Boris Godunov, the only project out of nine that Mussorgsky completed himself, has been cited as the great masterpiece of nineteenth-century Russian opera – with its thrilling crowd scenes, historic panorama and the chilling power of its principal character. Boris was unusual in having its chief male role written for a bass voice and for the ‘sung prose’ ...
1914–93 Bulgarian bass Christoff made his debut in Italy in La bohème (1946). He was most famous as Boris Godunov in the Rimsky-Korsakov version of the Mussorgsky opera. He made his US debut in San Francisco in 1956 in the same role. His Verdi roles included Philip II in the Giulini-Visconti Don Carlos at Covent Garden in 1958, and as ...
1914–93, Bulgarian As the leading Boris Godunov of his generation, Christoff benefited from his Russian mother’s insistence that he adopt her country’s culture. A difficult personality meant that controversy followed him throughout his life. Having sung with a church choir and local opera company in Bulgaria, Christoff emigrated to Italy in 1942 to pursue an operatic career. By ...
Glinka, the ‘father of Russian music’, was the first composer to forge a distinctively Russian style. Previously, during the reigns of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, music at the Imperial court had been directed by leading Italian opera composers such as Baldassare Galuppi (1706–85), Giovanni Paisiello (1740–1816) and Domenico ...
The 1860s saw a number of major reorganizations in European politics. Italy became a united country under the king of (former) Piedmont-Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II, in 1861 and its new national government tried to retain the kingdom’s liberal ideals, such as removing instances of operatic and intellectual censorship. However, Italy’s liberalism was not aspired to by other ...
Kátya belongs to the final decade of Janáček’s work and was inspired by his muse, Kamila Stösslova. She was the magnificent obsession who received a steady stream of letters from the composer up until his death, some of them confirming that Kátya was written for her. The opera was based on Ostrovsky’s drama The Storm, which concerns a ...
Composed: 1930–32 Premiered: 1934, Leningrad Libretto by the composer and Alexander Preys, after the short story by Nikolay Leskov Act I Katerina is married to Zinovy Ismailov. Despite his great wealth, she is bored. She has no children and Boris, her father-in-law, accuses her of being frigid. Zinovy has to go away on business. Boris makes ...
1799–1837, Russian Russian composers of the High Romantic era were able to enjoy a ready-made source of stories for operas in the works of Alexander Pushkin. His first success was the romantic poem Ruslan i Lyudmila (1820), which Glinka used for his opera of the same name, first performed in 1842. Pushkin produced not only poetry, but essays ...
(D’me’-tre Shus-ta-ko’vich) 1906–75 Russian composer Shostakovich was the first of his country’s composers to come to attention after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and since Stravinsky, Rachmaninov and (until the 1930s) Prokofiev were all living abroad, his early successes made him the great hope of Soviet music. He became associated with the Western-influenced modernist movement in the Soviet ...
1873–1938, Russian Almost entirely self-taught as a singer, Chaliapin began singing in Tbilisi and St Petersburg. He made a name for himself singing both Boris and Valaam from Modest Mussorgsky’s (1839–81) Boris Godunov (1874). Although best known for singing the Russian repertoire, Chaliapin performed in a wide range of operas, including those by Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) and ...
b. 1929 American composer Crumb studied with Boris Blacher (1903–75) and Ross Lee Finney (1906–97). A strong identification with the writer García Lorca is reflected in the surreal, otherworldly soundscapes he has composed (Ancient Voices of Children, 1970). To create these he used unusual performance instructions, such as playing woodwind instruments with thimbles. Crumb also has an inclination ...
1832–1906, Russian Ivan Melnikov, the Russian baritone, was best known for creating the role of Boris Godunov in Mussorgsky’s opera in 1869. Trained in Russia and Italy, Melnikov had made his debut at the Maryinsky Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg only two years earlier, as Riccardo in Bellini’s I puritani. Melnikov continued to sing at the ...
b. 1946 Spanish tenor Carreras was born and studied in Barcelona. He also made his professional debut there in 1970 as Ismaele in Nabucco. He made his London debut in 1971. In 1974 he appeared at Covent Garden as Alfredo in La traviata and at the New York Met as Cavaradossi in Tosca. Leukaemia halted his career for some time, ...
1839–81, Russian Modest Mussorgsky was born in to a family of aristocratic landowners – a status in life that afforded him both luxury and leisure. His musical talent was evident from an early age. Taught at first by his mother and his governess, Mussorgsky could play concertos by John Field (1782–1837) at the age of nine. At age 10 ...
(Mod-yest’ Moo-zôrk’-ske) 1839–81 Russian composer Mussorgsky was the most radical of the Russian composers known as ‘The Five’. Born to a land-owning family, he joined the army in 1856, where he encountered Borodin, then a military doctor, and Cui, who introduced him to Balakirev, with whom he studied. In 1858 he resigned to pursue a ...
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