Rachmaninoff

The chamber opera The Miserly Knight (to the text of one of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin’s Little Tragedies, 1905) was first performed at the Bolshoi Theatre on 11 January 1906 under the baton of the composer. Like Rachmaninoff’s two other operas, The Miserly Knight provoked great interest among the public and in music circles, but at the same time there were many arguments and disagreements in appraising it. In selecting the genre of so-called recitative opera to an original text by Pushkin (without arias, developed ensembles, choruses and other elements of traditional opera), the composer was continuing the line of Alexander Sergeyevich Dargomyzhsky’s The Stone Guest. Now it is difficult to agree with the opera’s critics who believed that Rachmaninoff had only succeeded with the instrumental part and that the orchestra eclipsed the vocal roles. Undeniably, the symphonic plan is highly developed in The Miserly Knight, and it is in the orchestral role that the all-round musical effect unfolds, parallel to the development of the plot. But it is in the vocal roles that not only the sense but also the expressiveness of Pushkin’s text unfolds and it is on the soloists, by and large, that opera audiences’ attention is focussed. Here one can speak of the composer’s many successes and discoveries. One clear example is the second scene of the opera (the Baron’s mono-scene). Throughout the entire scene, Rachmaninoff brilliantly maintains the audience’s interest, uncovering the sharply contrasting features of this character, the combination of gloomy magnificence (it is not by chance that here there are both textual and musical references to the image of Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov) and the maniacal passion for gold and riches that almost kills off all human emotions (even those of a father for his son).
The complexity of the artistic task the composer set himself also lies in the fact that Rachmaninoff was a lyricist, while there is no room in Pushkin’s tragedy for this, in the original source there are no distinctly positive characters, there is nothing lofty and nothing ideal. Albert, the Jewish moneylender, the Baron (who is also a money-lender!) and the Duke, apparently standing on the side lines – all of them are present in the gloomy world of Pushkin’s play, which became even more expressive thanks to Rachmaninoff’s music. The end of the third scene (and the whole opera), which concludes with the Baron’s death, does not bring a “brightening-up”, which provides yet a further justification to look at Rachmaninoff’s opera not just in the context of 19^th century Russian classical opera traditions, but also in terms of 20^th century opera aesthetics.
Vladimir Goryachikh

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff wrote the Spring cantata in 1902. Its premiere in St Petersburg took place in the hall of the Noble Assembly on 8 January 1905 with the participation of the Mariinsky Theatre Chorus (conducted by Alexander Ilyich Siloti). This work is unusual in many respects. Even Nekrasov’s poetry itself is unusual, forming the basis of the cantata in which the almost un-combinable is combined, where images of nature in wintertime and in springtime merge with the hero’s love drama (his wife’s infidelity, which almost results in a bloody denouement – a traditional melodramatic subject). But, however, unlike Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky’s play Don’t Live as You Want to but as God Commands (which forms the basis of Alexander Nikolayevich Serov’s opera The Power of the Fiend), with Nekrasov nature is not just a background for the unfolding drama. “Dishevelled winter” and the “winter blizzard song” in the hero’s mind become direct “co-conspirators” of the impending murder (predicting and even demanding its execution). Spring, with its anthem and Christian motifs of love, tolerance and forgiveness, however, is allotted a reconciliatory role at the close of the poetry. Vivid images of springtime nature are seen in their own right, as independent and existing almost outside the dramatic plot (“Rush-buzz Green Noise. Green Noise, spring noise!”).
In the music of Rachmaninoff’s Spring contrasting, even opposing elements are combined: the vivid, all-encompassing lyricism that comes from the composer’s romances, the highly vivid drama of the opera (the baritone solo has something in common with the Tale of the Old Man in Aleko), the rich orchestral sound that leads in the direction of Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov’s works (in particular The Snow Maiden), the generality of the cantata-oratorio genre (the chorus as a personality) and the open expressiveness of the soloist’s monologue (in which, at times, one can even sense the influence of Modest Petrovich Musorgsky). Rimsky-Korsakov, who submitted Spring for the Glinka Prize, believed the music in this work to be beautiful from the first note to the last. But he also made a remark about the unusual nature of the embodiment of the scene of spring and the springtime awakening of nature. And in actual fact, in this Rachmaninoff was unlike anyone else. Instead of the expected clarity of sound and warm, soft colours, the composer created a dense and intense fabric for the orchestra and chorus using a complex writing technique. But, as a result, a surprising integrity of both the image of spring and of the whole work emerges, as does an exact sense of the composer’s unique style.
Vladimir Goryachikh