| Unit name | Russian Opera |
|---|---|
| Unit code | MUSI30102 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | H/6 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
| Unit director | Professor. Fairclough |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of Music |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This course will look at the various ways in which Russian opera developed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, reflecting changes attitudes to 'Russianness', questions of Russian history, Russian musical nationalism and both cultural and political trends. Beginning with the 'first' Russian opera, Glinka's Life for the Tsar, we will explore Musorgsky's imposing historical operas, with their vocal and orchestral innovations and fascination with Russian medieval history, Borodin's overtly nationalistic Prince Igor, Rimsky-Korsakov's sparkling fairy-tale operas and Tchaikovsky's passionate settings of Pushkin's Evgeny Onegin and Queen of Spades. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the 19th-century burden of Tsarist censorship was replaced by a far more interventionist arts policy, and operas after 1917 reveal a far more obvious political bias. Among the numerous Soviet operas composed, we will focus on just three: Shostakovich's two completed operas, The Nose and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Prokofiev's War and Peace.
