Shlifshteyn, Semyon, 64, 114, 133 criticism of V buryu, 52 Sholokhov, Mikhail, 7, 9 Shostakovich, Dmitriy, 8, 13, 14, 64, 220 Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda (Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, 7, 22, 122 Shumyatsky, Boris, 103 socialist realism, 6, 123 central concepts of, 6, 12 Sollertinsky, Ivan, 59 Solodovnikov, Aleksandr, 114, 137 Solov’yov, Vladimir, 146, 149 Sovetskaya muzïka, 10 Soviet comedy political function of, 102 8 Soviet novel master plot, 28, 32, 56, 173, 180 Soviet opera, 1 2, 8, 29 30, 139, 155 6 desired manner and effects of, 10 librettos of, 9 official debates on, 51 relation to the cinema, 13 song opera, 7, 9 Soviet theatres operatic repertory of, 10 Stalin Prize, 54, 65, 98, 133, 141, 146, 149, 173, 214 Stalin Prize Committee, 64 criticism of Semyon Kotko, 54 Stalin, Iosif, 7, 10, 23, 60, 139, 147 appreciation for V buryu, 63 commission of Shchors, 21 interest in opera and cinema, 12 leader cult of, 10, 143 4 on Korneychuk’s V stepyakh Ukrainï, 59 on opera, 2, 7 promotion of comedy, 103 revision to Ivan Susanin, 11 role in cultural policy, 13 Stalingrad, Battle of, 143 Stalinist aesthetics monumentality, 10 11 Stalinskiye vïsotki, 161 Stanislavsky Opera Theatre, 100, 112 Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 30 support for Meyerhold, 25 Stanislavsky/Nemirovich Danchenko Theatre, 139 Strauss, Johann, II

Index Der Zigeunerbaron (The Gypsy Baron), 113 Stravinsky, Igor, 14, 15, 222 subjectivity, concepts of, 165 7 Surin, Vladimir, 142 Suvorov, Aleksandr, 58, 144 Tarle, Yevgeniy, 145, 146 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr, 15, 34, 111, 142 Cherevichki, 35, 43, 61 Pikovaya Dama (The Queen of Spades), 159 Yevgeny Onegin, 186 Terror, Great, 28, 31, 58, 106, 170 Timasheff, Nicholas on the ‘New Esthetic Policy’, 109 Tïshler, Aleksandr, 25 Tolstoy, Aleksey Peter the First, 213 The Road to Calvary, 214 Tolstoy, Lev Chto takoye iskusstvo? (What Is Art?), 158, 160 philosophy of history of, 128 30 Voyna i mir (War and Peace) representation of Kutuzov, 130 Tsïganov, N. A., 215 Tsukkerman, Viktor, 55, 57

255 Union of Soviet Composers, 5, 9, 54, 64, 216 discussions on opera, 141 Vakhtangov Theatre, 101 Vasil’yev, Georgiy and Sergey Vasil’yev Chapayev, 21 Vasilevsky, Aleksandr, 154 Verdi, Giuseppe, 91 Falstaff, 69, 84 in the Soviet repertory, 109 Rigoletto, 111 works as model for Soviet opera, 10, 111, 142 vïdvizhentsï, 110 11 Voroshilov, Kliment, 54, 60, 63 Wagner, Richard, 24, 90 works as model for Soviet opera, 10, 159 Zakharov, Vladimir, 218 Zhdanov, Andrey, 64 Zhdanovshchina, 141, 170, 214 Zhukovsky, Vasiliy, 159