Iolanthe, a lyric opera in one act, was Tchaikovsky’s last production for the stage. It was first given in St. Petersburg in December, 1893, shortly after the composer’s death. “In Iolanthe,” says Cheshikin, “Tchaikovsky has added one more tender and inspired creation to his gallery of female portraits ... a figure reminding us at once of Desdemona and Ophelia.” The music of Iolanthe is not strong, but it is pervaded by an atmosphere of tender and inconsolable sadness; by something which seems a faint and weak echo of the profoundly emotional note sounded in the “Pathetic” Symphony.
We may sum up Tchaikovsky’s operatic development as follows: Beginning with conventional Italian forms in The Oprichnik he passed in Cherevichek to more modern methods, to the use of melodic recitative and ariosos; while Eugene Oniegin shows a combination of both these styles. This first operatic period is purely lyrical. Afterwards, in The Maid of Orleans, Mazeppa, and Charodeika, he passed through a second period of dramatic tendency. With Pique-Dame he reaches perhaps the height of his operatic development; but this work is the solitary example of a third period which we may characterise as lyrico-dramatic. In Iolanthe he shows a tendency to return to simple lyrical forms.
From the outset of his career he was equally attracted to the dramatic and symphonic elements in music. Of the two, opera had perhaps the greater attraction for him. The very intensity of its fascination seems to have stood in the way of his complete success. Once bitten by an operatic idea, he went blindly and uncritically forward, believing in his subject, in the quality of his work, and in its ultimate triumph, with that kind of undiscerning optimism to which the normally pessimistic sometimes fall unaccountable victims. The history of his operas repeats itself: a passion for some particular subject, feverish haste to embody his ideas; certainty of success; then disenchantment, self-criticism, and the hankering to remake and remodel which pursued him through life.
Only a few of Tchaikovsky’s operas seem able to stand the test of time. Eugene Oniegin and The Queen of Spades achieved popular success, and The Oprichnik and Mazeppa have kept their places in the repertory of the opera houses in St. Petersburg and in the provinces; but the rest must be reckoned more or less as failures. Considering Tchaikovsky’s reputation, and the fact that his operas were never allowed to languish in obscurity, but were all brought out under the most favourable circumstances, there must be some reason for this luke-warm attitude on the part of the public, of which he himself was often painfully aware. The choice of subjects may have had something to do with this; for the books of The Oprichnik and Mazeppa, though dramatic, are exceedingly lugubrious. But Polonsky’s charming text to Cherevichek should at least have pleased a Russian audience.
I find another reason for the comparative failure of so many of Tchaikovsky’s operas. It was not so much that the subjects in themselves were poor, as that they did not always suit the temperament of the composer; and he rarely took this fact sufficiently into consideration. Tchaikovsky’s outlook was essentially subjective, individual, particular. He himself knew very well what was requisite for the creation of a great and effective opera: “breadth, simplicity, and an eye to decorative effect,” as he says in a letter to Nadejda von Meck. But it was exactly in these qualities, which would have enabled him to treat such subjects as The Oprichnik, The Maid of Orleans, and Mazeppa, with greater power and freedom, that Tchaikovsky was lacking. In all these operas there are beautiful moments; but they are almost invariably the moments in which individual emotion is worked up to intensely subjective expression, or phases of elegiac sentiment in which his own temperament could have full play.
Tchaikovsky had great difficulty in escaping from his intensely emotional personality, and in viewing life through any eyes but his own. He reminds us of one of those actors who, with all their power of touching our hearts, never thoroughly conceal themselves under the part they are acting. Opera, above all, cannot be “a one-man piece.” For its successful realisation it demands breadth of conception, variety of sentiment and sympathy, powers of subtle adaptability to all kinds of situations and emotions other than our own. In short, opera is the one form of musical art in which the objective outlook is indispensable. Whereas in lyric poetry self-revelation is a virtue; in the drama self-restraint and breadth of view are absolute conditions of greatness and success. We find the man reflected in Shakespeare’s sonnets, but humanity in his plays. Tchaikovsky’s nature was undoubtedly too emotional and self-centred for dramatic uses. To say this, is not to deny his genius; it is merely an attempt to show its qualities and its limitations. Tchaikovsky had genius, as Shelley, as Byron, as Heine, as Lermontov had genius; not as Shakespeare, as Goethe, as Wagner had it. As Byron could never have conceived “Julius Cæsar” or “Twelfth Night,” so Tchaikovsky could never have composed such an opera as “Die Meistersinger.” Of Tchaikovsky’s operas, the examples which seem destined to live longest are those into which he was able, by the nature of their literary contents, to infuse most of his exclusive temperament and lyrical inspiration.
CHAPTER XIV
CONCLUSION
ALTHOUGH I have now passed in review the leading representatives of Russian opera, my work would be incomplete if I omitted to mention some of the many talented composers—the minor poets of music—who have contributed works, often of great value and originality, to the repertories of the Imperial Theatres and private opera companies in Russia. To make a just and judicious selection is no easy task, for there is an immense increase in the number of composers as compared to five-and-twenty years ago, and the general level of technical culture has steadily risen with the multiplication of provincial opera houses, schools, and orchestras. If we cannot now discern such a galaxy of native geniuses as Russia possessed in the second half of the nineteenth century, we observe at least a very widespread and lively activity in the musical life of the present day. The tendency to work in schools or groups seems to be dying out, and the art of the younger musicians shows a diffusion of influences, and a variety of expression, which make the classification of contemporary composers a matter of considerable difficulty.
In point of seniority, Edward Franzovich Napravnik has probably the first claim on our attention. Born August 12/26, 1839, at Beisht, near Königgratz, in Bohemia, he came to St. Petersburg in 1861 as director of Prince Youssipov’s private orchestra. In 1863 he was appointed organist to the Imperial Theatres, and assistant to Liadov, who was then first conductor at the opera. In consequence of the latter’s serious illness in 1869, Napravnik was appointed his successor and has held this important post for over fifty years. He came into power at a time when native opera was sadly neglected, and it is to his credit that he continued his predecessor’s work of reparation with tact and zeal. The repertory of the Maryinsky Theatre, the home of Russian Opera in St. Petersburg, has been largely compiled on his advice, and although some national operas may have been unduly ignored, Napravnik has effected a steady improvement on the past. Memorable performances of Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar; of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Oniegin, The Oprichnik, and The Queen of Spades; and of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas, both of his early and late period, have distinguished his reign as a conductor. Under his command the orchestra of the Imperial Opera has come to be regarded as one of the finest and best disciplined in the world. He has also worked indefatigably to raise the social and cultural condition of the musicians.
As a composer Napravnik is not strikingly original. His music has the faults and the qualities generally found side by side in the creative works of men who follow the conductor’s vocation. His operas, as might be expected from so experienced a musician, are solidly constructed, written with due consideration for the powers of the soloists, and effective as regards the use of choral masses. On the other hand, they contain much that is purely imitative, and flashes of the highest musical inspiration come at long intervals. His first opera, The Citizens of Nijny-Novgorod,[50] was produced at the Maryinsky Theatre in 1868. The libretto by N. Kalashnikov deals with an episode from the same stirring period in Russian history as that of A Life for the Tsar, when Minin, the heroic butcher of Nijny-Novgorod, gathered together his fellow townsfolk and marched with the Boyard Pojarsky to the defence of Moscow. The national sentiment as expressed in Napravnik’s music seems cold and conventional as compared with that of Glinka or Moussorgsky. The choruses are often interesting, especially one in the church style, sung at the wedding of Kouratov and Olga—the hero and heroine of the opera—which, Cheshikin says, is based on a theme borrowed from Bortniansky, and very finely handled. On the whole, the work has suffered, because the nature of its subject brought it into competition with Glinka’s great patriotic opera. Tchaikovsky thought highly of it, and considered that it held the attention of the audience from first to last by reason of Napravnik’s masterly sense of climax; while he pronounced the orchestration to be brilliant, but never overpowering.