May Night (Mayskaya noch')-Russian Romantic Opera

May Night (Mayskaya noch'), comic opera in 3 acts
Russian Romantic Opera
Composition Descriptionby John Palmer

Based on the story, Mayskaya noch', ili Utoplennitsa (May Night, or The Drowned Maiden), by Nickolay Vasil'yevich Gogol (1809 - 1852), Rimsky-Korsakov's Mayskaya noch (May Night) was written after he had recently completed two large collections of folk music. This, plus Rimsky's participation, with Balakirev and Lyadov, in the creation of an new edition of Glinka's economically orchestrated stage works, led to the streamlined score and folk song style his May Night. Gogol borrows from a German theme he came to know most likely through the Singspiel Das Donauweibchen (The Danube Wife) by Ferdinand Kauer, an Austrian composer. Composed in 1797, it was very popular in Russia in the 1830s as Lesta, or the Dnepr Water Nymph. Once he began work on May Night, Rimsky required eight months to complete the score. It received its premiere at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg on January 21, 1880, with the part of the Village Head sung by Fyodor Stravinsky, Igor Stravinsky's father.

Rimsky's rendition of Gogol's tale concerns Levko, a young Ukrainian man who is the son of the Village Head. Dressed as the devil, Levko plays a prank on his father, who refuses to let Levko marry Hanna, the woman he loves. Levko has an encounter with Pannochka-Rusalka and other water-nymphs, and helps Pannochka-Rusalka discover the identity of her evil stepmother. The nymph rewards Levko by helping him marry Hanna. With May Night, Rimsky took his first step into the combination of fantasy and comedy that would prove very fruitful. Rimsky adheres closely to Gogol's plot and succession of scenes, and the suggestion of folk song in the story sent Rimsky running to Alexander Rubets' 1872 folk song collection, from which Rimsky chose eight tunes. The first folk melody appears at the opening of the opera as children sing, "A mï proso seyali" (Ah the millet we did sow). Another tune from Rubets' collection provides the basis for Levko's first song. After Levko tells Hanna a story, offstage female voices sing a Whitsun song based on a Rubets melody. The second act begins with a tune from the same collection. In Act III leaves behind the "real" world and enter the realm of fantasy as Levko meets Pannochka-Rusalka on the banks of a lake. As in Sadko, Rimsky musically depicts this world through a chromatic idiom developed from whole-tone scales, octatonic scales, other "artificial" scales, and unusual harmonic gestures.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• opera
• alexandru
• popescu
• tenor
• Rimsky
• Korsakov
• Russian
• Romantic
• Opera

[rolandegauthierjr]

nice opera but the camera man making me motion sickness..

[JustinIsAlwaysWright]

Nice!