Bewitching Russian Opera: The Tsarina from State to Stage by Inna Naroditskaya (review)

Abstract

DRAMA Bewitching Russian Opera: Tsarina from State to Stage. By Inna Naroditskaya. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. [xvi, 401 p. ISBN 9780195340587. $74.] Music examples, tables, bibliography, index.This delightful essay in revisionism departs from premise that students of Russian opera face major task of forgetting. We have to forget first fact we ever learned: viz., that Russian opera begins with Glinka. Even those of us who think we have become sophisticated on matter of nationalism, who have refined notion of Glinka's primacy to acknowledge existence of his predecessors, and who define his significance in terms of genre (the first real operas-that is, sung-straight-through) and reception (performed and admired abroad!)-even we, author insists, are still blinded by discourse that is unholy ahistorical issue of utopian nationalism and masculinist revenge. muchtouted fact that Glinka's contemporaries immediately recognized his work as a wonderful beginning (to quote Gogol yet again) merely locates source of that ahistorical discourse in need for nineteenth-century Russians to forget that their country had been ruled in eighteenth century by women, and that one among those women who mattered most to histories both of Russia and of opera was foreigner to boot. So we must now remember what they forgot and forget what they would have us remember. And if we manage to do all that, we will put Catherine II, known as the Great, in place of Glinka in founder's seat. Then, and only then, will we be able to see history of Russian opera as single continuous development and understand both how it got going and how it became what it became in years of its greatest fame.Does it still seem odd to put noncomposer in such place? Such thesis comes with less strain to an ethnomusicologist, which is what author, Inna Narodit skaya, is by training and selfdescription; but as work of scholars such as Ellen Rosand and Martha Feldman has shown, even unprefixed musicologists are getting used to idea that, when it comes to charting their histories, artistic genres are better viewed as social practices than as collections of works. empresses who ruled Russia (but for three tiny interregna totaling less than four years) from 1725 to 1796 were ones who brought opera to Saint Petersburg court. There were four of them, but as it was second, Anne, who first imported genre from Italy, one tends to think of them as trio. Catherine Great was last, and she did more than patronize genre. She also contributed to it as librettist, composing (with assistance of literary secretaries) Russian texts to five comic operas and one historical pageant with music. composers who set them were an assortment of Italians and locals, who sometimes collaborated (so that pageant, Early Reign of Oleg, had music by two Italians, Giuseppe Sarti and Carlo Cannobio, and one Russian, Vasily Pashkevich, who also set one of comic librettos).Catherine's activity was never secret to historians of Russian opera-even though aristocratic mores did not permit her name to appear on works she authored until they were posthumously published or reprinted-but it was never taken seriously. Her spoken comedies have fared better with historians; there is even literary scholar, Lurana O'Malley, who specializes in works of Catherine Great. But present book contains most extensive treatment her operas have ever received in any language. Naroditskaya's book has only one noteworthy predecessor: Russkaya opera do Glinki (Russian Opera before Glinka), monograph published in 1948 (Moscow: Muzgiz) by Soviet musicologist Alexan - der Rabinovich. very title of book, with its suggestion of prehistory, reinforces influence of old narrative; whereas some of music by Catherine's composers (especially native ones who hailed from lower social echelons) is praised, Catherine's contributions are never actually discussed, only insulted: The libretto of Fevey, we read of one, sets veritable record for feebleness and tastelessness. …