Competing Visions of Love and Brotherhood: RewritingWar and Peacefor the Soviet Opera Stage

Abstract

AbstractWhen Sergei Prokofiev chose to adaptWar and Peacefor the Soviet opera stage in the 1940s, he faced both operatic conventions and Soviet ideological demands that ran counter to the philosophy and structure of Tolstoy’s sprawling masterpiece. Prokofiev’s early decision to split his opera intoPeaceandWar, making the first a romantic love story of individuals and the second a collective story of the people’s love for Mother Russia, marked a major divergence from Tolstoy. This article explores how Prokofiev reworked Tolstoy’s philosophy of love and human connection to make his opera acceptable for the Soviet stage. Moving away from Tolstoy’s family ideal inPeace, with its basis on intimate sibling bonds, Prokofiev shifted the family toWar, turning it into a national Russian family of Father Kutuzov, Mother Russia and their children – the Russian people. The opera uses choral glorification of these heroic parents to foster on a national scale the type of intimacy Tolstoy had advocated in the home.