The Stone Guest (Dargomyzhsky)
Template:Dargomyzhsky operas The Stone Guest (Каменный гость in Cyrillic, Kamennyj gost' in transliteration) is an opera in three acts by Alexander Dargomyzhsky. Opera was created in 1866-1869's.
The libretto was taken almost verbatim from Alexander Pushkin's like-named play in blank verse (part of his collection Little Tragedies), with slight changes in wording and the interpolation of two songs indicated in the play. It was first performed at the Mariinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg, 16 February 1872 (Old Style)[1][2].
According to the composer's wishes, the last few lines of Tableau 1 were composed by César Cui, and the whole was orchestrated by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Many years later, Rimsky-Korsakov revised his own orchestration of the opera, rewrote a few of Dargomyzhsky's own original passages, and added an orchestral prelude. This version, completed in 1903 and first performed in 1907 at the Bolshoi Theatre[1], is now considered the standard version.
Performance History
-
Komissarzhevsky
and Petrov -
Fyodor Komissarzhevsky
as Don Juan -
Yuliya Platonova
as Donna Anna -
Platonova
and Komissarzhevsky
Roles
| Role | Voice type | Premiere Cast 16 February 1872 (Old Style) (Conductor: Eduard Nápravník) |
|---|---|---|
| Don Juan | tenor | Fyodor Komissarzhevsky |
| Leporello, his servant | bass | Osip Petrov |
| Donna Anna | soprano | Yuliya Platonova |
| Don Carlos | baritone | Ivan Melnikov |
| Laura | mezzo-soprano | Mariya Ilyina |
| A Monk | bass | Vladimir Sobolev |
| First Guest | tenor | Vasily Vasilyev (Vasilyev II) |
| Second Guest | bass | Mikhail Sariotti |
| Statue of the Commander | bass | Vladimir Sobolev |
Style
(V. Bessel and Co., Saint Petersburg)
As an opera, The Stone Guest is notable for having its text taken almost exactly from the literary stage work which inspired it, rather than relying on a libretto adapted from the source in order to accommodate expectations of opera audiences for arias, duets, choruses, etc. Consequently, the resulting musical drama consists almost entirely of solo speeches by characters sung in turn, as in a spoken play. This procedure amounted to a radical statement about the demands of spoken and musical drama and was seen by some as a devaluation of the musical genre of opera distinct from the literary genre of spoken drama. Tchaikovsky in particular was critical of the idea; in response to Dargomyzhky's statement that "I want sound directly to express the word; I want truth" (Taruskin 1981, 258), Tchaikovsky wrote in his private correspondence that nothing could be so "hateful and false" as the attempt to present as musical drama something that was not.[citation needed]
Music
Consequently, certain musical novelties of The Stone Guest stem from the above basic premise of composition. For instance, there is little recurrence of whole sections of music in the course of the work; like the verse itself, the resulting music is primarily through-composed. (Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestral introduction to the opera, however, draws on themes from the music that Dargomyzhsky composed.) As if to emphasize this feature, the composer wrote the entire opera without key signatures, even though it would be possible (and practical) to re-notate the work with key signatures to reflect the various tonalities through which it passes.
In addition, the opera was novel for its time in its use of dissonance and whole-tone scales. Dargomyzhky's attempts at realism and faithfulness to the text resulted in what has been referred to as a "studied ugliness"[citation needed] in the music, apparently intended to reflect the actual ugliness in the story. Cui termed the stylistic practice of the work as "melodic recitative" for its balance between the lyric and the naturalistic.[citation needed]
The value of the opera
It was the time of formation of realism in art. Opera The Stone Guest corresponded to this genre. Dargomyzhsky used the ideas of the society of The Five (composers).
The great innovation of this Opera is in style. Opera written in innovative for those times style: no arias, nor ensembles (not counting two small romances of Laura[3]), it is entirely built on the melodic recitative of the human voice, put on music. This was immediately noted by Russian musical specialists: César Cui[4], Alexander Serov[5].
Opera had a great importance in the formation of Russian musical culture. Russian musical culture, built entirely on the European music has found its direction in the world musical culture.
Innovation of Dargomyzhsky was continued by other composers, first of all they were taken up and developed by Modest Mussorgsky. Mussorgsky called Dargomyzhsky «the teacher of musical truth».[6] Later the principles of Dargomyzhsky’s art were embodied by Modest Mussorgsky in his operas Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina; Mussorgsky continued and strengthened this new musical traditions.
The modern Russian music critic Viktor Korshikov thus summed up:
- There is not the development of Russian musical culture without the The Stone Guest. It is three operas - Ivan Soussanine, Ruslan and Ludmila and The Stone Guest have created Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin. Soussanine is an opera, where the main character is the people, Ruslan is the mythical, deeply Russian intrigue, and The Guest, in which the drama dominates over the softness of the beauty of sound.[7].
Recordings
Audio
- 1946, Aleksandr Orlov (conductor), USSR Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Dmitriy Tarkhov (Don Juan), Georgiy Abramov (Leporello), Nina Aleksandriyskaya (Laura), Daniil Demyanov (Don Carlos), Gugo Tits, V. Nevskiy (Guests), Nataliya Rozhdestvenskaya (Doña Anna), Konstantin Polyayev (Monk), Aleksey Korolyov (Commander),
- 1977, Mark Ermler (conductor), Bolshoy Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, Vladimir Atlantov (Don Juan), Aleksandr Vedernikov (Leporello), Tamara Sinyavskaya (Laura), Vladimir Valaitis (Don Carlos), Vitaliy Vlasov, Vitaliy Nartov (Guests), Tamara Milashkina (Doña Anna), Lev Vernigora (Monk), Vladimir Filippov (Commander)
- 1995, Andrey Chistyakov (conductor), Bolshoy Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, Nikolay Vasiliyev (Don Juan), Vyacheslav Pochapsky (Leporello), Tatyana Erastova (Laura), Nikolay Reshetnyak (Don Carlos), Marina Lapina (Doña Anna), Boris Beyko (Monk), Nikolay Nizyenko (Commander)
Video
- 1979, Mark Ermler (conductor), Bolshoy Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, Vladimir Atlantov (Don Juan), Tamara Milashkina (Doña Anna), Aleksandr Vedernikov (Leporello), Tamara Sinyavskaya (Laura), Vladimir Valaitis (Don Carlos), Vladimir Filippov (Monk , Commander), Andrey Sokolov, Pyotr Glubokiy (Guests)
References
Notes
- ^ a b The Stone Guest (ru: Опера Даргомыжского «Каменный гость»)
- ^ ru: Опера `Каменный гость`
- ^ ru: Александр Даргомыжский – «Каменный гость»
- ^ César Cui. Selected articles. - Leningrad: 1952
- ^ A. N. Serov. Selected articles. - Moscow: 1950-1957
- ^ M. P. Mussorgsky. Collection of romances and songs. - Moscow, 1960
- ^ Victor Korchikov, "Do you want, I'll teach you to love the opera. About the music, and not only". The publishing house ЯТЬ. Moscow, 2007 / Russian: Виктор Коршиков. Хотите, я научу вас любить оперу. О музыке и не только. Издательство ЯТЬ. Москва, 2007
Further reading
- Taruskin, Richard "The Stone Guest". Grove Music Online (OperaBase). Accessed 26 Jun 2005 (subscription access).
- Taruskin, Richard, "The Stone Guest and its Progeny" in Opera and Drama in Russia as Preached and Practiced in the 1860s. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1981.