Dream on the Volga is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 in four acts composed by Anton Arensky

Anton Arensky

Anton Stepanovich Arensky -Biography:Arensky was born in Novgorod, Russia. He was musically precocious and had composed a number of songs and piano pieces by the age of nine...

. The libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 was adapted by Arensky from Alexander Ostrovsky's melodrama Voyevoda. The opera premiered on January 2, 1891 at the Bolshoi Theatre

Bolshoi Theatre

The Bolshoi Theatre is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, designed by architect Joseph Bové, which holds performances of ballet and opera. The Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Opera are amongst the oldest and most renowned ballet and opera companies in the world...

 in Moscow with Arensky conducting.

Background

Dream on the Volga was Arensky's first opera. He began working on it while still a student in Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...

's composition class at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and finished it in 1890. Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...

, whose music also had a significant influence on Arensky, had twenty years earlier had adapted the Ostrovsky play as an opera, The Voyevoda. However, Tchaikovsky was so dissatisfied with his own version that he later destroyed the manuscript score. Arensky's version was a much closer adaptation of the play than Tchaikovsky's which had condensed Ostrovsky's original five acts down to three. Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother Modest

Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a Russian dramatist, opera librettist and translator.-Early life:Modest Ilyich was born in Alapayevsk, the younger brother of the future composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. He graduated from the School of Jurisprudence with a degree in law...

 that he had not been very impressed when Arensky had played him fragments of the opera in St. Petersburg, but after going through the completed score in the summer of 1890 and then after seeing the premiere, he was convinced that it was one of the best Russian operas. He considered the music "very elegant" but went on to say that if it had one defect it was "a certain monotony of method" which reminded him of Rimsky-Korsakov.

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

, a later student of Rimsky-Korsakov, recalled attending a performance of Dream on the Volga in St. Petersburg with him. Stravinsky claimed to have found the music dull, and that during a bass clarinet

Bass clarinet

The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...

 solo intended to evoke a sinister atmosphere, Rimsky-Korsakov loudly commented, "the noble bass clarinet should not be put to such ignominious use." However, the musicologist Richard Taruskin

Richard Taruskin

Richard Taruskin is an American-Russian musicologist, music historian, and critic who has written about the theory of performance, Russian music, fifteenth-century music, twentieth-century music, nationalism, the theory of modernism, and analysis. As a choral conductor he directed the Columbia...

 has cast doubt on the veracity of Stravinsky's anecdote, noting that the sole performance of the opera in St. Petersburg was in 1903, a time when it was unlikely that they were close enough to have been attending performances together. Taruskin also points out that Vasily Yastrebtsev wrote in his Reminiscences of Rimsky-Korsakov that one day in 1903 he had found the composer "leafing through Dream on the Volga and sincerely admiring many pages [...] 'Nowadays,' he said no one writes like this anymore; it smacks of something irretrievable.'"

Synopsis

The story revolves around an elderly Voyevoda (Provincial Governor) who falls in love with two young women and ruthlessly imprisons them. The first woman is married and the second is engaged to another man. After initial failed attempts by their partners to rescue them, the women are eventually freed when a new Voyevoda is appointed.

Recordings

There are no complete recordings of Dream on the Volga. However, its overture

Overture

Overture in music is the term originally applied to the instrumental introduction to an opera...

 can be heard on several recordings of Arensky's works including:

• Arensky: Symphony 2; Suite 3; Dream on the Volga Overture; Nal & Damayanti Prelude; Intermezzo – BBC Philharmonic
  BBC Philharmonic
  The BBC Philharmonic is a British broadcasting symphony orchestra based at Media City UK, Salford, England. It is one of five radio orchestras maintained by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The orchestra's primary concert venue is the Bridgewater Hall....
  
  , Vassily Sinaisky
  Vassily Sinaisky
  Vassily Serafimovich Sinaisky is a Russian conductor and pianist. He studied conducting with Ilya Musin at the Leningrad Conservatory and began his career as Assistant to Kirill Kondrashin at the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra...
  
   (conductor). Label: Chandos
  Chandos Records
  Chandos Records is an independent classical music recording company based in Colchester, Essex, in the United Kingdom, founded in 1979 by Brian Couzens.- Background :...
  
   10024
• Svetlanov Conducts Arensky, Vol 3 – Russian State Academic Symphony Orchestra
  State Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Russian Federation
  The State Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Russian Federation is a Russian orchestra based in Moscow...
  
  , Yevgeny Svetlanov (conductor). Label: Svetlanov Foundation 3

External links

• Complete score at the International Music Score Library Project
  International Music Score Library Project
  The International Music Score Library Project , also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle...