The Russian Opera. Newmarch Rosa
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