The wedding and death of Milos Obilic: From The Fairy’s veil to The Fatherland

Abstract

The prominent Serbian and Yugoslav composer Petar Konjovic (1883-1970) wrote five operas between 1900 and 1960. Konjovic?s operatic opus represents his homeland and his spiritual spectrum: in the first place, indelible memories of his childhood and youth focused on the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, in particular its heroic repertoire of Serbian literature. Consequently, three out of five of Konjovic?s music dramas are derived from Serbian epic and theatre plays. In addition to Ivo Vojnovic?s Death of the Jugovic Mother, these are Dragutin Ilic?s Wedding ofMilos Obilic and Laza Kostic?s Maksim Crnojevic. Therefore three of Konjovic?s operas can be conditionally brought together as being in many ways related, not only by their content but also by music and the scope of time they were created: The Fairy?s Veil (based on Wedding of Milos Obilic)during World War I, The Fatherland (based on Death of the Jugovic Mother)during World War II, and between them The Prince of Zeta (based on Maksim Crnojevic). The last of them, subtitled ?A sacred festival drama? (following with its subtitle the idea of Wagner?s Parsifal) had its gala performance in Belgrade National Theatre on 19 October 1983. The structure of the musical composition was inspired by the ?Kosovo mystery play? by Vojnovic (1857-1929), an outstanding dramatist from Dubrovnik. In this case, the playwright was a narrator of the historical-legendary past of the Serbs. Drawing on Serbian national epic poetry which deals with the downfall of the Serbian medieval empire caused by the Turkish invasion, Vojnovic constructed his play on the basis of the central poem of the epic cycle about Kosovo, The Death of the Jugovic Mother. Both the epic and Vojnovic?s play present the tragedy of Serbian people in the figure of the Mother. She dies with a broken heart after the loss of her heroic husband, Jug-Bogdan, and her nine sons, the Jugovici, in the decisive battle against the Turks in the Kosovo field in 1389. Vojnovic?s play was performed in Belgrade and Zagreb in 1906 and 1907 respectively, as well as in Trieste (1911) and Prague (1926); and several Serbian and Croatian composers wrote incidental music for it. Slovenian composer Mirko Polic was also inspired by it and his work was performed in Ljubljana in 1947, while Konjovic?s ?festival drama? finished in 1960 was staged much later. Its premiere in 1983 was scrupulously prepared by the father-son duo, Dusan Miladinovic (conductor) and Dejan Miladinovic (director), who paid special attention to the visual aspect of the performance. The director, together with the scenographer Aleksandar Zlatovic created for The Fatherland a semi-permanent set of symbolical characters, with an enormous raven, made of jute, replacing the backdrop. The costume designer was influenced by medieval frescoes from Serbian monasteries in Kosovo. The director himself conceived a ?mute? and motionless appearance of figures of Serbian warriors in ?tableaux vivants? by placing them in attitudes of combat on the edge of the revolving stage during the curtain music between the acts. What the composer Konjovic aimed for with his last music drama was to eternalize in music the beautiful Serbian epic, depicting the tragic history of his people and thus reminding Serbs of their roots. In this sense The Fatherland was Konjovic?s Ninth Symphony and his oath of Kosovo.