Pan Voyevoda by N. A. Rimskii-Korsakov. To the Creative History of Opera

Abstract

In the N. A. Rimskii-Korsakov’s legacy there are operas that seem to be in the shadow of his great creations; among them is the opera Pan Voyevoda (1903) to a libretto by I. F. Tyumenev (without using any historical or literary source). The opera was the result of the composer’s long-cherished plan to create an opera on a Polish plot, so that in it “there would be no place for politics or national enmity”. Romantic events that took place in the 16th–17th centuries are presented in many respects in the traditional musical solution, which does not exclude the presence of bright dramatic situations, dramatic alignment, magnificent melodies, famous national dances. The surviving documents: letters, memoirs of both authors, as well as autographs of the libretto, clavier (partially) and scores from the archives of St Petersburg allow us to recreate the process of working on the work. The main time of work on the musical text was in the summer of 1902, when the composer left for Heidelberg to live with his son. The execution of several other creative works in parallel, including the re-interpretation of the Stone Guest by A. S. Dargomyzhsky, did not interfere with the active process of working on Pan Voyevoda. The first three acts of the four (the last act is very short) were written in less than three months, and during the winter and spring of 1903 N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov performed the orchestration. Musical autographs show how the work was carried out: the text of the libretto was clarified, sometimes expanded or shortened, the composition of the characters was determined, intonation and harmonic variants were introduced, the orchestration changed, and so on. The composer strenuously searched for optimal means of expression, creating a national color and a special “timeless aura” of Polish antiquity. It is no coincidence that the composer marked on the title page a dedication to the Memory of Frédéric Chopin.