Taras Bulba (opera)
Encyclopedia
Taras Bulba is an opera
in four acts by the Ukrainian
composer Mykola Lysenko
. The libretto
was written by Mykhailo Starytsky (the composer's cousin) after the novel Taras Bulba
by Nikolai Gogol
. The opera, which was unrevised at the time of the composer's death in 1912, was first performed in 1924. Present-day performances are however based on thorough revisions, affecting the text, the music and the orchestration, carried out in the 1930s and 1950s.
leader Vovgura Lys, so the story may have had a special significance to him. Shortly after completing it he played the score to Tchaikovsky, who reportedly "listened to the whole opera with rapt attention, from time to time voicing approval and admiration. He particularly liked the passages in which national,Ukrainian, touches were most vivid...Tchaikovsky embraced Lysenko and congratulated him on his talented composition."
The history of the present form of the opera is complex. A piano score was published in 1913, but much of the composer's original orchestration
was lost. The prelude to the fourth act was first given at a concert in Kiev under the baton of Reinhold Glière
in 1914. The first performance of the full opera took place in 1924 in Kharkiv
. Although this was unsuccessful, other better received productions were carried out in Kiev
(1927) and Tbilisi
, (1930), which generated the idea of a revision of the work. This was carried out in 1937 by Maksym Rylsky
(text), Lysenko's pupil Levko Revutsky
(music), and Boris Lyatoshinsky (orchestration), and performed in Moscow
. This version in turn met with the criticism that it had departed too far from Lysenko's intentions. It was not until after World War II
that the same trio produced the present-day performing version, which was premiered in Kiev in 1955. The opera remains in the repertory of the Kiev Opera House, which has also performed the opera abroad in Wiesbaden
(1982), Dresden
(1987) and Zagreb
(1988). The opera house traditionally performs the opera at the end of each operatic season in Kiev.
The work's structural defects may to a large extent be a consequence of its history, and to the fact that the composer was never able to adjust the work after hearing it in performance. The opera marks a great advance on the composer's earlier works such as Natalka Poltavka
and Utomlena with its folklore
and nationalistic
elements being much more closely integrated in a continuous musical framework which also clearly shows a debt to Tchaikovsky. But the episodic nature of the libretto (which may be due to some extent to political considerations during its revision in the Soviet
era) is a serious problem. There are extensive non-narrative excursions for dances and patriotic marches and choruses; Kudryiaha is chosen to lead the Cossacks in a long scene in Act III and then vanishes from the rest of the opera; there is no attempt to balance the historical events with the story of Andriy and Maryltsya (which is effectively entirely squeezed into the antipenultimate scene); the absence of emotional or musical transition from the death of Andriy to the triumphalist conquest of Dubno (the final scene, which involves no singing) is evident and uncomfortable.
Amongst those who have successfully taken the role of Taras is the Ukrainian singer Boris Gmyrya
, who also featured in a recording of the opera.
, in the 17th century, at a time when Poland
sought supremacy in the region. This synopsis is based on the present (1955) performing version.
, whose servants disperse a crowd listening to the song of a kobzar
(Ukrainian bard). Taras Bulba leaves his sons Ostap and Andriy at the monastery to be educated. Andriy has already been impressed by a Polish girl he has seen (who turns out to be Maryltsya, daughter of the Polish governor of Dubno). Ostap encourages the kobzar to sing a patriotic song; this angers the Poles, and in a scuffle the bard is killed.
stronghold, so as to participate in the struggles. Nastya collapses.
, Kyrdiaha, to lead them. He declares his intention to go in to battle.
from the castle, and Taras kills his own son for his treason. Ostap's feelings are torn and he sings a lament for his brother.
This ending significantly differs from Gogol's original in which first Ostap and then Taras are captured by the Poles and given cruel public executions. Many other significant features of the novel - notably the equivocal behaviour of Taras and the Cossacks to local Jews
- are also omitted (see article Taras Bulba
).
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 by the Ukrainian
Ukrainians
Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
composer Mykola Lysenko
Mykola Lysenko
Mykola Vitaliiovych Lysenko was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor and ethnomusicologist.- Biography :Lysenko was born in Hrynky, Kremenchuk Povit, Poltava Governorate, the son of Vitaliy Romanovich Lysenko . From childhood he became very interested in the folksongs of Ukrainian peasants and...
. 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 written by Mykhailo Starytsky (the composer's cousin) after the novel Taras Bulba
Taras Bulba
Taras Bulba is a romanticized historical novel by Nikolai Gogol. It tells the story of an old Zaporozhian Cossack, Taras Bulba, and his two sons, Andriy and Ostap. Taras’ sons studied at the Kiev Academy and return home...
by Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
. The opera, which was unrevised at the time of the composer's death in 1912, was first performed in 1924. Present-day performances are however based on thorough revisions, affecting the text, the music and the orchestration, carried out in the 1930s and 1950s.
Performance history
Lysenko worked on Taras Bulba during 1880-1891 but it was probably his insistence on the use of Ukrainian for performance that prevented any productions during his lifetime. Lysenko was reputedly a descendant of the 17th century CossackCossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
leader Vovgura Lys, so the story may have had a special significance to him. Shortly after completing it he played the score to Tchaikovsky, who reportedly "listened to the whole opera with rapt attention, from time to time voicing approval and admiration. He particularly liked the passages in which national,Ukrainian, touches were most vivid...Tchaikovsky embraced Lysenko and congratulated him on his talented composition."
The history of the present form of the opera is complex. A piano score was published in 1913, but much of the composer's original orchestration
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
was lost. The prelude to the fourth act was first given at a concert in Kiev under the baton of Reinhold Glière
Reinhold Glière
Reinhold Moritzevich Glière was a Russian and Soviet composer of German–Polish descent.- Biography :Glière was born in Kiev, Ukraine...
in 1914. The first performance of the full opera took place in 1924 in Kharkiv
Kharkiv
Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...
. Although this was unsuccessful, other better received productions were carried out in Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
(1927) and Tbilisi
Tbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
, (1930), which generated the idea of a revision of the work. This was carried out in 1937 by Maksym Rylsky
Maksym Rylsky
Maksym Tadeyovych Rylsky was a Ukrainian poet.He began writing as a representative of 'pure art' doctrine, during the Stalinist years adopted the official doctrine of 'socialist realism' . In 1937 he was involved in rewriting the libretto of Mykola Lysenko's opera, Taras Bulba...
(text), Lysenko's pupil Levko Revutsky
Levko Revutsky
Levko Mykolajovych Revutskyi was a Ukrainian composer, teacher, and activist. Amongst his students at the Lysenko Music Institute were the composers Arkady Filippenko and Valentin Silvestrov.-Early life and education:...
(music), and Boris Lyatoshinsky (orchestration), and performed in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. This version in turn met with the criticism that it had departed too far from Lysenko's intentions. It was not until after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
that the same trio produced the present-day performing version, which was premiered in Kiev in 1955. The opera remains in the repertory of the Kiev Opera House, which has also performed the opera abroad in Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
(1982), Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
(1987) and Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
(1988). The opera house traditionally performs the opera at the end of each operatic season in Kiev.
The work's structural defects may to a large extent be a consequence of its history, and to the fact that the composer was never able to adjust the work after hearing it in performance. The opera marks a great advance on the composer's earlier works such as Natalka Poltavka
Natalka Poltavka (opera)
Natalka Poltavka is an opera in three acts by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko, based on the play Natalka Poltavka by Ivan Kotlyarevsky, first performed in 1889.-Background:...
and Utomlena with its folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
and nationalistic
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
elements being much more closely integrated in a continuous musical framework which also clearly shows a debt to Tchaikovsky. But the episodic nature of the libretto (which may be due to some extent to political considerations during its revision in the Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
era) is a serious problem. There are extensive non-narrative excursions for dances and patriotic marches and choruses; Kudryiaha is chosen to lead the Cossacks in a long scene in Act III and then vanishes from the rest of the opera; there is no attempt to balance the historical events with the story of Andriy and Maryltsya (which is effectively entirely squeezed into the antipenultimate scene); the absence of emotional or musical transition from the death of Andriy to the triumphalist conquest of Dubno (the final scene, which involves no singing) is evident and uncomfortable.
Amongst those who have successfully taken the role of Taras is the Ukrainian singer Boris Gmyrya
Boris Gmyrya
Boris Romanovich Gmyrya was a Soviet basso cantante singer of opera and art song.During World War II, he stayed in Nazi-occupied Poltava where he performed for the Germans. This kind of behavior was considered to be collaboration with enemy by the Soviet authorities, and Gmyrya would be...
, who also featured in a recording of the opera.
Roles
| Role | Voice type | |
|---|---|---|
| Taras Bulba | bass Bass (voice type) A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C... |
|
| Ostap, his son | baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or... |
|
| Andriy, his son | tenor | |
| Nastya, his wife | contralto Contralto Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above... |
|
| Maryltsya, daughter of the Polish governor of Dubno | soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody... |
|
| Governor | bass | |
| Kobzar | tenor | |
| Chorus: citizens, Cossacks, etc | ||
Synopsis
The opera is set in Kiev, Taras's village in Ukraine, the Zaporozhian Sich, and DubnoDubno
Dubno is a city located on the Ikva River in the Rivne Oblast of western Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of Dubno Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast...
, in the 17th century, at a time when Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
sought supremacy in the region. This synopsis is based on the present (1955) performing version.
Act I
The opera is preceded by an orchestral overture. It opens in Kiev,which is occupied by the Polish szlachtaSzlachta
The szlachta was a legally privileged noble class with origins in the Kingdom of Poland. It gained considerable institutional privileges during the 1333-1370 reign of Casimir the Great. In 1413, following a series of tentative personal unions between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of...
, whose servants disperse a crowd listening to the song of a kobzar
Kobzar
A Kobzar was an itinerant Ukrainian bard who sang to his own accompaniment.-Tradition:Kobzars were often blind, and became predominantly so by the 1800s...
(Ukrainian bard). Taras Bulba leaves his sons Ostap and Andriy at the monastery to be educated. Andriy has already been impressed by a Polish girl he has seen (who turns out to be Maryltsya, daughter of the Polish governor of Dubno). Ostap encourages the kobzar to sing a patriotic song; this angers the Poles, and in a scuffle the bard is killed.
Act II
Taras's village. Ostap and Andriy return from Kiev and greet their mother Nastya. Bulba's friend Tovkach tells of the war being unleashed throughout Ukraine by the Poles. Despite his wife's protestations, Taras determines to take his sons to the Sich, the CossackCossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
stronghold, so as to participate in the struggles. Nastya collapses.
Act III
The Sich. Taras successfully encourages the idle residents to rouse themselves for battle. Andriy and Ostap look forward to this; when Andriy has brief forebodings, Ostap promises always to support him. Drumbeats sumon a council (rada) of the Cossacks; with Taras's support, they elect a new, more pugnacious hetmanHetman
Hetman was the title of the second-highest military commander in 15th- to 18th-century Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which together, from 1569 to 1795, comprised the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or Rzeczpospolita....
, Kyrdiaha, to lead them. He declares his intention to go in to battle.
Scene 1
The Cossack camp. The Cossacks are besieging Dubno, where Maryltsya's father is governor. She has sent her Tatar maid to find Andriy, and to beg his help as the inhabitants are suffering from starvation. Andriy agrees to help and, with the maid, takes food into the town through a secret passage.Scene 2
Inside the castle. Andriy and Maryltsya express their love for each other. Andriy asks the Governor for her hand; the szlachta object on class grounds. On the advice of his priest, the Governor considers it expedient to allow Andriy to marry , and appoints him a Colonel in the Polish Army.Scene 3
The Cossack camp. Taras hears news that the Tatars have destroyed the Sich. Then an escaping prisoner tells him of Andriy's desertion. Troops under Andriy make a sortieSortie
Sortie is a term for deployment or dispatch of one military unit, be it an aircraft, ship, or troops from a strongpoint. The sortie, whether by one or more aircraft or vessels, usually has a specific mission....
from the castle, and Taras kills his own son for his treason. Ostap's feelings are torn and he sings a lament for his brother.
Scene 4
In a purely orchestral scene Taras and Ostap lead the Cossacks to victory against the Poles and take over the town of Dubno.This ending significantly differs from Gogol's original in which first Ostap and then Taras are captured by the Poles and given cruel public executions. Many other significant features of the novel - notably the equivocal behaviour of Taras and the Cossacks to local Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
- are also omitted (see article Taras Bulba
Taras Bulba
Taras Bulba is a romanticized historical novel by Nikolai Gogol. It tells the story of an old Zaporozhian Cossack, Taras Bulba, and his two sons, Andriy and Ostap. Taras’ sons studied at the Kiev Academy and return home...
).
Sources
- Oxford Music Online, Lysenko, Mykola and Ukraine