CHAPTER XIV

CONCLUSION

Some minor composers. Napravnik: _The Citizens of Nijny-Novgorod_,

_Harold_, _Doubrovsky_, _Francesca da Rimini_. Blaramberg: _Skomorokhi_,

_The Roussalka-Maiden_, _Toushino_, _The Wave_. Arensky: _A Dream on the

Volga_, _Raphael_, _Nal and Damyanti_. Rachmaninov: _Aleko_.

Grechyaninov: _Dobrynia Nikitich_. Ippolitov-Ivanov: _Ruth_, _Assya_.

Kalinnikov: _The Year 1812_. Taneiev: _Orestes_. Foreign influence in

contemporary Russian music. Rebikov: _In the Storm_, _The Christmas

Tree_. Kazachenko, Korestchenko, Kochetov, Stravinsky. Famous operatic

singers: Platonova, Petrov, Melnikov, the Figners, Shaliapin. Mamantov

and the Moscow Private Opera Company. Great increase of opera companies

in Russia. Concluding observations......362

THE RUSSIAN OPERA

THE RUSSIAN OPERA

CHAPTER I

THE DAWN OF MUSIC IN RUSSIA

The early history of the development of the national music, like that of

most popular movements in Russia, has its aspects of oppression and

conflict with authority. On the one hand we see a strong natural impulse

moving irresistibly towards fulfilment; on the other, a policy of

repression amounting at moments to active persecution. That the close of

the nineteenth century has witnessed the triumph of Russian music at

home and abroad proves how strong was the innate capacity of this

people, and how deep their love of this art, since otherwise they could

never have finally overcome every hindrance to its development. That

from primitive times the Slavs were easily inspired and moved by music,

and that they practised it in very early phases of their civilisation,

their early historians are all agreed. In the legend of "Sadko, the Rich

Merchant" (one of the _byline_ of the Novgorodian Cycle) the hero, a

kind of Russian Orpheus, who suffers the fate of Jonah, makes the

Sea-king dance to the sound of his _gusslee_, and only stays his hand

when the wild gyrations of the marine deity have created such a storm on

earth that all the ships on the ocean above are in danger of being

wrecked. In the "Epic of the Army of Igor," when the minstrel Boyan

sings, he draws "the grey wolf over the fields, and the blue-black eagle

from the clouds." In peace and war, music was the joy of the primitive

Slavs. In the sixth century the Wends told the Emperor in Constantinople

that music was their greatest pleasure, and that on their travels they

never carried arms but musical instruments which they made themselves.

Procopius, the Byzantine historian, describing a night attack made by

the Greeks, A.D. 592, upon the camp of the Slavs, says that the latter

were so completely absorbed in the delights of singing that they had

forgotten to take any precautionary measures, and were oblivious of the

enemy's approach. Early in their history, the Russian Slavs used a

considerable number of musical instruments: the _gusslee_, a kind of

horizontal harp, furnished with seven or eight strings, and the

_svirel_, a reed pipe (chalumet), being the most primitive. Soon,

however, we read of the _goudok_, a species of fiddle with three

strings, played with a bow; the _dombra_, an instrument of the guitar

family, the forerunner of the now fashionable _balalaïka_, the strings

of which were vibrated with the fingers; and the _bandoura_, or _kobza_,

of the Malo-Russians, which had from eight to twenty strings. Among the

primitive wind instruments were the _sourna_, a shrill pipe of Eastern

origin, and the _doudka_, the bagpipe, or cornemuse. The drum, the

tambourine, and the cymbals were the instruments of percussion chiefly

in use.

Berezovsky makes a convenient division of the history of Russian music

into four great periods. The first, within its limits, was purely

national. It included all the most ancient folksongs and _byline_, or

metrical legends; it saw the rise and fall of the _Skomorokhi_, the

minstrels who were both the composers and preservers of these old epics

and songs. This period reached its highest development in the reign of

Vladimir, "The Red Sun," first Christian prince of Russia, about A.D.

988. The second period, which Berezovsky describes as already falling

away from the purely national ideal, dates from the establishment of

Christianity in Russia, at the close of the tenth century, when the folk

music lost much of its independence and fell under Byzantine influence.

Russian music entered upon its third period about the middle of the

eighteenth century; national songs now regained some of their former

importance, but its progress was checked because the tastes of Western

Europe were already paramount in the country. Italian music had reached

the capital and long held the field. The first twenty years of the

nineteenth century witnessed a passionate revival of interest in the

national music, and when, in 1836, Glinka created _A Life for the Tsar_,

he inaugurated a fourth period in the history of national art, the

limits of which have yet to be ultimately defined.

Of the first, the primitive period in Russian music, there are few

records beyond the allusions to the love of minstrelsy which we find in

the earliest known songs and legends of the Russian Slavs. When we reach

the second period, at which the national music entered upon a struggle

with the spiritual authorities, we begin to realise from the intolerance

of the clerical attitude how deeply the art must have already laid hold

upon the spirit of the people. Whether from a desire to be faithful to

oriental asceticism, and to the austere spirit which animated the Church

during the first centuries which followed the birth of Christ, or

because of the need to keep a nation so recently converted, and still so

deeply impregnated with paganism, fenced off from all contaminating

influences, the Church soon waged relentless war upon every description

of profane recreation. The Orthodox clergy were not only opposed to

music, but to every form of secular art. Moreover the folksongs were of

pagan origin; therefore, just as the priests of to-day still look

askance at the songs and legends of the Brittany peasants which

perpetuate the memory of heathen customs, so the Byzantine monks of the

eleventh century, and onwards, denounced the national songs of Russia as

being hostile to the spirit of Christianity. Songs, dances, and

spectacular amusements were all condemned. Even at the weddings of the

Tsars, as late as the seventeenth century, dancing and singing were

rigorously excluded, only fanfares of trumpets, with the music of flutes

and drums, and fireworks, being permitted. Professor Milioukhov, in his

"Sketch for a History of Russian Culture," quotes one of the austere

moralists of mediæval times who condemns mirth as a snare of the evil

one; "laughter does not edify or save us; on the contrary it is the ruin

of edification. Laughter displeases the Holy Spirit and drives out

virtue, because it makes men forget death and eternal punishment. Lord,

put mirth away from me; give me rather tears and lamentations." So

persistent and effectual was the repression of all secular enjoyments

that one monkish chronicler was able to remark with evident satisfaction

that, for the time being, "there was silence in all the land of

Russia."

Under these conditions the primitive music had little chance of

development. Driven from the centres of dawning civilisation, it took

refuge in forest settlements and remote villages. With it fled the bards

and the mummers, the gleemen--those "merry lads" as the Russians called

them--so dear to the hearts of the people. These musicians were

originally of two classes: minstrels and _gusslee_ players (harpists),

such as the famous Skald, Bayan; and the _Skomorokhi_, or mummers, who

sang and juggled for the diversion of the people. In course of time we

find allusions to several subdivisions in the band of _Skomorokhi_, all

of which may now be said to have their modern equivalents in Russia.

There was the _Skomorokh-pievets_, or singer of the mythical or heroic

songs, who afterwards became absorbed into the ranks of the poets with

the rise of a school of poetry at the close of the sixteenth century;

the _Skomorokh-goudets_, who played for dancing, and was afterwards

transformed into the orchestral player, exchanging his _gusslee_

or _dombra_ for some more modern western instrument; the

_Skomorokh-plyassoun_, the dancer, now incorporated in the

corps-de-ballet; and the _Skomorokh-gloumosslovets_, the buffoon or

entertainer, who eventually became merged in the actor.

Monkish persecution could not entirely stamp out the love of music in

the land. To attain that end it would have been necessary to uproot the

very soul of the nation. Despite the fulminations of the clergy, the

nobles still secretly cherished and patronised their singers, who

beguiled the tedium of the long winters in their _poteshni palati_.

These dependents of the aristocracy were the first actors known to the

Russians. At the same time such fanatical teaching could not fail to

alter in some degree the temper of a people wholly uneducated and prone

to superstition. The status of the minstrels gradually declined. They

ceased to be "welcome guests" in hut and hall, and the _Skomorokhi_

degenerated into companies of roving thieves, numbering often from fifty

to a hundred, who compelled the peasants to supply them with food, as

they moved from place to place, driven onward by their clerical

denunciators. By way of compromise, the gleemen now appear to have

invented a curious class of song which they called "spiritual," in which

pagan and Christian sentiments were mingled in a strange and unedifying

jumble. The pure delight of singing having been condemned as a sin, and

practised more or less _sub rosa_, the standard of songs became very

much corrupted. The degeneracy of music and kindred forms of recreation

was most probably the outcome of this intolerant persecution. But though

they had helped to bring about this state of affairs, there was no

doubt something to be said for the attitude of the clergy, if we may

believe the testimony of western travellers in Russia in the sixteenth

century. The minstrels in the service of the richer nobles deteriorated

as a class, and claimed their right to give entertainments in towns and

villages, which were often of scandalous coarseness and profanity. The

same may be said of the puppet-shows (_Koukolnaya teatr_), of somewhat

later date, the abominable performances of which shocked the traveller

Adam Olearius when he accompanied the ambassador sent by Frederick Duke

of Holstein to the Great Duke of Muscovy in 1634 and 1636. The long

struggle between spiritual authority and the popular craving for secular

recreation continued until the reign of Alexis Mikhaïlovich (1645-1676).

In a measure the Church was successful in turning the thoughts of the

people from worldly amusements to the spiritual drama enacted within her

doors. During these long dark centuries, when Russia had neither

universities nor schools, nor any legitimate means of recreation, the

people found a dramatic sensation in the elaborate and impressive ritual

of the Orthodox Church. Patouillet, in his book "Le Théâtre de Moeurs

Russes," says: "the iconostasis, decorated with paintings, erected

between the altar and the faithful, resembles, with its three doors, an

antique proscenium. The 'imperial' door, reserved for the officiating

priest, and formerly for the Emperor, recalls by its name, if not by its

destination, the 'royal' entrance of the Greek theatre. Thus there is,

as it were, a double scene being enacted, one which takes place before

the eyes of the congregation, the other hidden from them during certain

portions of the ritual, particularly at the moment of the 'Holy

Mysteries' (the Consecration of the elements). These alternations of

publicity and mystery; the celebrant reappearing and disappearing; the

deacon, who goes in and out at the side doors and stands upon the

_Ambon_, like a kind of [Greek: logeion], to declare the divine word to

the assembled Christians, dialoguing sometimes with them, sometimes with

the officiating priest; the double choir of singers, arranged even in

this day on each side of the iconostasis, and finally the attitude of

the faithful themselves--rather that of a crowd of spectators than of

participants--all these details formed a spectacle full of dramatic

interest in times of simple faith."

On certain religious festivals, allegorical representations, such as the

Washing of the Feet and the Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem, were

enacted in public places. The early marriage service of the Orthodox

Church, with its pompous religious ceremonial and social customs, such

as the pretended lamentations of the bride, and the choruses of the

young girls, held distinctly dramatic elements. In these ecclesiastical

ceremonies and social usages may be traced the first germs of the

Russian drama.

In Western Russia we find the school drama (Shkolnaya-drama) established

in the ecclesiastical Academy of Kiev as early as the close of the

fifteenth century. The students used to recite the events of the

Nativity in public places and illustrate their words by the help of the

_Vertep_, a kind of portable retable on which were arranged figures

representing the Birth of Christ. The Passion of Our Lord was

represented in the same way, and the recital was interspersed with

choral singing, and not infrequently with interludes of a secular or

comic nature. This form of drama had found its way into Russia from

Poland. In 1588 Giles Fletcher, Queen Elizabeth's ambassador to Russia,

gives an account of a representation in Moscow, which reminds us of the

Scoppio del Carro, the Easter ceremony at Florence, when a mechanical

dove carrying the "Pazzi fire," lit from the sacred flint brought back

from the Holy Sepulchre, is set rushing along a wire from the altar to

the car, hung about with fireworks, which stands outside the great West

Door of the Duomo. When the bird comes in contact with the car the

pyrotechnical display is ignited, and if all goes without a hitch the

vintage and harvest will prosper.

Says Fletcher: "The weeke before the Nativitie of Christ every bishop in

his cathedral church setteth forth a shew of the three children in the

oven.[2] Where the Angell is made to come flying from the roof of the

church, with great admiration of the lookers-on, and many terrible

flashes of fire are made with rosen and gun-powder by the Chaldeans (as

they call them), that run about the town all the twelve days, disguised

in their plaiers coats, and make much good sport for the honour of the

bishop's pageant. At the Mosko, the emperour himselfe and the empress

never faile to be at it, though it be but the same matter plaid every

yeere, without any new invention at all."

Dr. Giles Fletcher was a member of the family so well-known in the

history of English literature; he was the uncle of John Fletcher, the

dramatist, and the father of Phineas Fletcher, the author of the poem

"The Purple Island." How naïve and almost barbarous must this Russian

mystery play have seemed to the Englishman who had probably witnessed

some of the innumerable comedies, tragi-comedies, farces, and tragedies

which were then enacted at home in the universities, the Inns of Court,

and elsewhere; and who may very likely already have frequented the

theatre in Blackfriars or Shoreditch, and seen the plays of Marlowe and

Greene, although as yet hardly anything of Shakespeare!

Ivan the Terrible (1533-1584), who first sent for printers from Germany

and published the earliest Russian book (containing the Acts of the

Apostles and the Epistles) in 1564, did nothing towards the secular

education of his Court or of the people. Nor was there much progress in

this respect in the reign of Boris Godounov (1598-1605). Secular

dramatic art continued to be discouraged by the Church, without any

patronage being accorded to it in high places until the reign of Alexis

Mikhaïlovich. This prince, who may justly be called the founder of a

national theatre in Russia, showed a real interest in the fine arts. He

summoned a few musicians to Moscow, who taught the Russians the use of

instruments hitherto unused by them. This encouragement of music at his

Court provoked a final outburst of clerical intolerance. In 1649, by

order of the Patriarch Joseph, all the musical instruments in the city

of Moscow were confiscated and burnt in the open market place. Those

belonging to the Tsar's private band were spared, perhaps from a fear of

offending their royal patron, but more probably because their owners,

being Germans, were welcome to go to perdition in their own way.

When we come to the middle of the seventeenth century and the advent of

the enlightened Alexis Mikhaïlovich, the history of Russian drama, so

closely associated with that of its opera, assumes a more definite

outline. This prince married Natalia Naryshkin, the adopted daughter of

the Boyard Artamon Matveiev. Matveiev's wife was of Scottish origin--her

maiden name was Hamilton--so that the outlook of this household was

probably somewhat cosmopolitan. The Tsaritsa Natalia was early

interested in the theatre; partly perhaps because she had heard of it

from her adopted parents, but most probably her taste was stimulated by

witnessing one of the performances which were given from time to time

among the foreigners in the German quarter of Moscow. Lord Carlisle, in

his "Relation of Three Embassies from His Majesty Charles II. to the

Great Duke of Moscovy," makes mention of one of these performances in

1664. He says: "Our Musique-master composed a Handsome Comedie in Prose,

which was acted in our house."

Travelled nobles and ambassadors also told of the great enjoyment

derived from the theatre in Western Europe. Likhatchev, who was sent to

Florence in 1658, wrote with naïve enthusiasm of an opera which he had

seen there; but he seems to have been more impressed by the scenic

effects, which included a moving sea filled with fish, and a vanishing

palace, than by the music which accompanied these wonders. Potemkin, who

represented the Tsar at the Court of the Grand Monarque, saw Molière's

company in "Amphitryon" in 1668, and doubtless communicated his

impressions to his sovereign. But before this date, as early as 1660,

Alexis Mikhaïlovich had given orders to an Englishman in his service to

engage for him "Master Glassblowers, Master Engravers and Master Makers

of comedies." It was long, however, before Russia actually attained to

the possession of this last class of workers. Finally, incited by his

wife's tastes, by the representations of his more polished nobles, and

not a little by personal inclinations, Alexis issued an _Oukaz_, on May

15th, 1672, ordering Count Von-Staden to recruit in Courland all kinds

"of good master workmen, together with very excellent skilled

trumpeters, and masters who would know how to organise plays."

Unfortunately the reputation of Russia as a dwelling-place was not

attractive. Doubtless the inhabitants of Eastern Europe still spoke with

bated breath of the insane cruelties of Ivan the Terrible which had

taken place a hundred years earlier. At any rate the Courlanders showed

no great anxiety to take service under the Tsar, and Staden returned

from his mission to Riga and other towns, in December, 1672, with only

"one trumpeter" and "four musicians." Nevertheless the _Oukaz_ itself is

an important landmark in the cultural evolution of Russia, marking,

according to Tikhonraviev, the end of her long term of secular isolation

as regards the drama. These five imported musicians formed the nucleus

of what was to expand one day into the orchestra of the Imperial Opera.

Alexis Mikhaïlovich was evidently impatient to see some kind of drama

enacted at his Court; for in June of the same year, without waiting for

"the masters who would know how to organise plays," he determined to

celebrate the birthday of his son Peter--later to be known as Peter the

Great--with a theatrical performance. The Tsar therefore commissioned

Yagan (otherwise Johann) Gottfried Gregory, one of the protestant

pastors residing in the German quarter of Moscow, to write a play, or

"act" as it is described in the Tsar's edict, dealing with the Biblical

subject of Esther. As a temporary theatre, a room was specially arranged

at Preobrajensky, a village on the outskirts of Moscow which now forms

part of the city. Red and green hangings, carpets and tapestries of

various sorts were lent from the Tsar's household to decorate the walls

and the seats of honour; the bulk of the audience, however, had to

content themselves with bare wooden benches. The scenery was painted by

a Dutchman named Peter Inglis, who received the pompous title of

"Master-Perspective-Maker." The Boyard Matveiev, the Tsaritsa's adoptive

father, took an active interest in the organisation of this primitive

theatre, and was appointed about this time, "Director of the Tsar's

Entertainments," being in fact the forerunner of the later "Intendant"

or Director of the Imperial Opera. Pastor Gregory, aided by one or two

teachers in the German school, wrote the text of a "tragi-comedy"

entitled _The Acts of Artaxerxes_. Gregory, who had been educated at the

University of Jena, probably selected just such a subject as he had been

accustomed to see presented in German theatres in his early youth.

Although he had long resided in Moscow he does not seem to have acquired

complete command of the Russian language, which was then far from being

the subtle and beautiful medium of expression which it has since become.

The tragi-comedy was written in a strange mixture of Russian and German,

and we read that he had the assistance of two translators from the

Chancellery of Ambassadors. A company numbering sixty-four untrained

actors was placed at his service; they were drawn from among the

children of foreign residents and from the better class of tradesfolk.

Music evidently played an important part in the performance; the

orchestra consisting of Germans, and of servants from Matveiev's

household who played on "organs, viols and other instruments." The

organist of the German church, Simon Gutovsky, was among the musicians.

A chorus also took part in the play, consisting of the choir of the

Court Chapel, described as "the Imperial Singing-Deacons."

The actual performance of _The Acts of Artaxerxes_ took place on October

17th, 1672 (O.S.), and is said to have lasted ten hours, making demands

upon the endurance of the audience which puts Wagnerian enthusiasts

completely to shame. The Tsar watched the spectacle with unflagging

attention and afterwards generously rewarded those who had taken part in

the performance. The attitude of the clergy had so far changed that the

Tsar's chaplain, the Protopope Savinov, undertook to set at rest his

master's last scruples of conscience by pointing to the example of the

Greek emperors and other potentates.

Gaining courage, and also a growing taste for this somewhat severe form

of recreation, Alexis went on to establish a more permanent theatrical

company. In the following year (1673) Pastor Gregory was commanded to

instruct twenty-six young men, some drawn from the clerks of the

Chancellery of State, others from the lower orders of the merchants or

tradespeople, who were henceforth to be known as "the Comedians of His

Majesty the Tsar." At first the audience consisted only of the favoured

intimate circle of the Tsar, and apparently no ladies were present; but

after a time the Tsaritsa and the Tsarevnas were permitted to witness

the performance from the seclusion of a Royal Box protected by a

substantial _grille_. The theatre was soon transferred from

Preobrajensky to the Poteshny Dvorets in the Kremlin.

_The Acts of Artaxerxes_ was followed by a series of pieces, nearly all

of a highly edifying nature, written or arranged by Gregory and others:

_Tobias_, _The Chaste Joseph_, _Adam and Eve_, _Orpheus and Eurydice_

(with couplets and choruses) and _How Judith cut off the head of

Holofernes_. The libretto of the last-named play is still in existence,

and gives us some idea of the patient endurance of primitive

theatre-goers in Russia. It is in seven acts, subdivided into

twenty-nine scenes, with a prologue and an interlude between the third

and fourth acts; the characters number sixty-three; all the female parts

were acted by youths. The libretto is constructed more or less on the

plan of the German comedies of the period, but what gives the piece a

special importance in the history of Russian opera is the fact that it

contains arias and choruses linked with the action of the piece, such as

the Song of the Kings, in which they bewail their sad fate when taken

captive by Holofernes, a soldier's Drinking Song, a Love-Song sung by

Vagav at Judith's feast, and a Jewish Song of Victory, the words of

which are paraphrased from Biblical sources. The author is supposed,

without much foundation in fact, to have been Simeon Polotsky, of whom

we shall hear later. The piece was probably translated from German

sources. A custom was then started, which prevailed for a considerable

time in Russia, of confiding the translation of plays to the clerks in

the Chancellery of the Ambassadors, which department answered in some

measure to our Foreign Office. The composer of the music is unknown, but

Cheshikin, in his "History of Russian Opera," considers himself fully

justified in describing it as the _first Russian opera_. Two hundred

years later Serov composed a popular opera on the subject of Judith, an

account of which will be found on page 150.

All the Russian operas of the eighteenth century follow this style of

drama, or comedy, with some musical numbers interpolated; it is the type

of opera which is known in Germany as the _Singspiel_. As _Judith_

represents the prototype of many succeeding Russian operas, a few

details concerning it will not be out of place here. The work is

preserved in manuscript in the Imperial Public Library. It is evident

that the dramatic action was strongly supported by the music; for

instance, to quote only one scenic direction in the piece, "Seloum beats

the drum and cries aloud," alarm is here expressed by the aid of

trumpets and drums. The action develops very slowly, and the heroine

does not appear until the fourth act. In Act I. Nebuchadnezzar and his

great men take counsel about the invasion of Judea; the king summons

Holofernes and appoints him leader of his army. In Act II. the

sufferings of the Jews are depicted; and the embassy to Holofernes from

the Asiatic kings. Act III. is concerned with the speech which the

God-fearing man Achior delivers in honour of Israel, in the presence of

Holofernes; and with the wrath of the leader who orders the punishment

of Achior. Act IV. contains a conversation between Judith and her

handmaiden Arboya about the miserable plight of Judea. In Act V. occurs

the Lament of Israel: Judith persuades the people not to capitulate to

Holofernes and prays God to come to their rescue. Act VI., Judith's

Farewell to the Jewish Elders, and her departure for the camp of

Holofernes; she slays Holofernes and the Jews return to Bethulia. The

whole work concludes with Israel's Song of Victory. Side by side with

these dramatic scenes are interpolated comic interludes in the

characteristic German style of the seventeenth century. The language

contains many Germanisms and South Russian locutions, as though the

translator had been a Malo-Russian. The piece is certainly tedious and

contains much sententious moralising, with a reflection of sentiment

which seems to belong peculiarly to the Orthodox Church. The pious tone

of the work was indispensable at that period, and it was not until the

Tsar's patronage of the drama became more assured that Pastor Gregory

ventured on the production of a secular play founded on a distant echo

of Marlowe's "Tamerlane the Great" (1586), written on the same lines as

_Judith_, and containing also musical numbers.

Besides pieces of the nature of the Singspiel, Patouillet tells us that

there were ballets at the Court of Alexis Mikhaïlovich. School dramas

were in vogue at the Ecclesiastical Academy (of Zaikonospasskaya), for

which Simeon Polotsky, and later on Daniel Touptalo (afterwards

canonised as Saint Dimitri of Rostov), wrote sacred plays. Polotsky,

educated at the Academy of Kiev, joined the Ecclesiastical School of

Moscow, in 1660, as professor of Latin. He adapted, or wrote, _St.

Alexis_, _Nebuchadnezzar_, _The Golden Calf, and the Three Children who

were not consumed in the Fiery Furnace_, and _The Prodigal Son_. The

last-named play was undoubtedly performed before the Court, and was

reprinted in 1685 with a number of plates showing the costumes of the

actors and spectators.

Dimitri of Rostov, who was also a student at Kiev, composed a series of

Mystery Plays with rhymed verse. _The Prodigal Son_, by Simeon Polotsky,

says Patouillet, "had interludes which have not been preserved, and in

Dimitri of Rostov's _Nativity_, the scene of the Adoration of the

Shepherds was long in favour on account of a certain naïve folk-style of

diction" None of these plays can be claimed as literature, but they are

interesting as marking the transition from sacred to secular drama, and

in some of them there was a faint reflection of contemporary manners.

But this was not a spontaneous or popular movement; it was merely a

Court ordinance. The clerks and artisans who were trained as actors

often took part in these spectacles against the wish of their parents,

who were only partly reconciled by the Tsar's example to seeing their

sons adopt what they had long been taught to regard as a disorderly and

irreligious career. Because the movement had no roots in the life of the

people it could not flourish healthily. When Alexis died in 1670, the

"Chamber of Comedians" was closed, Matveiev was exiled, and there was a

reaction in favour of asceticism.

But the impetus had been given, and henceforth the drama was never to be

entirely banished from Russian life. Some of the westernised Boyards now

maintained private theatres--just as their ancestors had maintained the

bards and the companies of _Skomorokhi_--in which were played pieces

based upon current events or upon folk legends; while the School Drama

long continued to be given within the walls of the Ecclesiastical

Academy of Zaikonospasskaya. Thus the foundations of Russian dramatic

art, including also the first steps towards the opera and the ballet,

were laid before the last decade of the seventeenth century.

The advent of Peter the Great to the throne was not on the whole

favourable to music. The fine arts made no special appeal to the

utilitarian mind of this monarch. Music had now ceased to be regarded as

one of the seven deadly sins, but suffered almost a worse fate, since in

the inrush of novel cosmopolitan ideas and customs the national songs

seem for a time to have been completely forgotten. With the drama things

advanced more quickly. Peter the Great, who conceived his mission in

life to be the more or less forcible union of Russia with Western

Europe, realised the importance of the theatre as a subordinate means

to this end. During his travels abroad he had observed the influence

exercised by the drama upon the social life of other countries. In 1697

he was present at a performance of the ballet "Cupidon," at Amsterdam,

and in Vienna and London he heard Italian opera, which was just coming

into vogue in this country, and waxed enthusiastic over the singing of

our prima donna Cross. During his sojourn in Vienna he took part

himself, attired in the costume of a Friesland peasant, in a pastoral

pageant (_Wirthschaft_) given at the Court. Thus the idea of

reorganising the "Comedians' Chamber" founded by his father was

suggested to him. As Alexis had formerly sent Von-Staden to find foreign

actors for Russia, so Peter now employed a Slovak, named Splavsky, a

captain in the Russian army, on a similar mission. The Boyard Golovin

was also charged with the erection of a suitable building near to the

Kremlin. After two journeys, Splavsky succeeded in bringing back to

Russia a German troupe collected by an _entrepreneur_ in Dantzig, Johann

Christian Kunst. At first the actors were as unwilling to come as were

those of a previous generation, having heard bad accounts of the country

from a certain Scottish adventurer, Gordon, who had been connected with

a puppet-show, and who seems to have been a bad character and to have

been punished with the knout for murder. Finally, in April, 1702, Kunst

signed a contract by which his principal comedians undertook for the

yearly sum of about 4,200 roubles in the present currency "to make it

their duty like faithful servants to entertain and cheer His Majesty the

Tsar by all sorts of inventions and diversions, and to this end to keep

always sober, vigilant and in readiness." Kunst's company consisted of

himself, designated "Director of the Comedians of His Majesty the Tsar,"

his wife Anna, and seven actors. Hardly had he settled in Moscow before

he complained that Splavsky had hastened his departure from Germany

before he had had time or opportunity to engage good comedians skilled

in "singing-plays." The actors played in German, but a certain number of

clerks in the Chancellery of the Embassies were sent to Kunst to be

taught the repertory in Russian. It was not until 1703 that the first

public theatre in Russia, a wooden building, was erected near the

Kremlin in Moscow. Meanwhile the plays were given at the residence of

General Franz Lefort, in the German quarter of the city. Here, on the

occasion of the state entry of Peter into Moscow, Kunst performed

_Alexander and Darius_, followed by _The Cruelty of Nero_, a comedy in

seven acts, _Le Médecin malgré lui_, and _Mahomet and Zulima_, a comedy

interspersed with songs and dances. The new theatre was a genuine

attempt on the part of the Tsar Peter to bring this form of

entertainment within reach of a larger public than the privileged circle

invited to witness the plays given at the Court of Alexis. For the

country and period, the installation was on quite a sumptuous scale.

There were seats at four prices: ten, six, five and three kopecks. In

1704 there were two performances in the week which usually lasted about

five hours, from five to ten p.m. Peter the Great gave orders in 1705

that the pieces should be given alternately in Russian and German, and

that at the performance of the plays "the musicians were to play on

divers instruments." Russians of all ranks, and foreigners, were bidden

to attend "as they pleased, quite freely, having nothing to fear." On

the days of performance the gates leading into the Kremlin, the

Kitaï-gorod and the Bieli-gorod were left open till a later hour in

order to facilitate the passage of theatre-goers. From the outset Kunst

demanded facilities for the mounting of opera, and also an orchestra.

Seven musicians were engaged by special contract in Hamburg and an agent

was commissioned "to purchase little boys in Berlin with oboes and

pipes." By this time a few Russian magnates had started private bands in

imitation of those maintained by some of the nobility in Germany.

Prince Gregory Oginsky contributed four musicians from his private band

for the royal service in Moscow. To the director of the musicians from

Hamburg, Sienkhext, twelve Russian singers were handed over to be taught

the oboe. We learn nothing as to the organisation of a company of

singers, because in all probability, in accordance with the custom of

those days, the actors were also expected to be singers.

In the comedy of _Scipio Africanus_, and _The Fall of Sophonisba_, _The

Numidian Queen_, an adaptation from Loenstein's tragedy _Sophonisba_

(1666), short airs and other incidental music formed part of the play.

Music also played a subordinate part in an adaptation of Cicconini's

tragic opera _Il tradimento per l'honore, overo il vendicatore pentito_

(Bologna, 1664), and in an adaptation of Molière's _Don Juan_. These and

other pieces from the repertory of the day were culled from various

European sources, but almost invariably passed into the Russian through

the intermediary of the German language. The work continued to be

carried on in the Chancellery of the Embassies, where alone could be

found men with some knowledge of foreign tongues. The translations were

perfunctory and inaccurate, and there is no literary vitality whatever

in the productions of this period, unless it is found in the interludes

of a somewhat coarse humour which found more favour with the

uncultivated public than did the pieces themselves. Simeon Smirnov was

the first Russian who wrote farcical interludes of this kind, which were

almost as rough and scandalous as the plays of the _Skomorokhi_ of

earlier centuries. It cannot be proved that in the time of Peter the

Great an opera in the sense of a drama in which music preponderated was

ever put upon the stage, but it is an undoubted fact, according to

Cheshikin, that there exists the manuscript of a libretto for an opera

on the subject of Daphne. It seems to be the echo of what had taken

place in Florence at least a hundred years previously, when translations

of the book of "Daphne," composed by Caccini and Peri in 1594, gradually

made their way into various parts of Europe. In 1635 we hear of its

being given in Warsaw in the original Italian, and two or three years

later it was translated into Polish, running through three editions;

from one of these it was put into Russian early in the eighteenth

century by an anonymous author. The manuscript of the translation exists

in the Imperial Public Library, under one of the usual voluminous titles

of the period, _Daphnis pursued by the love of Apollo is changed into a

laurel bush_, or _the Act of Apollo and the fair Daphne; how Apollo

conquered the evil snake Python and was himself overcome by little

Cupid_. It bears the signature of one Dimitri Ilyinski, graduate of the

Slaviano-Latin Academy of Moscow, who appears to have been merely the

copyist, not the author, and the date "St. Petersburg, 1715." The pupils

of this Academy kept alive for some time the traditions of the "School

Drama" side by side with the official theatre subsidised by the state.

The plays continued to consist chiefly of Biblical episodes, and were

usually so framed as to be a defence of the Orthodox Church. They were

given periodically and were bare of all reference to contemporary life.

Side by side with these we may place the allegorical and panegyrical

plays performed by the medical students of the great hospital in Moscow.

Crude as were the productions of these two institutions they represent,

however, the more spontaneous movement of the national life rather than

the purely imported literary wares of the official theatre.

Kunst died in 1703, and was succeeded by Otto Fürst, whose Russian name

was Artemiem. He was a fair Russian scholar, and in a short time the

company became accustomed to playing in the vernacular. But it cannot be

said that this tentative national theatre was truly a success. It was a

hothouse plant, tended and kept alive by royal favour, and when the Tsar

removed his Court to St. Petersburg it gradually failed more and more to

hold the attention of the public. The theatre in the Red Square was

demolished before 1707. Fürst's company, however, continued to give

performances at Preobrajensky, the residence of the Tsarevna Natalia

Alexseievna, youngest sister of Peter the Great, and later on at the

palace of the Tsaritsa Prascovya Feodorovna at Ismailov. The private

theatre of this palace was never closed during the life of the widowed

Tsaritsa, who died in 1723. Her eldest daughter, the Duchess of

Mecklenburg, was fond of all sorts of gaiety; while her second daughter,

the Duchess of Courland, afterwards the Empress Anne of Russia, who

often visited her mother at Ismailov, was also a lover of the theatre.

The ladies in waiting joined Fürst's pupils in the performance of plays,

while the Duchess of Mecklenburg frequently acted as stage manager. The

entrance was free, and although the places were chiefly reserved for the

courtiers, the public seems to have been admitted somewhat

indiscriminately, if we can believe the account of the page in waiting,

Bergholds, who says that once his tobacco was stolen from his pocket and

that two of his companions complained of losing their silk

handkerchiefs.

About 1770 a theatrical company, consisting entirely of native actors

and actresses, was established in St. Petersburg under the patronage of

the Tsarevna Natalia Alexseievna, who herself wrote two plays for them

to perform. This princess did all in her power to second the efforts of

Peter the Great to popularise the drama. In 1720 the Tsar sent

Yagoujinsky to Vienna to raise a company of actors who could speak

Czech, thinking that they would learn Russian more quickly than the

Germans, but the mission was not successful. In 1723 a German company,

under the direction of Mann, visited the new capital and gave

performances in their own tongue. They were patronised by the Empress

Catherine I. At that time the Duke of Holstein, who afterwards married

the Tsarevna Anne, was visiting St. Petersburg, and the Court seem to

have frequently attended the theatre; but there is no definite record of

Mann's company giving performances of opera. A new theatre was

inaugurated in St. Petersburg in 1725, the year of Peter the Great's

death.

CHAPTER II

RUSSIAN OPERA PRIOR TO GLINKA

The history of Russian music enters upon a new period with the

succession of the Empress Anne. The national melodies now began to be

timidly cultivated, but the inauguration of a native school of music was

still a very remote prospect, because the influence of Western Europe

was now becoming paramount in Russian society. Italian music had just

reached the capital, and there, as in England, it held the field against

all rivals for many years to come.

Soon after her coronation, in 1732, the pleasure-loving Empress Anne

organised private theatricals in her Winter Palace and wrote to Bishop

Theofane Prokovich, asking him to supply her with three church singers.

The piece given was a "school drama" entitled _The Act of Joseph_, and

in its mounting and composition, a famous pupil of the Slaviano-Latin

Academy took part, Vassily Cyrillovich Trediakovsky, poet and

grammarian, and one of the first creators of the literary language of

Russia. The rest of the actors consisted of the singers lent by the

Bishop and of pupils selected from the Cadet Corps, among them Peter and

Carl, sons of Anne's favourite, Biron. Some of the actors' parts are

still in existence, with descriptions of their costumes, and details as

to the requirements of the piece, which seem to show that the entire

Biblical story of Joseph was presented, and that some allegorical

personages such as Chastity, Splendour, Humility, and Envy, were

introduced into the play. Splendour was attired in a red cloth garment,

slashed and trimmed with silver braid; Chastity was in white without

ornaments, crowned with a laurel wreath and carrying a sheaf of lilies.

Besides Jacob, Joseph, and his Brethren, there were parts for King

Pharaoh and two of his senators, Wise Men, slaves, attendants, and an

executioner, who, we read, was clad in a short tunic of red linen and

wore a yellow cap with a feather.

These old-fashioned, edifying plays soon bored the Empress Anne. Italian

actors appeared at the Court and gave amusing comedies, occasionally

containing musical interludes. The Empress employed Trediakovsky to

translate the pieces that were played before her; for she was no Italian

scholar. The new form of entertainment was so much to her liking that

she determined to establish a permanent Italian company in St.

Petersburg, and was the first to open a theatre in Russia exclusively

for opera. This brings upon the scene a personality inseparably linked

with the history of Russian opera: Francesco Araja, who is the first

palpable embodiment of operatic music in Russia, for all his

predecessors who composed for the plays of Kunst and Fürst have remained

anonymous.

Araja was born at Naples in 1700. His first opera, _Berenice_, was given

at the Court of Tuscany in 1730; his second, _Amore per Regnante_, was

produced soon afterwards in Rome. This seemed to have attracted the

attention of the Russian ambassador to Italy, and in 1735 the composer

was invited to St. Petersburg as director of the new Italian opera

company. The performances took place in the Winter Palace during the

winter, and in the summer in the Theatre of the Summer Garden. It is

possible that Araja's first season opened with a performance of one of

his own works with Russian text. Trediakovsky's translation of _La Forza

dell'Amore e dell'Odio_ is described as "a drama for music performed at

the New Theatre, by command of Her Imperial Highness Anna Johannovna,

Autocrat of all the Russias. Published in St. Petersburg by the Imperial

Academy of Science." It is not impossible that this comparatively

unimportant work actually led to Trediakovsky's great literary

innovation: the replacing of syllabic verse by tonic accent. It is

significant that his book on this subject came out in the same year, and

Cheshikin thinks that the study of the Italian opera of the eighteenth

century, with its correct versification, may have suggested to him the

theories which he sets forth in it. The same opera was given two years

later in Italian under the title of _Abizare_. Other operas by Araja

given in the Russian language are _Seleucus_ (1744), _Mithriadates_

(1747), _Eudocia Crowned, or Theodosia II._ (1751), and _Dido Forsaken_,

the libretto by Metastasio (1758); the last named was given in Moscow

the following year, and was apparently the first of Araja's works to be

heard in the old capital.

The Empress Elizabeth succeeded her cousin Anne in 1741, and Araja

continued to be Court Capellmeister. Like Peter the Great, Elizabeth was

anxious to popularise the drama in Russia. She showed a taste for Gallic

art, and established a company which gave French comedies and tragedies

alternately with Araja's opera company. Elizabeth urged her ladies in

waiting to attend every performance, and occasionally announced that the

upper classes among the merchants might be present on certain nights

"provided they were properly dressed."[3]

Russian opera made a decided step in advance when in 1751 Araja

composed music to a purely Russian text. The subject, _La Clemenza di

Tito_, which Mozart subsequently treated in 1791, had nothing in common

with the national life, but the libretto was the work of F. G. Volkov,

and the effect was quite homogeneous, for all the singers sang in the

vernacular instead of some using the Russian and some the Italian

language as was formerly done. This tasteless custom did not wholly die

out until well into the nineteenth century, but it became less and less

general. Thus in 1755 we hear of Araja's _Cephalus and Procius_ being

confided entirely to singers of Russian birth. The book of this opera

was by Soumarakov, based on materials borrowed from the "Metamorphoses"

of Ovid. The work is said to have been published in 1764, and is claimed

by some to be the earliest piece of music printed in Russia. J. B.

Jurgenson, head of the famous firm of music publishers in Moscow, who

has diligently collected the Russian musical publications of the

eighteenth century, states that he has never found any of Araja's operas

printed with music type. The fact that music was printed in Russia

before the reign of Catherine II. still needs verification. The scenery

of _Cephalus_ was painted by Valeriani, who bore one of the high

sounding titles which it was customary to bestow at the Court of

Russia--being distinguished as "First Historical Painter, Professor of

Perspective (scene painting) and Theatrical Engineer at the Imperial

Court of Russia." Among the singers who took part in the performance

were Elizabeth Bielogradsky, daughter of a famous lute player, Count

Razoumovsky, and Gravrilo Martsenkovich, known as Gravriloushko. The

success of the opera was brilliant, and the Empress presented the

composer with a fine sable coat as a mark of her gratification. In 1755,

Araja, having amassed considerable wealth, returned to Italy and spent

the remaining years of his life at Bologna.

Music under the Empress Elizabeth became a fashionable craze. Every

great landowner started his private band or choir. About this time, the

influence of the Empress's favourite, Razoumovsky, made itself felt in

favour of Russian melodies. By this time, too, a few talented native

musicians had been trained either in the Court Chapel or in some of the

private orchestras established by the aristocracy; but the influx of

foreigners into Russia threatened to swamp the frail craft of native

talent which had just been launched with pride upon the social sea. The

majority of these foreigners were mediocrities who found it easier to

impose upon the unsophisticated Russians than to make a living in their

own country; but the names of Sarti, Paisiello, and Cimarosa stand out

as glorious exceptions among this crowd of third and fourth rate

composers.

To Feodor Grigorievich Volkov, whose name has been already mentioned as

the author of the first genuine Russian libretto, has been also accorded

the honour of producing the first Russian opera boasting some

pretensions to the national style. Volkov was born at Kostroma, in 1729,

the son of a merchant. On his father's death and his mother's

re-marriage his home was transferred to Yaroslav. Here he received his

early education from a German pastor in the service of Biron, Duke of

Courland, then in banishment at Yaroslav. During a visit to St.

Petersburg in 1746, Volkov was so captivated by his first impressions of

Italian opera that he determined to start a theatrical company of his

own in Yaroslav. He gathered together a few enthusiastic amateurs and

began by giving performances in his own home. The attempt was so

successful that the fame of his entertainments reached the Empress

Elisabeth, and the young actors were summoned to her Court in 1752,

where they gave a private performance of a "comedy" with musical

interludes entitled _The Sinner's Repentance_, by Dimitri, metropolitan

of Rostov. One result of this production was that the Empress resolved

to continue the education of two members of the company, one of whom,

Ivan Dmitrievsky, became the most famous Russian actor of his day. In

1759 Volkov was sent to Moscow to establish a "Court theatre" there. The

festivities with which the coronation of Catherine II. was celebrated in

the old capital included a sumptuous masquerade entitled _Minerva

Triumphant_, arranged by Volkov, in which choral music played a part.

While engaged in organising the procession, Volkov caught a severe chill

from which he never recovered, and died in April 1763. He was an amateur

of music and made use of it in the entertainments which he produced; but

there seem to be grave doubts as to whether he was capable of composing

music to the first Russian comic opera, _Taniousha or The Fortunate

Meeting_, said to have been produced in November 1756. Gorbounov thinks

it highly improbable that such an opera ever existed,[4] because

Volkov's biographer, Rodislavsky, had no better foundation for assuming

its composition and production than some old handbills belonging to the

actor Nossov, which seem to have existed only in the imagination of

their collector. The assertion that _Taniousha_ was the first Russian

national opera must therefore be accepted with reserve.

Evstignei Platovich Fomin was born August 5th 1741 (O.S.), in St.

Petersburg. He was a pupil of the Imperial Academy of Arts, and in view

of his promising musical talent was sent to study in Italy, where he

entered for a time the Academy of Music at Bologna, and made rapid

progress. He began his musical career in Moscow in 1770, but appears to

have migrated to St. Petersburg before the death of Catherine II. He was

commissioned to compose the music for a libretto from the pen of the

Empress herself, entitled _Boeslavich, the Novgorodian Hero_. Catherine

not being quite confident as to Fomin's powers submitted the score to

Martini. The result appears to have been satisfactory. In 1797 Fomin was

employed at the Imperial Theatres as musical coach and _répétiteur_; he

was also expected to teach singing to the younger artists of both sexes

in the Schools, and to accompany in the orchestra for the French and

Italian operas. For these duties he received an annual sum of 720

roubles. Fomin died in St. Petersburg in April, 1800. He wrote a

considerable number of operas, including _Aniouta_ (1772), the libretto

by M. V. Popov; _The Good Maiden_ (_Dobraya Devka_), libretto by

Matinsky (1777); _Regeneration_ (_Pereiojdenia_), (1777)[5]; in January

1779 his _Wizard-Miller_ (_Melnik-Koldoun_) an opera in three acts, the

libretto by Ablessimov, was produced for the first time, and proved one

of the most successful operas of the eighteenth century; a one-act

opera, the book by Nikolaiev, entitled _The Tutor Professor, or Love's

Persuasive Eloquence_, was given in Moscow; and in 1786 _Boeslavich_, in

five acts, the text by Catherine II., was mounted at the Hermitage

Palace; _The Wizard, The Fortune Teller and The Matchmaker_, in three

acts, dates from 1791. In 1800 appeared two operas, _The Americans_, the

libretto by Kloushin, and _Chlorida and Milon_, the words of which were

furnished by the well-known writer Kapnist. As far as is known, Fomin

composed ten operas and also wrote music to a melodrama entitled

_Orpheus_.[6] It is probable, however, that Fomin really produced many

more musical works for the stage, for it has been proved that he

occasionally took an assumed name for fear of his work proving a

failure. Of his voluminous output only three works need be discussed

here.

_Aniouta_ owed some of its success to Popov's libretto, which was a mild

protest against the feudal aristocracy. The peasant Miron sings in the

first act some naïve verses in which he bewails the hard fate of the

peasant; "Ah, how tired I am," he says. "Why are we peasants not nobles?

Then, we might crunch sugar all day long, lie warm a'top of the stove

and ride in our carriages." If we put aside the idea that Volkov's

_Taniousha_ was the first opera written by a Russian composer, then this

honour must be rendered to Fomin's _Aniouta_.

Contemporary proof of the immense success of _The Miller_

(_Melnik-Koldoun_) is not wanting. The Dramatic Dictionary for 1787

informs us that it was played twenty-seven nights running and that the

theatre was always full. Not only were the Russians pleased with it, but

it interested the foreigners at Court. The most obvious proof of its

popularity may be found in the numerous inferior imitations which

followed in its wake.

The libretto of _The Miller_, like that of _Aniouta_, was tinged by a

cautious liberalism. Here it is not a peasant, but a peasant proprietor,

who "tills and toils and from the peasants collects the rent" who plays

the principal rôle. The part of the Miller was admirably acted by

Kroutitsky (1754-83), who, after the first performance, was called to

the Empress's box and presented with a gold watch. But undoubtedly

Fomin's music helped the success of the opera. The work has been

reissued with an interesting preface by P. Karatagyn (Jurgenson,

Moscow), so that it is easily accessible to those who are interested in

the early history of Russian opera. The music is somewhat amateurish and

lacking in technical resource. Fomin does not venture upon a chorus,

although there are occasionally couplets with choral refrains; lyric

follows lyric, and the duets are really alternating solos with a few

phrases in thirds at the close of the verses. But the public in Russia

in the eighteenth century was not very critical, and took delight in the

novel sensation of hearing folk-songs on the stage. In the second act

the heroine Aniouta sings a pretty melody based on a familiar folk-tune

which awakened great enthusiasm among the audience. The songs and their

words stand so close to the original folk-tunes that no doubt they

carried away all the occupants of the pit and the cheap places; while,

for the more exacting portion of the audience, the rôle of the Miller

was written in the conventional style of the _opera buffa_. This

judicious combination pleased all tastes.

We find far greater evidences of technical capacity in Fomin's opera

_The Americans_, composed some thirteen years later. In the second act

there is a fairly developed love-duet between Gusman and Zimara; the

quartets and choruses, though brief, are freer and more expressive;

there is greater variety of modulation, and altogether the work shows

some reflection of Mozart's influence, and faintly foreshadows a more

modern school to come. The libretto is extremely naïve, the Americans

being in reality the indigenous inhabitants, the Red Indians; but there

is nothing in the music allotted to them which differentiates them from

the Spanish characters in the opera. The advance, however, in the music

as compared with that of his earlier operas proves that Fomin must have

possessed real and vital talent. Yet it is by _The Miller_ that he will

live in the memory of the Russian people, thanks to his use of the

folk-tunes. To quote from Karatagyn's preface to this work: "Fomin has

indisputably the right to be called our first national composer. Before

the production of _The Miller_, opera in Russia had been entirely in the

hands of travelling Italian _maestri_. Galuppi, Sarti, Paisiello,

Cimarosa, Salieri, Martini, and others ruled despotically over the Court

orchestra and singers. Only Italian music was allowed to have an

existence and Russian composers could not make their way at all except

under the patronage of the Italians." This sometimes led to tragic

results, as in the case of Berezovsky, whose efforts to free himself

from the tutelage of Sarti cost him the patronage of the great Potemkin

and drove him to a pitch of despair which ended in suicide. Too much

weight, however, must not be attached to this resentment against the

Italian influence, so loudly expressed in Russia and elsewhere. The

Italians only reigned supreme in the lands of their musical conquest so

long as there existed no national composer strong enough to compete with

them. Fomin's success clearly proves that as soon as a native musician

appeared upon the scene who could give the people of their own, in a

style that was not too elevated for their immature tastes, he had not to

complain of any lack of enthusiasm.

It is to be regretted that none of his contemporaries thought it worth

while to write his biography, but at that time Russian literature was

purely aristocratic, and Fomin, though somewhat of a hero, was of the

people--a serf.

Contemporary history is equally silent as regards Michael Matinsky, who

died in the second decade of the nineteenth century. He, too, was a

serf, born on the estate of Count Yagjinsky and sent by his master to

study music in Italy. He composed several operas, the most successful of

which was _The Gostinny Dvor in St. Petersburg_, a work that eventually

travelled to Moscow. In his youth Matinsky is said to have played in

Count Razoumovsky's private band. In addition to his musical activity he

held the post of professor of geometry in the Smolny Institute in St.

Petersburg.

Vassily Paskievich was chamber-musician to the Empress Catherine II. In

1763 he was engaged, first as violinist, and then as composer, at the

theatres in St. Petersburg; he also conducted the orchestra at the state

balls. Some of his songs, which are sentimental, but pleasingly national

in colour, are still popular in Russia. He is said to have written seven

operas in all. The first of these, _Love brings Trouble_, was produced

at the Hermitage Theatre in 1772. Some years later he was commissioned

to set to music a libretto written by the Empress Catherine herself. The

subject of this opera is taken from the tale of _Tsarevich Feveï_, a

panegyric upon the good son of a Siberian king who was patriotic and

brave--in fact possessed of all the virtues. In her choice of subject

the Empress seems to have been influenced by her indulgent affection for

her favourite grandchild, the future Alexander I. Prince Feveï does

nothing to distinguish himself, but most of the characters in the opera

go into ecstasies over his charms and qualities, and it is obvious that

in this libretto Catherine wished to pay a flattering compliment to her

grandson. There are moments in the music which must have appealed to the

Russian public, especially an aria "Ah, thou, my little father," sung in

the style of an old village dame. Other numbers in the opera have the

same rather sickly-sweet flavour that prevails in Paskievich's songs.

The redeeming feature of the opera was probably its Kalmuc element,

which must have imparted a certain humour and oriental character to

both words and music. In one place the text runs something like this:

"Among the Kalmuc folk we eat kaimak, souliak, tourmak, smoke tabac(co)

and drink koumiss," and the ring of these unfamiliar words may have

afforded some diversion to the audiences of those days.[7]

[Illustration:

A CHURCH SERVICE, PROCESSION OF BOYARDS

_From 16th century contemporary prints, attributed to Jost Amman._

]

But however dull the subject of _Feveï_ may appear to modern

opera-goers, that of Paskievich's third opera, _Fedoul and Her

Children_, must surely take the prize for ineptitude even among Russian

operas of the eighteenth century. Fedoul, a widow, announces to her

fifteen grown-up children her intention of getting married again to a

young widower; at first the family not unnaturally grumble at the

prospect of a step-father, but having been scandalised by the marriage

with the prince in the first act, they solemnly sing his praises in the

finale of the last.

In co-operation with Sarti and Canobbio, Paskievich composed the music

to another book by the Empress Catherine, entitled _The Early Reign of

Oleg_, produced at the Hermitage Theatre, St. Petersburg, September,

1794. Paskievich's share of this work seems to have been the choruses,

which give a touch of national sentiment to the opera. Here he uses

themes that have now become familiar to us in the works of later

Russian musicians, such as the _Slavsia_ in honour of the Tsar, and the

Little Russian theme "The Crane" (_Jouravel_), which Tchaikovsky

employed in his Second Symphony. The orchestral accompaniments sometimes

consist of variations upon the theme, a form much favoured by Russian

musicians of a more modern school. Other operas by Paskievich are _The

Two Antons_ (1804) and _The Miser_ (1811). Paskievich had not as strong

a talent as Fomin, but we must give him credit, if not for originating,

at least for carrying still further the use of the folksong in Russian

opera.

In a book which is intended to give a general survey of the history of

Russian opera to English readers, it is hardly necessary to enter into

details about such composers as Vanjour, Bulant, Briks, A. Plestcheiev,

Nicholas Pomorsky, the German, Hermann Raupach, Canobbio, Kerzelli,

Troinni, Staubinger, and other musicians, Russian and foreign, who

played more or less useful minor parts in the musical life of St.

Petersburg and Moscow during the second half of the eighteenth century.

Three Italians and two Russians, however, besides those already

mentioned, stand out more prominently from the ranks and deserve to be

mentioned here.

Vincente Martin (Martin y Solar), of Spanish descent, born about 1754,

migrated in his boyhood to Italy, where he was known as _lo Spagnulo_.

He wrote an opera, _Iphigenia in Aulis_, for the carnival in Florence in

1781, and having won some reputation as a composer in Italy, went to

Vienna in 1785. Here his success was immense, so much so that his opera

_Una Cosa Rara_ was a serious rival to Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro." A

year later Mozart paid Martin the compliment of introducing a fragment

of _Una Cosa Rara_ into the finale of the second act of "Don Juan."

Martin went to St. Petersburg in 1788, at the invitation of the Italian

opera company. During his stay in Russia eight of his operas were given

in the vernacular, including _Dianino_, an _opera d'occasion_, the text

by Catherine the Great; _La Cosa Rara_, translated by Dmitrievsky;

_Fedoul and her Children_, in which he co-operated with the native

composer Paskievich; _A Village Festival_, the libretto by V. Maikov,

and a comic opera in one act, _Good Luke, or Here's my day_, the words

by Kobyakov. The fact that he wrote so frequently to Russian texts

entitles him to a place in the history of Russian opera. Martin was held

in great honour in the capital, and the Emperor Paul I. made him a Privy

Councillor. This did not prevent him, however, from suffering from the

fickleness of fashion, for in 1808 the Italians were replaced by a

French opera company and Martin lost his occupation. He continued,

however, to live in Russia, teaching at the Smolny monastery and in the

aristocratic families of St. Petersburg, where he died in May, 1810.

Among the foreigners who visited Russia in the time of Catherine the

Great, none was more distinguished than Guiseppe Sarti. Born at Faenza

in December, 1729, celebrated as a composer of opera by the time he was

twenty-four, he was appointed in 1753 Director of the Italian opera, and

Court Capellmeister to Frederick V. of Denmark. He lived in Copenhagen,

with one interval of three years, until the summer of 1775, when he

returned to Italy and subsequently became Maestro di Capella of the

cathedral of Milan. Here he spent nine years of extraordinary activity

composing fifteen operas, besides cantatas, masses and motets. In 1784

Catherine the Great tempted him to visit St. Petersburg, and constituted

him her Court-composer. His opera _Armida_ was received with great

enthusiasm in the Russian capital in 1786. It was sung in Italian, for

it was not until 1790 that Sarti took part in the composition of an

opera written to a Russian libretto. This was the _Early Rule of Oleg_,

the book from the pen of the Empress herself, in which he co-operated

with Paskievich. He also composed a _Te Deum_ in celebration of the fall

of Ochakov before the army of Potemkin; this was for double chorus, its

triumphal effect being enhanced by drums and salvos of artillery; a

procedure which no doubt set a precedent for Tchaikovsky when he came to

write his occasional Overture "1812." Many honours fell to Sarti's lot

during the eighteen years he lived in Russia, among others the

membership of the Academy of Science. The intrigues of the Italian

singer Todi obliged him to retire for a time to a country estate

belonging to Potemkin in the Ukraine; but he was eventually reinstated

in Catherine's good graces. After the Empress's death he determined to

return to Italy, but stayed for a time in Berlin, where he died in 1802.

Giovanni Paesiello (1741-1816) was another famous Italian whom Catherine

invited to St. Petersburg in 1776, where he remained as "Inspector of

the Italian operas both serious and buffa" until 1784. Not one of the

series of operas which he wrote during his sojourn in St. Petersburg was

composed to a Russian libretto or sung in the Russian tongue. His

_Barber of Seville_, written during the time when he was living in St.

Petersburg, afterwards became so popular with the Italians that when

Rossini ventured to make use of the same subject the public regarded it

as a kind of sacrilege. Paesiello's influence on Russian opera was

practically nil.

The generous offers of Catherine the Great drew Baldassare Galuppi

(1706-1785) to St. Petersburg in 1765. One can but admire the spirit of

these eighteenth-century Italian musicians--many of them being well

advanced in years--who were willing to leave the sunny skies of Italy

for the "Boreal clime" of St. Petersburg. Galuppi acted as the Director

of the Imperial Court Chapel for three years, and was the first

foreigner to compose music to a text in the ecclesiastical Slavonic, and

to introduce the motet (the Russian name for which is "concert") into

the service of the Orthodox Church. His operas, _Il Ré Pastore_,

_Didone_, and _Iphigenia in Taurida_, the last named being composed

expressly for the St. Petersburg opera, were all given during his

sojourn in the capital, but there is no record to prove that any one of

these works was sung in Russian.

Maxim Sozontovich Berezovsky[8] (1745-1777) studied at the School of

Divinity at Kiev, whence, having a remarkably fine voice, he passed into

the Imperial Court Chapel. In 1765 he was sent at the Government expense

to study under the famous Padre Martini at Bologna. His studies were

brilliant, and he returned to St. Petersburg full of hope and ambition,

only to find himself unequal to coping with the intrigues of the Italian

musicians at Court. Discouraged and disappointed, his mind gave way, and

he committed suicide at the age of thirty-two. He left a few sacred

compositions (_a capella_) which showed the highest promise. While in

Italy he composed an opera to an Italian libretto entitled _Demofonti_

which was performed with success at Bologna and Livorno.

Dmitri Stepanovich Bortniansky, born in 1751, also began his career as a

chorister in the Court Choir, where he attracted the attention of

Galuppi, who considered his talents well worth cultivation. When Galuppi

returned to Italy in 1768, Bortniansky was permitted to join him the

following year in Venice, where he remained until 1779. He was then

recalled to Russia and filled various important posts connected with the

Imperial Court Choir. He is now best known as a composer of sacred

music, some of his compositions being still used in the services of the

Orthodox Church. Although somewhat mellifluous and decidedly Italianised

in feeling, his church music is not lacking in beauty. He wrote four

operas, two to Italian and two to French texts. The titles of the

Italian operas are as follows: _Alcide, Azioni teatrale postea in musica

da Demetrio Bortnianski, 1778, in Venezia_; and _Quinto Fabio, drama

per musica rappresentata nel ducal teatro di Modena, il carnavale

dell'anno 1779_. The French comic opera _Le Faucon_ was composed for the

entertainment of the Tsarevich Paul Petrovich and his Court at Gatchina

(1786); while _Le Fils Rival_ was produced at the private theatre at

Pavlovsk in 1787, also for the Tsarevich Paul and his wife Maria

Feodorovna.

Throughout the preceding chapters I have used the word "opera" as a

convenient general term for the works reviewed in them; but although a

few such works composed by Italians, or under strong Italian influences,

might be accurately described as melodic opera, the nearer they approach

to this type the less they contain of the Russian national style. For

the most part, however, these productions of the eighteenth century were

in the nature of vaudevilles: plays with couplets and other incidental

music inserted, in which, as Cheshikin points out, the verses were often

rather spoken than sung; consequently the form was more declamatory than

melodic. Serov, in a sweeping criticism of the music of this period,

says that it was for the most part commissioned from the pack of needy

Italians who hung about the Court in the various capacities of _maîtres

d'hôtel_, wig-makers, costumiers, and confectioners. This, as we have

seen, is somewhat exaggerated, since Italy sent some of her best men to

the Court of Catherine II. But even admitting that a large proportion of

the musicians who visited Russia were less than second-rate, yet beneath

this tawdry and superficial foreign disguise the pulse of national music

beat faintly and irregularly. If some purely Italian tunes joined to

Russian words made their way into various spheres of society, and came

to be accepted by the unobservant as genuine national melodies, on the

other hand some true folk-songs found their way into semi-Italian operas

and awoke the popular enthusiasm, as we have witnessed in the works of

Fomin and Paskievich. In one respect the attitude of the Russian public

in the eighteenth century towards imported opera differed from our own.

All that was most successful in Western Europe was brought in course of

time to St. Petersburg, but a far larger proportion of the foreign

operas were translated into the vernacular than was the case in this

country.

With regard to the location of opera, the first "opera house" was

erected by the Empress Anne in St. Petersburg, but was not used

exclusively for opera, French plays and other forms of entertainment

being also given there. The building was burnt down in 1749, and the

theatrical performances were continued temporarily in the Empress's

state apartment. A new, stone-built opera house was opened in St.

Petersburg in 1750, after the accession of the Empress Elizabeth. It was

situated near the Anichkov Palace. Catherine the Great added another

stone theatre to the capital in 1774, which was known as "The Great

Theatre." After damage from fire it was reconstructed and reopened in

1836.[9] Rebuilt again in 1880, it became the home of the Conservatoire

and the office of the Imperial Musical Society. Besides these buildings,

the Hermitage Theatre, within the walls of the Winter Palace, was often

used in the time of Catherine the Great.

In Moscow the Italian _entrepreneur_ Locatelli began to solicit the

privilege of building a new theatre in 1750. Six years later he was

accorded the necessary permission, and the building was opened in

January, 1759. But Locatelli was not very successful, and his tenure

only lasted three years. Titov managed the Moscow theatre from 1766 to

the death of Catherine in 1796. After this the direction passed into the

hands of Prince Ouroussov, who in association with a Jew named

Medoks[10] proceeded to build a new and luxurious theatre in Petrovsky

Street. Prince Ouroussov soon retired, leaving Medoks sole manager. The

season began with comic operas such as _The Miller_ by Fomin. In 1805

the Petrovsky theatre shared the fate of so many Russian buildings and

was destroyed by fire.

Alexander I. succeeded the unfortunate Paul Petrovich, done to death in

the Mikhaïlovsky Palace during the night of March 23rd, 1801. With his

advent, social sentiment in Russia began to undergo a complete

revolution. The Napoleonic wars in Western Europe, in which the Russian

troops took part, culminating in the French invasion of 1812, awoke all

the latent patriotism of the nation. The craze for everything foreign,

so marked under the rule of Catherine II., now gave place to

ultra-patriotic enthusiasm. This reaction, strongly reflected in the

literature of the time, was not without its influence on musical taste.

In Russia, music and literature have always been closely allied, and the

works of the great poet Poushkin, of the fabulist Krylov, and the

patriotic historian Karamzin, gave a strong impulse and a new tone to

the art. At the same time a wave of romanticism passed over Russia. This

was partly the echo of Byron's popularity, then at its height in England

and abroad; and partly the outcome of the annexation of the old kingdom

of Georgia, in 1801, which turned the attention of Young Russia to the

magic beauty and glamour of the Caucasus.

There was now much discussion about national music, and a great deal

was done to encourage its progress; but during the first quarter of the

nineteenth century composers had but a superficial idea of the meaning

of a national school, and were satisfied that a Russian subject and a

selection of popular tunes constituted the only formula necessary for

the production of a native opera.

During his short reign the Emperor Paul had not contributed to the

advancement of music, but in spite of somewhat unfavourable conditions,

an Italian opera company under the management of Astarito[11] visited

St. Petersburg in 1797. Among their number was a talented young Italian,

Catterino Cavos, whose name is inseparably connected with the musical

history of Russia. Born at Venice in 1776, the son of the musical

director of the celebrated "Fenice" Theatre, it is said that at fourteen

Cavos was the chosen candidate for the post of organist of St. Mark's

Cathedral, but relinquished his chance in favour of a poor musician. The

story is in accordance with what we read of his magnanimity in later

life. His gifts were remarkable, and in 1799 he was appointed Court

Capellmeister. In 1803 he became conductor of the Italian, Russian and

French opera companies. Part of his duties consisted in composing for

all three institutions. Light opera and ballet, given by the French

company, was then all the fashion in St. Petersburg. Cavos quickly

realised the direction and scope of the public taste, and soon began to

write operas to romantic and legendary subjects borrowed from Russian

history and folk-lore, and endeavoured to give his music a decided touch

of national colour. In May, 1804, he made an immense success with his

_Roussalka of the Dneiper_, in which he had the co-operation of Davidov.

The following year he dispensed with all assistance and produced a

four-act opera to a Russian text called _The Invisible Prince_, which

found great favour with the public. Henceforth, through over thirty

years of unresting creative activity, Cavos continued to work this

popular vein. His operas have practically all sunk into oblivion, but

the catalogue of their titles is still of some interest to students of

Russian opera, because several of his subjects have since been treated

and re-vitalised by a more recent generation of native composers. His

chief works, given chronologically, are as follows: _Ilya the Hero_, the

libretto by Krilov (1806); _The Three Hunchback Brothers_ (1808); _The

Cossack Poet_ (1812); _The Peasants, or the Unexpected Meeting_ (1814);

_Ivan Sousanin_ (1815); _The Ruins of Babylon_ (1818); _Dobrinya

Nikitich_ (1810); and _The Bird of Fire_ (1822)--the last two in

co-operation with Antonolini; _Svietlana_, text by Joukovsky (1822);

_The Youth of Joan III._ (1822); _The Mountains of Piedmont, or The

Devil's Bridge_ (1825); _Miroslava, or the Funeral Pyre_ (1827).

The foregoing list does not include any works which Cavos wrote to

French or Italian texts, amounting to nearly thirty in all. In _Ilya the

Hero_ Cavos made his first attempt to produce a national epic opera.

Founded on the Legend of Ilya Mouromets, from the Cycle of Kiev, the

opera is not lacking in spirit, and evoked great enthusiasm in its day,

especially one martial aria, "Victory, victory, Russian hero!" Cavos was

fortunate in having secured as librettist a very capable writer, Prince

Shakovsky, who also supplied the text for _Ivan Sousanin_, the most

successful of all Cavos's national operas; although we shall see in the

next chapter how completely it was supplanted in the popular favour by

Glinka's work dealing with the same subject.

In the spring of 1840 Cavos's health began to fail, and he received

leave of absence from his many arduous but lucrative official posts. He

became, however, rapidly much worse and had to abandon the idea of a

journey. He died in St. Petersburg on April 28th (O.S.). His loss was

deeply felt by the Russian artists, to whom, unlike many of his Italian

predecessors, he had always shown generous sympathy; they paid him a

last tribute of respect by singing Cherubini's _Requiem_ at his funeral.

The Russian musician Youry Arnold, who was well acquainted with Cavos in

the later years of his life, describes him at sixty as a robust and

energetic man, who was at his piano by 9 a.m., rehearsing the soloists

till 1 p.m., when he took the orchestral rehearsals. If by any chance

these ended a little sooner than he expected, he would occupy himself

again with the soloists. At 5 p.m. he made his report to the Director of

the Imperial Theatres, and then went home to dine. But he never failed

to appear at the Opera House punctually at 7 o'clock. On evenings when

there was no performance he devoted extra time to his soloists. He

worked thus conscientiously and indefatigably year after year. He was

not, however, indifferent to the pleasures of the table and was

something of a _gourmet_. Even in the far-distant north he managed to

obtain consignments of his favourite "_vino nero_." "He told me more

than once," said Arnold, "that except with tea, he had never in the

whole course of his life swallowed a mouthful of water: '_Perchè cosa

snaturalle, insoffribile e nocevole!_'"

Cavos was an admirable and painstaking conductor, and his long _régime_

must have greatly contributed to the discipline and good organisation

of the opera, both as regards orchestra and singers. His own works, as

might be expected from a musician whose whole life was spent in studying

the scores of other composers, were not highly original. He wrote well,

and with knowledge, for the voice, and his orchestration was adequate

for that period, but his music lacks homogeneity, and reminiscences of

Mozart, Cherubini and Méhul mingle with echoes of the Russian folk-songs

in the pages of his operas. But the public of his day were on the whole

well satisfied with Russian travesties of Italian and Viennese

vaudevilles. It is true that new sentiments were beginning to rouse the

social conscience, but the public was still a long way from desiring

idealistic truth, let alone realism, in its music and literature. In

spite of the one electrical thrill which Glinka administered to the

public in _A Life for the Tsar_, opera was destined to be regarded for

many years to come as a pleasing and not too exacting form of

recreation. The libretto of Cavos's _Ivan Sousanin_ shows what society

demanded from opera even as late as 1815; for here this tragedy of

unquestioning loyalty to an ideal is made to end quite happily. At the

moment when the Poles were about to slay him in the forest, Sousanin is

rescued by a Russian boyard and his followers, and the hero, robust and

jovial, lives to moralise over the footlights in the following

couplets, in which he takes leave of the audience:

Now let the cruel foe beware,

And tremble all his days;

But let each loyal Russian heart

Rejoice in songs of praise.

At the same time it must be admitted that in this opera Cavos sometimes

gives an echo of the genuine national spirit. The types of Sousanin and

his young son Alexis, and of Masha and her husband, Matthew, are so

clearly outlined, says Cheshikin, that Glinka had only to give them more

relief and finish. The well-constructed overture, the duet between Masha

and Alexis, and the folk-chorus "Oh, do not rave wild storm-wind" are

all far in advance of anything to be found in the Russian operas of the

eighteenth century.

Among those who were carried along by the tide of national feeling which

rose steadily in Russia from 1812 onward was the gifted amateur Alexis

Nicholaevich Verstovsky. Born in 1799, near Tambov, the son of a country

gentleman, Verstovsky was educated at the Institute of Engineers, St.

Petersburg, where he took pianoforte lessons from John Field, and later

on from Steibelt. He also learnt some theory from Brandt and Steiner;

singing from an operatic artist named Tarquini; and violin from Böhm and

Maurer. Verstovsky composed his first vaudeville at nineteen and its

success encouraged him to continue on the same lines. In 1823 he was

appointed Director of the Moscow Opera, where he produced a whole series

of operettas and vaudevilles, many of which were settings of texts

translated from the French. After a time he became ambitious of writing

a serious opera, and in May 1828, he produced his _Pan Tvardovsky_, the

libretto by Zagoskin and Aksakov, well known literary men of the day.

The book is founded on an old Polish or Malo-Russian legend, the hero

being a kind of Slavonic Faust. The music was influenced by Méhul and

Weber, but Verstovsky introduced a gipsy chorus which in itself won

immediate popularity for the opera. Its success, though brilliant, was

short-lived.

_Pan Tvardovsky_ was followed by _Vadim, or the Twenty Sleeping

Maidens_, based on a poem by Joukovsky, but the work is more of the

nature of incidental music to a play than pure opera.

_Askold's Tomb_, Verstovsky's third opera, by which he attained his

greatest fame, will be discussed separately.

_Homesickness_ (_Toska po rodine_), the scene laid in Spain, was a poor

work produced for the benefit night of the famous Russian bass O. A.

Petrov, the precursor of Shaliapin.

_The Boundary Hills, or the Waking Dream_, stands nearest in order of

merit to _Askold's Tomb_. The scene is laid in mythical times, and the

characters are supernatural beings, such as Domovoi (the House Spirit),

Vodyanoi (the Water Sprite) and Liessnoi (the Wood Spirit). The music

breathes something of the spirit of Russian folk-song, and a Slumber

Song, a Triumphal March, and a very effectively mounted Russian Dance,

which the composer subsequently added to the score, were the favourite

numbers in this opera.

Verstovsky's last opera _Gromoboi_ was based upon the first part of

Joukovsky's poem "The Twenty Sleeping Maidens." An oriental dance

(_Valakhsky Tanets_) from this work was played at one of the concerts of

the Imperial Russian Musical Society, and Serov speaks of it as being

quite Eastern in colour, original and attractive as regards melody but

poorly harmonised and orchestrated as compared with the _Lezginka_ from

Glinka's _Russlan and Liudmilla_, the lively character of the dance

being very similar.

A few of the composers mentioned in the previous chapter were still

working in Russia at the same time as Verstovsky. Of those whose

compositions belong more particularly to the first forty years of the

nineteenth century, the following are most worthy of notice:

Joseph Antonovich Kozlovsky (1757-1831), of Polish birth, began life as

a soldier in Prince Potemsky's army. The prince's attention having been

called to the young man's musical talents, he appointed him director of

his private band in St. Petersburg. Kozlovsky afterwards entered the

orchestra of the Imperial Opera. He wrote music to Oserov's tragedy

_[OE]dipus in Athens_ (1804); to _Fingal_ (1805), _Deborah_, libretto by

Shakovsky (1810), _OEdipus Rex_ (1811), and to Kapnist's translation

of Racine's _Esther_ (1816).

Ludwig Maurer (1789-1878), a famous German violinist, played in the

orchestra at Riga in his early days, and after touring abroad and in

Russia settled in St. Petersburg about 1820, where he was appointed

leader of the orchestra at the French theatre in 1835. Ten years later

he returned to Germany and gave many concerts in Western Europe; but in

1851 he went back to St. Petersburg as Inspector-General of all the

State theatrical orchestras. Maurer is best known by his instrumental

compositions, especially his Concertos for four violins and orchestra,

but he wrote music for several popular vaudevilles with Russian text,

and co-operated occasionally with Verstovsky and Alabiev.

The brothers Alexis and Sergius Titov were types of the distinguished

amateurs who played such an important part in the musical life of Russia

during the first half of the last century. Alexis (d. 1827) was the

father of that Nicholas Titov often called "the ancestor of Russian

song." He served in the Cavalry Guards and rose to the rank of

Major-General. An admirable violinist, he was also a voluminous

composer. Stassov gives a list of at least fourteen operas, melodramas,

and other musical works for the stage, many of which were written to

French words. His younger brother Sergius (b. 1770) is supposed to have

supplied music to _The Forced Marriage_, text by Plestcheiev (1789), _La

Veillée des Paysans_ (1809), _Credulity_ (1812), and, in co-operation

with Bluhm, _Christmas Festivals of Old_ (1813). It is probable that he

had a hand in the long list of works attributed to his brother Alexis,

and most of the Russian musical historians seem puzzled to decide how to

apportion to each of the brothers his due share of creative activity.

A composer belonging to this period is known by name even beyond the

Russian frontiers, owing to the great popularity of one of his songs,

"The Nightingale." Alexander Alexandrovich Alabiev was born at Moscow,

August 4th, 1787[12] (O.S.). He entered the military service and,

becoming acquainted with Verstovsky, co-operated in several of his

vaudevilles. For some breach of discipline Alabiev was exiled for a time

to Tobolsk. Inspired by the success of Cavos's semi-national operas,

Alabiev attempted a Russian fairy opera entitled _A Moonlight Night or

the Domovoï_. The opera was produced in St. Petersburg and Moscow, but

did not long hold a place in the repertory of either theatre. He next

attempted music to scenes from Poushkin's poem _The Prisoner in the

Caucasus_, a naïve work in which the influence of Bellini obscures the

faint national and Eastern colour which the atmosphere of the work

imperatively demands. Alabiev, after his return from Siberia, settled in

Moscow, where he died February 22nd, 1851 (O.S.).

[Illustration: MICHAEL IVANOVICH GLINKA

_From a portrait by Repin_]

CHAPTER III

MICHAEL IVANOVICH GLINKA

In the preceding chapters I have shown how long and persistently Russian

society groped its way towards an ideal expression of nationalism in

music. Gifted foreigners, such as Cavos, had tried to catch some faint

echo of the folk-song and reproduce it disguised in Italian accents;

talented, but poorly equipped, Russian musicians had exploited the music

of the people with a certain measure of success, but without sufficient

conviction or genius to form the solid basis of a national school. Yet

all these strivings and aspirations, these mistaken enthusiasms and

immature presentiments, were not wasted. Possibly the sacrifice of many

talents is needed before the manifestation of one genius can be

fulfilled. When the yearning after a musical Messiah had acquired

sufficient force, the right man appeared in the person of Michael

Ivanovich Glinka. With his advent we reach the first great climax in the

history of Russian music.

It is in accordance with the latent mysticism and the ardour smouldering

under the semi-oriental indolence of the Russian temperament that so

many of their great men--especially their musicians--seem to have

arrived at the consciousness of their vocation through a kind of process

of conversion. Moussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov, to mention

but one or two examples, all awoke suddenly from a condition of mental

sloth or frivolity to the conviction of their artistic mission; and some

of them were prepared to sacrifice social position and an assured

livelihood for the sake of a new, ideal career. Glinka was no exception.

He, too, heard his divine call and followed it. Lounging in the theatres

and concert rooms of Italy, listening to Italian singers and fancying

himself "deeply moved" by Bellini's operas, suddenly it flashed upon

Glinka, a cultivated amateur, that this was not what he needed to

stimulate his inspiration. This race, this art, were alien to him and

could never take the place of his own people. This swift sense of

remoteness, this sudden change of thought and ideal, constituted the

psychological moment in the history of Russian music. Glinka's first

impulse was merely to write a better Russian opera than his

predecessors; but this impulse held the germ of the whole evolution of

the new Russian School as we know it to-day.

It is rather remarkable that outside the Russian language so little has

been written about this germinal genius, who summed up the ardent

desires of many generations and begat a great school of national music.

The following details of his childhood and early youth are taken from

his Autobiographical Notes and now appear for the first time in an

English translation.

"I was born on June 2nd (May 20th, O.S.), 1804, in the glow of the

summer dawn at the village of Novospasskoï, which belonged to my father,

Ivan Nicolaevich Glinka, a retired army captain.... Shortly after my

birth, my mother, Eugenia Andreievna (_née_ Glinka), was obliged to

leave my early bringing up to my grandmother who, having taken

possession of me, had me transferred to her own room. Here in company

with her, a foster mother, and my nurse, I spent the first three or four

years of my life, rarely seeing anything of my parents. I was a child of

delicate constitution and of nervous tendencies. My grandmother was in

her declining years, and almost always ailing, consequently the

temperature of her room in which I lived was never less than 20

Réaumur.... In spite of this, I was not allowed to take off my pelisse,

and night and day I was given tea with cream and quantities of sugar in

it, and also cracknels and fancy bread of all kinds. I seldom went into

the fresh air, and then only in hot weather. There is no doubt that

this early upbringing had a great influence on my physical development

and explains my unconquerable affection for warm climates....

"My grandmother spoilt me to an incredible degree and never denied me

anything I wanted. In spite of this I was a gentle and well-behaved

child, and only indulged in passing fits of peevishness--as indeed I

still do when disturbed at one of my favourite occupations. One of my

chief amusements was to lie flat on the floor and draw churches and

trees with a bit of chalk. I was piously inclined, and church

ceremonies, especially at the great festivals, filled me heart and soul

with the liveliest poetic enthusiasm. Having learnt to read at a

remarkably early age, I often moved my grandmother and her elderly

friends to tears by reading the Scriptures aloud to them. My musical

proclivities showed themselves at that time in a perfect passion for the

sound of bells; I drank in these harsh sounds, and soon learnt how to

imitate them rather cleverly by means of two copper bowls. When I was

ill they used to give me a little hand-bell to keep me amused.

"On the death of my grandmother, my way of living underwent some

changes. My mother spoilt me rather less, and tried to accustom me to

the fresh air; but her efforts in this direction were not very

successful.... My musical sense still remained undeveloped and crude. In

my eighth year (1812), when we were delivered from the French invasion,

I listened with all my old delight to the ringing of the bells,

distinguishing the peals of the different churches, and imitating them

on my copper bowls.

"Being entirely surrounded by women, and having for playmates only my

sister, who was a year younger than myself, and my nurse's little

daughter, I was never like other boys of my age; moreover the passion

for study, especially of geography and drawing--and in the latter I had

begun to make sensible progress--drew me away from childish pastimes,

and I was, from the first, of a quiet and gentle disposition.

"At my father's house we often received many relatives and guests; this

was usually the case on his name-day, or when someone came to stay whom

he wished to entertain with special honours. On these occasions he would

send for the musicians belonging to my maternal uncle, who lived eight

versts away. They often remained with us for several days, and when the

dances were over and the guests departed, they used to play all sorts of

pieces. I remember once (it was in 1814, or 1815, when I was about ten)

they played a quartet by Cruselli; this music produced in me an

inconceivably new and rapturous effect; after hearing it I remained all

day long in a state of feverish excitement, lost in inexplicably sweet

dreamy emotions, and the next day at my drawing lesson I was quite

absent-minded. My distracted condition increased as the lesson

proceeded, and my teacher, remarking that I was drawing very carelessly,

scolded me repeatedly, until finally guessing what was the matter with

me, said that I now thought of nothing but music. 'What's to be done?' I

answered: 'music is the soul of me!'

"In truth at that time I loved music passionately. My uncle's orchestra

was the source of the liveliest delight to me. When they played dances,

such as écossaises, quadrilles and valses, I used to snatch up a violin

or piccolo and join in with them, simply alternating between tonic and

dominant. My father was often annoyed with me because I did not dance,

and deserted our guests; but at the first opportunity I slipped back

again among the musicians. During supper they generally played Russian

folk-songs arranged for two flutes, two clarinets, two horns, and two

bassoons; this poignantly tender, but for me perfectly satisfactory,

combination delighted me (I could hardly endure shrill sounds, even the

lower notes of the horn when they were not played loud), and perhaps

these songs, heard in my childhood, were the first cause of my

preference in later years for Russian folk-melodies. About this time we

had a governess from St. Petersburg called Barbara Klemmer. She was a

girl about twenty, very tall, strict and exacting. She taught us

Russian, French, German, geography and music.... Although our music

lessons, which included reading from notes and the rudiments of the

piano, were rather mechanical, yet I made rapid progress with her, and

shortly after she came one of the first violins from my uncle's band was

employed to teach me the fiddle. Unfortunately he himself did not play

quite in tune and held his bow very stiffly, a bad habit which he passed

on to me.

"Although I loved music almost unconsciously, yet I remember that at

that time I preferred those pieces which were most accessible to my

immature musical intelligence. I enjoyed the orchestra most of all, and

next to the Russian songs, my favourite items in their repertory were:

the Overtures to 'Ma Tante Aurore,' by Boieldieu, to 'Lodoïska,' by

Rodolph Kreutzer, and to 'Les Deux Aveugles,' by Méhul. The last two I

liked playing on the piano, as well as some of Steibelt's sonatas,

especially 'The Storm,' which I played rather neatly."

I have quoted _verbatim_ from Glinka's record of his childish

impressions, because they undoubtedly influenced his whole after career,

and the nature of his genius was conditioned by them. Like most of the

leading representatives of Russian music, Glinka was born and spent the

early years of his life in the country, where he assimilated

subconsciously the purer elements of the national music which had

already begun to be vulgarized, if not completely obliterated, in the

great cities. Saved from the multitudinous distractions of town life,

the love of the folk-music took root in his heart and grew undisturbed.

Had he been brought up in one of the capitals, taken early, as Russian

children often were, and still are, to the opera and to concerts, his

outlook would have been widened at the expense of his individuality.

Later on, as we shall see, he was led away from the tracks of

nationality by his enthusiasm for Italian opera; but the strong

affections of his childhood guided him back instinctively to that way of

art in which he could best turn his gifts to account. It has been said

that Glinka remained always somewhat narrow in his ideas and activities;

but it was precisely this exclusiveness and concentration that could

best serve Russia at the time when he appeared. In his letters and

Autobiographical Notes, he often adopts the tone of a genius

misunderstood, and hints that an unkind Providence enjoyed putting

obstacles in his path. It is true that in later life, after the

production of his second opera, _Russlan and Liudmilla_, he had some

grounds for complaining of the fickleness and mental indolence of the

Russian public. But his murmurings against destiny must be discounted by

the fact that Glinka, the spoilt and delicate child, grew up into

Glinka, the idolised and hypochondriacal man. On the whole his life was

certainly favourable to his artistic development.

Stassov, in his fine monograph upon the composer, lays stress on this

view of Glinka's career. The history of art, he argues, contains only

too many instances of perverted talent; even strongly gifted natures

have succumbed to the ill-judged advice of friends, or to the mistaken

promptings of their own nature, so that they have wasted valuable years

in the manufacture of works which reached to a certain standard of

academic excellence, and even beauty, before they realised their true

individual vocation and their supreme powers. Glinka was fortunate in

his parents, who never actually opposed his inclinations; and perhaps he

was equally lucky in his teachers, for if they were not of the very

highest class they did not at any rate interfere with his natural

tendencies, nor impose upon him severe restrictions of routine and

method. Another happy circumstance in his early life, so Stassov thinks,

was his almost wholly feminine environment. Glinka's temperament was

dual; on the one hand he possessed a rich imagination, both receptive

and creative, and was capable of passionate feeling; in the other side

of his nature we find an element of excessive sensibility, a something

rather passive and morbidly sentimental. Women had power to soothe and

at the same time to stimulate his temperament. Somewhere in his memoirs,

Glinka, speaking of his early manhood, says: "At that time I did not

care for the society of my own sex, preferring that of women and girls

who appreciated my musical gifts." Stassov considers that these words

might be applied to the whole of Glinka's life, for he always seemed

most at ease in the company of ladies.

In the autumn of 1817, being then thirteen, he was sent to the newly

opened school for the sons of the aristocracy, where he remained until

1822. His schooldays appear to have been happy and profitable. He was

industrious and popular alike with the masters and pupils. In the

drawing class the laborious copying from the flat, with its tedious

cross-hatching and stippling then in vogue, soon disgusted him.

Mathematics did not greatly interest him. Dancing and fencing were

accomplishments in which he never shone. But he acquired languages with

a wonderful ease, taking up Latin, French, German, English and Persian.

In after years he dropped to some extent Persian and English, but became

proficient in Italian and Spanish. Geography and zoology both attracted

him. That he loved and observed nature is evident from all his writings;

and the one thing in which he resembled other boys was in his affection

for birds, rabbits, and other pets. While travelling in the Caucasus in

1823 he tamed and kept wild goats, and sometimes had as many as sixteen

caged birds in his room at once, which he would excite to song by

playing the violin.

Glinka's parents spared nothing to give their son a good general

education, but the idea that they were dealing with a budding musical

genius never occurred to them. As he had shown some aptitude for the

piano and violin in childhood, he was allowed to continue both these

studies while at school in St. Petersburg. He started lessons with the

famous Irish composer and pianist John Field, who, being on the eve of

his departure for Moscow, was obliged to hand Glinka over to his pupil

Obmana. Afterwards he received some instruction from Zeuner, and

eventually worked with Carl Meyer, an excellent pianist and teacher,

with whom he made rapid progress. At the school concert in 1822, Glinka

was the show pupil and played Hummel's A minor Concerto, Meyer

accompanying him on a second piano. With the violin he made less

progress, although he took lessons from Bohm, a distinguished master and

virtuoso who had not, however, so Glinka declared, the gift of imparting

his own knowledge to others. Bohm would sigh over his pupil's faulty

bowing and remark: "_Messieu Klinka, fous ne chouerez chamais du

fiolon._"

Glinka's repertory at nineteen contained nothing more profound than the

virtuoso music of Steibelt, Herz, Hummel and Kalkbrenner. Although

Beethoven had already endowed the world with his entire series of

sonatas, and was then at the zenith of his fame, his music only began to

make headway in Russia some ten years later. As time went on, Glinka

heard and met most of the great pianists of his day, and his criticisms

of their various styles are unconventional and interesting, but would

lead us far away from the subject of Russian opera.

Imperfect as his mastery of the violin appears to have been, it was of

more importance to his subsequent career than his fluency as a pianist,

because during the vacations at home he was now able to take part in

earnest in his uncle's small orchestra. The band generally visited the

Glinkas' estate once a fortnight, and sometimes stayed a whole week.

Before the general rehearsal, the son of the house would take each

member of the orchestra through his part--with the exception of the

leaders--and see that they were all note perfect and played in tune. In

this way he learnt a good deal about instrumentation and something about

the technique of conducting. Their repertory included overtures by

Cherubini, Méhul, and Mozart; and three symphonies, Haydn in B, Mozart

in G minor, and Beethoven's second symphony, in D major, the last named

being Glinka's special favourite.

In St. Petersburg he began to frequent the opera, which was not then so

exclusively given over to Italian music as it was a few years later.

Méhul's "Joseph," Cherubini's "Water-Carriers," Isouard's "Gioconda" and

Boieldieu's "Le Bonnet Rouge" were among the works which he heard and

admired in the early 'twenties.

In 1824 Glinka entered the Government service as a clerk in the Ministry

of Ways and Communications. Here he found several amateurs as

enthusiastic as himself, and was soon launched in a social circle where

his musical gifts were greatly appreciated and he ran the risk of

degenerating into a spoilt dilettante. From the beginning to the end of

his career Glinka remained an amateur in that higher sense of the word

which implies that he merely wrote what he liked and was exempt from the

necessity of composing to order for the sake of a livelihood.

He himself has related the circumstances of his first creative impulse.

In the spring of 1822, when he was about nineteen, he made the

acquaintance of a young lady "of fascinating appearance, who played the

harp and had also a beautiful voice. This voice was not to be compared

to any musical instrument; it was just a resonant silvery soprano, and

she sang naturally and with extraordinary charm. Her attractive

qualities and her kindness to me (she called me her nephew and I called

her aunt) stirred my heart and my imagination." We see the rest of the

picture: a Petersburg drawing room with its semi-French decoration, an

amiable grandpapa reposing in his armchair, while Glinka played by the

hour and the young lady joined in with her silvery soprano. So the first

compositions were written--"to do her a service and laid at her

feet"--variations upon her favourite theme from Weigel's "Swiss Family,"

an opera then all the vogue, variations for harp and piano on a theme by

Mozart and an original Valse in F for piano. Of these only the

variations for harp survive.

At twenty Glinka took singing lessons from the Italian Belloli. This led

to his first essays in song writing, and after one hopeless failure he

succeeded in setting some words by Baratynsky, "Do not needlessly

torment me."

Henceforth Glinka began to be conscious of his powers, and between 1825

and 1830 he was constantly composing. Although the best of relations

existed between himself and his father, he does not seem to have shown

him anything of his deeper artistic nature, and Glinka's family accepted

his music merely as an agreeable addition to his social qualities.

Meanwhile he wrote many of the songs of his first period, and a few

isolated dramatic scenas with orchestral accompaniment, including the

Chorus on the Death of a Hero, in C minor, and an Aria for baritone, a

part of which he used in the finale of the second act of his opera

_Russlan and Liudmilla_. He also learnt Italian and received some

instruction in theory from Zamboni. In 1829 he published an album

containing most of his early compositions.

From time to time Glinka was incapacitated by an affection of the eyes,

and his general health was far from satisfactory. He was possessed of a

craving to travel in Spain or Italy, and his father's refusal to let him

go abroad "hurt me," he says, "to the point of tears." However, a famous

doctor having examined him, reported to his father that the young man

had "a whole quadrille of ailments" and ought to be sent to a warm

climate for at least three years. Glinka left Russia for Italy in 1830,

and remained abroad until the spring of 1834.

During his visit to Italy, Glinka wrote regularly and fully to his

family, but unfortunately the correspondence was not deemed worthy of

preservation, and the letters were destroyed shortly after his return.

If we may judge by the communications to his friends sent later in life

from Spain, France and Germany, the destruction of these records of his

early impressions is a real loss to musical biography.

The two chief objects of Glinka's journey abroad were to improve his

physical condition and to perfect his musical studies. As regards his

health, he was benefited perhaps but not cured. "All his life," says

Stassov, "Glinka was a martyr to doctors and remedies," and his

autobiography is full of details concerning his fainting fits and

nervous depression, and his bodily sufferings in general. He had,

however, sufficient physical and moral strength to work at times with

immense energy.

As regards his musical education, Glinka had now begun to realise that

his technical equipment did not keep pace with his creative impulse. He

felt the need of that theoretical knowledge which Kirnberg says is to

the composer what wings are to a bird. He was by no means so completely

ignorant of the theory of his art as many of his critics have

insinuated. He had already composed music which was quite on a level

with much that was popular in his day, and had won some flattering

attentions from musical society in St. Petersburg. We must respect the

self-criticism which prompted him to put himself to school again at

six-and-twenty. But Italy could not give him that deeper and sounder

musical culture of which he was in search. In Milan he began to work

under Basili, the Director of the Milan Conservatoire, distinguished for

having refused a scholarship to Verdi because he showed no aptitude for

music. Basili does not seem to have had _la main heureuse_ with budding

genius; Glinka found his methods so dry and pedantic that he soon

abandoned his lessons as a waste of time. Nevertheless Italy, then and

now the Mecca of all aspiring art students, had much to give to the

young Russian. He was deeply impressed by the beauty of his

surroundings, but, from the practical side, it was in the art of singing

and writing for the voice that Glinka made real progress during his

sojourn in the South. He had arrived in Italy in company with Ivanov,

who became later on the most famous Russian operatic tenor. Glinka's

father had persuaded the tenor to accompany his son abroad and had

succeeded in getting him two years leave of absence from the Imperial

Chapel. The opera season 1830-1831 was unusually brilliant at Milan, and

the two friends heard Grisi, Pasta, Rubini, Galli and Orlandi. Their

greatest experience came at the end of the season, when Bellini's "La

Sonnambula" was mounted for the first time, "Pasta and Rubini singing

their very best in order to uphold their favourite _maestro_." "We, in

our box," continues Glinka, "shed torrents of tears--tears of emotion

and enthusiasm." But still more important to his appreciation of vocal

music was his acquaintance in Naples with Nozzari and Fodor-Mainville.

Ivanov studied with both masters, and Glinka was permitted to be present

at his lessons. Nozzari had already retired from the stage, but his

voice was still in its fullest beauty. His compass was two octaves, from

B to B, and his scale so perfect that Glinka says it could only be

compared to Field's scale upon the piano. Under the influence of Italian

music, he wrote at this time a few piano pieces and two songs to Russian

words. His setting of Koslov's "Venetian Night" was merely an echo of

his surroundings; "The Victor," music to Joukovsky's words, showed more

promise of originality, and here we find for the first time the use of

the plagal cadence which he employed so effectively in _A Life for the

Tsar_.

During the third year of his visit, he felt a conviction that he was

moving on the wrong track, and that there was a certain insincerity in

all that he was attempting. "It cost me some pains to counterfeit the

Italian _sentimento brilliante_," he says. "I, a dweller in the North,

felt quite differently (from the children of the sunny South); with us,

things either make no impression at all, or they sink deep into the

soul; it is either a frenzy of joy or bitter tears." These reflections,

joined to an acute fit of homesickness, led to his decision to return to

Russia. After a few pleasant days spent in Vienna, he travelled direct

to Berlin, where he hoped to make up some of the deficiencies of his

Italian visit with the assistance of the well-known theorist Siegfried

Dehn.

Dehn saw at once that his pupil was gifted with genius, but impatient of

drudgery. He gave himself the trouble to devise a short cut to the

essentials of musical theory. In five months he succeeded in giving

Glinka a bird's-eye view of harmony and counterpoint, fugue and

instrumentation; the whole course being concentrated into four small

exercise books. "There is no doubt," writes Glinka, "that I owe more to

Dehn than to any of my masters. He not only put my musical knowledge

into order but also my ideas on art in general, and after his lessons I

no longer groped my way along, but worked with the full consciousness of

what I was doing."

While studying with Dehn, he still found time for composition, and it is

noticeable that what he wrote at this time is by no means Germanised

music. Two songs, "The Rustling Oak," words by Joukovsky, and Delvig's

poem, "Say not that love has fled," the Variations for piano on

Alabiev's "Nightingale," and outlines of the melody for the Orphan's

Song "When they slew my mother," afterwards used in a _Life for the

Tsar_, besides a sketch for one of the chief themes in the overture of

the opera, all tend to prove that he was now deeply preoccupied with the

expression of national sentiment in music.

In April 1834 his profitable studies with Dehn were cut short by the

death of his father, which necessitated his immediate return to Russia.

Stassov sums up the results of this period abroad in the words: "Glinka

left us a _dilettante_ and returned a _maestro_."

CHAPTER IV

GLINKA'S OPERAS