Dancing theKolomyikaat the Opéra-Comique: Léo Delibes's Galician OperaKassya

Abstract

In the spring 1893, the following statement appearedin a theater review in one of the Parisian dailies: “Mais, dans ce diable de pays de Galicie, on n'est jamais tranquille et il faut toujours craindre pour le lendemain [But, in this hell of a land Galicia, it's never quiet, and one must always fear for tomorrow].” These words were written in response to the first, and perhaps the only, opera produced in Western Europe about the Austrian province of Galicia. The work's plot centered on a love triangle between a count, a gypsy girl, and a peasant, and was set against the historical backdrop of the Galician peasant uprising of 1846. The opera in question,Kassya, was the swan song of French composer Léo Delibes, written after a trip he took to Hungary and Austrian Galicia. The critic who penned the above words, Georges Street, certainly knew something about intrigue and conspiracy within the Austrian Empire. He was the grandson of Metternich's master spy, Georg Klindworth, and the son of Agnes Street-Klindworth, who gathered intelligence for her father about refugees of the 1848 upheavals living in Weimar. Delibes's opera and Street's biography interconnect only circumstantially—the former composed the music toKassya;the latter attended a performance and wrote a review—yet this coincidence suggests an interesting avenue for investigation regarding French contacts with East Central Europe.