Teacher's Guide Cambridge Pre-U MUSIC Available for teaching ...

Cambridge Pre-U Teacher Guide
title, Cherevichki (The Slippers), and believed that it would find a permanent place in the repertoire.
Eugene Onegin (1878) was based on a poetic novel by Pushkin and became a huge success when the
Imperial Opera produced it in 1884 (the première had been given by the Moscow Conservatory in
1879). The Maid of Orleans (1879, revised 1882) was based on a play by Schiller about Joan of Arc,
while the libretto of Mazepa (1883) was derived from a poem by Pushkin. The Enchantress (1887)
contains much excellent music but is let down by a weak plot. The Queen of Spades (1890), based
largely on a short horror story by Pushkin, is both musically and dramatically among Tchaikovsky’s
most intense works and has become one of his best known. His last opera, Iolanta (1891), is a brief
piece in one act, which was commissioned by the Imperial Theatre to form a double bill with The
Nutcracker (though the ballet has by now completely eclipsed it in fame and popularity).
For the sake of completeness, three further composers also wrote operas that were successful in their
day and which are still occasionally performed in Russia. Eduard Nápravník (1839–1916), though
Czech by birth, spent most of his career in Russia, where he joined the staff of the Mariinsky Theatre
in 1863, becoming chief conductor in 1869. He directed the first performances of more than eighty
operas, including works by Tchaikovsky, Dargomyzhsky, Mussorgsky, Cui, Rubinstein and Rimsky-
Korsakov. His own four operas were Nizhegorodtsï (1869), Harold (1886), Dubrovsky (1895) to a
libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky based on Pushkin, and Francesca da Rimini (1902). Sergei Taneyev
(1856–1915) was a pupil of Tchaikovsky at the Moscow Conservatory. He composed mainly chamber
music, chamber music and songs, but wrote one opera, The Oresteia (1895), a ‘musical trilogy’ based
on Aeschylus. Anton Arensky (1861–1906) was a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov. As professor of harmony
and counterpoint at the Moscow Conservatory he taught Rachmaninov, Skryabin and Glier. He
composed three operas: A Dream on the Volga (1888), Raphael (1894), and Nal and Damayanti (1903),
of which the first was the most successful.
Bohemia
As part of the Hapsburg Empire, Bohemia had been under Austrian rule since 1526. The language
of government and of the ruling classes was German, and use of the Czech language was actively
discouraged. In the mid-nineteenth century there was a gradual move for independence and a
distinctively Czech style of music emerged as a significant factor in the assertion of a Bohemian
national identity.
There had been no systematic attempt to compose operas with libretti in Czech before those of
Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884), who occupies a position in Czech music comparable to Glinka’s in
Russia. The impetus for his first opera, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia (1863), was the opening
of the Provisional Theatre in Prague in 1862. As its name suggests, this theatre was intended as a
temporary home for Czech opera until a permanent national theatre could be established. Smetana
became the musical director of the Provisional Theatre in 1866, a post he held for eight years until
deafness prevented him from continuing. His second opera, The Bartered Bride (1866, revised
1870) was produced there in 1866 in its original version with spoken dialogue; the revision, with the
dialogue set to music, was first performed in 1870. It took a long time before The Bartered Bride
achieved the overwhelming popularity it now enjoys, but it has come to be seen as the embodiment
of the Czech spirit, with music derived from traditional dances (furiant, polka) and a setting in a village
among ordinary people. Smetana’s next opera, Dalibor (1867, revised 1870) was less successful. It
has an historical setting in Prague during the fifteenth century, but its libretto had been translated
from German and Smetana was accused of abandoning his quest for nationalism by writing music
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