The image of Ivan Mazepa in opera works of the 19th century

Abstract

Statement of the problem. Ukraine is currently going through a period of forming its nation, so it is urgent to turn to historical figures who influenced the country’s development. The tragic life of Hetman Ivan Mazepa has been attracting the attention of both historians and artists for over 300 years. Each of the authors was drawnto something “his own” in Mazepa’s fate, so the range of artistic representations of the hetman is very wide: from traitor to hero, from warrior to philanthropist, from an ordinary person to an almost mythical creature. The question arises as to the relevance of Mazepa’s personality representation in artistic works. The purpose of the article is to study the image of the Hetman in the opera practice of the nineteenth century using historical, chronological, cultural and comparative research methods. For the first time, M. Grandval’s opera is studied in comparative chronological and general cultural contexts. Results and conclusions. In world culture, the memory of I. Mazepa has been preserved mainly because his life reflects the main themes of Romanticism: loneliness, betrayal, love, exile. These romantic features prompted most authors to modify the historical truth, so Mazepa’s portraits are very different from their prototype. Taking up the study of Mazepa’s “operatic iconography”, we found that three other operas of the same name were created in the nineteenth century, in addition to the most famous and most studied work by P. Tchaikovsky, written in 1881–1883. The first of them is the opera “Mazepa” (“Maria”) by the prominent Ukrainian composer, folklorist, and music critic Petro Sokalsky (1832–1887). The opera was never staged. The second opera “Mazepa” chronologically was written and staged in St. Petersburg in 1859 by Borys Fitinhoff, a little-known Russian composer of German descent. The third opera “Mazeppa” was written b the French composer M. Grandval (Marie Félicie Clemence de Rezet, Victoire de Grandval). By analyzing the facts of her creative life, we have clarified the main features of her compositional style, which represented the salon culture of the time and was the result of her own passion for opera. Her operatic work was quite fruitful: she created eight operas and two “lyrical poems” written together with the most famous librettists who collaborated with G. Bizet, Ch. Gounod, J. Massenet, C. Saint-Saëns. M. Grandval’s Mazepa (1892) is rightfully considered the most prominent and popular among the composer’s operas. After its premiere, the opera was performed for more than 10 years at opera houses in France. The answer to the question of why the composer of chamber and lyrical salon genres chose a large-scale historically significant image of Mazepa, on the one hand, should be sought in the high public interest in the romanticized image of the Ukrainian hetman and the related problem of power inherent in post-Napoleonic France. On the other hand, the creation of “Mazeppa” is a logical result of the internal evolution of Grandval’s operatic work from a one-act comedy to a five-act grand historical opera, which is a continuation of the established national tradition.