Kirov Opera – Mazeppa

The world-renowned Kirov Opera led by Valery Gergiev returns for the second of ten annual visits funded by Alberto Vilar with two full-length operas by Tchaikovsky.

Mazeppa One of the great pillars of the Mariinsky repertoire, Tchaikovsky’s soaring Mazeppa depicts the legendary 17th-century Ukrainian separatist in both his political and romantic exploits. Taking inspiration from Pushkin’s epic poem Poltava, the opera follows the enigmatic yet aging military leader Mazeppa as he falls in love with Maria, the young daughter of Kochubey, a Cossack judge. Denied the judge’s blessing to marry, Mazeppa and Maria decide to elope, an action that compels Kochubey to reveal Mazeppa’s secret revolutionary plans—a plot to turn the Ukraine into an independent state—to Tsar Peter the Great. What follows is a climactic series of shocking betrayals, heart-pounding duels, and a tragic descent into madness, all set to Tchaikovsky’s glorious music. Tchaikovsky was a leading Russian composer of the late 19th century, whose works are notable for their melodic inspiration and their orchestration. He is regarded as the master composer for classical ballet, as demonstrated by his scores for Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and Sleeping Beauty. Among the most subjective of composers, Tchaikovsky is inseparable from his music. His work is a manifestation, sometimes charming, often showy, of repressed feelings that became more and more despairing in later years and were most fully expressed in his Sixth Symphony, one of the greatest symphonic works of its time. Though his later work rejected conscious Russian nationalism, its underlying sentiment and character are as distinctively Russian as that of the Russian nationalist composers. His success in bridging the gulf between the musician and the general public partly accounts for the position he enjoys in Russia, as well as throughout the world of music.

Photo: PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

No composer since Tchaikovsky has suffered more from changes of fashion or from the extremes of over- and under-valuation. He achieved an enormous popularity with a wide audience, largely through his more emotional works; but the almost hypnotic effect that he was able to induce led to serious questioning of his true musical quality. He is certainly the greatest master of the classical ballet. His last three symphonies are deservedly famous, and to these should be added the neglected Manfred Symphony, the First Piano Concerto and the Violin Concerto. Notable among his other orchestral works are the early Romeo and Juliet Overture and the exquisite Serenade for Strings. Of the operas, Eugene Onegin is a masterpiece and The Queen of Spades dramatically effective. His chamber music includes string quartets, solo piano music and many fine songs.

 

 
Photo: PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY

 

Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840, in Kamsko-Votkinsk, a small industrial town east of Moscow. His father was superintendent of government-owned mines, and his mother Alexandra was half French. Tchaikovsky was musically precocious, but his interest was not actively encouraged because his parents felt it had an unhealthy effect on an already neurotically excitable child. One night after a party, Alexandra found him awake, pointing to his forehead, and crying, "Oh this music, this music! Take it away! It's here and it won't let me sleep!" Pyotr's father played a great variety of music on his orchestrion, a rudimentary form of a record player. After hearing tunes from the opera Don Giovanni, Pyotr became a lifelong admirer of Mozart. His childhood piano teacher was Maria Palchikova, a freed serf, and within a year he was able to play better than she could. When his father moved to Moscow and then to St. Petersburg, the boy entered the School of Jurisprudence in 1850 and quickly passed through the school's upper divisions. When he was 14 years old, Tchaikovsky' mother died of cholera. Though his musical training was informal, the boy composed a waltz for piano in her memory. After graduation, Tchaikovsky entered the Ministry of Justice in St. Petersburg as civil servant, a class of workers that represented petty officialdom and oppression to ordinary Russians. Tchaikovsky was not naturally suited to such a job but he remained at the Ministry of Justice for four years, bored but dutiful. He continued playing the piano and going to concerts. He joined the Ministry's own choral group, and in 1861, he began to study musical theory under Nikolai Zaremba, the Head of the Russian Musical Society
The pianist and composer Anton Rubenstein, who became the first director of the new St. Petersburg Music Conservatory, was the first to see real signs of talent in Tchaikovsky. When he failed to get a promotion at the Ministry, Tchaikovsky resigned and entered the St. Petersburg Music Conservatory at the age of twenty-two. He supported himself by teaching music, learned to play organ and flute, and joined the Conservatory orchestra. Tchaikovsky's first orchestral score (1864), an overture based on Aleksandr Ostrovsky's melancholy play The Storm, is remarkable in that it shows many of the stylistic features that would later be associated with his music. Rubenstein, whose tastes were formed by earlier styles, was critical of the work; he had expected Tchaikovsky's composition to be dark and dreary, Tchaikovsky instead created a colorful, dramatic piece of "program music," including unusual instruments such as the harp, oboe, and tuba. Rubenstein was also critical of Tchaikovsky's graduation exercise, a cantata representing Schiller's Ode to Joy. The cantata was performed January 12, 1866, in the presence of a distinguished audience - but Tchaikovsky was too nervous to attend. Rubenstein threatened to withhold Tchaikovsky's diploma, but nobody could deny Pyotr's outstanding talent. In late 1865, Rubenstein's brother Nikolai, director of the newly established Moscow Conservatory offered Tchaikovsky a post as professor of harmony, five years of lodging and monetary support to Tchaikovsky.