REALISM AS PREACHED AND PRACTICED: THE RUSSIAN OPERA DIALOGUE

Abstract

N 1878 there appeared in the Parisian publication Revue et Gazette Musicale an article, soon to become a book entitled La Musique en Russie, by Cesar Cui, the least talented and characteristic member but one of the most vocal and dogmatic mouthpieces of that group of Russian composers known as the moguchaya kuchka, the Mighty Five. 1 The work consisted in part of an extended apologia for the ideals and methods of the New Russian School, one of the earliest such to be written for foreign consumption. One of the major tenets, set forth in italics, states that Vocal music must be in perfect agreement with the sense of the words. 2 Needless to say, no more hackneyed a truism could be unearthed from the utterances of composers and their public defenders through the centuries: Monteverdi, Gluck, Wagner come immediately to mind. Yet elsewhere we may read of the Russian school's antipathy toward Wagner, their patronizing attitude toward Gluck, and, we assume, since we do not find any mention of him, their ignorance of Monteverdi. Clearly we have a case of independent formulation of the well-worn slogan. If we examine the trend of thought that led up to it, we become aware of an aesthetic outlook that is peculiarly Russian, and which casts light on various extreme and, on the face of it, aberrative manifestations of Russian musical art in the latter part of the 19th century.