Ukraine: the Battle of Poltava

05 Tuesday Apr 2022

Posted by michelinewalker in Russia, Russian Literature, Russian Music, Ukraine, Ukraine War

Tags

Mazepa, Tchaikovsky, Ukraine, War in Ukraine

“Onwards Ukraine,” a mural in Paris by the street artist Seth. Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters

Vladimir Putin: a Dictator

It is horrific. The atrocities committed at Bucha qualify as a war crime, but although the world grieves, the world will not defend Ukraine. Ironically, our best defence, NATO and the European Union, have turned into weapons. What about the United Nations?

Vladimir Putin knows that nations will stand still for fear that he, Vladimir Putin, one man, will trigger a Third World War. Putin has allies in what President Biden has described as a fight between autocracy and democracy. But Putin leads the pack.

Now that Vladimir Putin has ceased to be a world leader to change into a “dictator,” he can no longer go anywhere except an international court of justice where he will be tried as a criminal. But who will take him there? Putin is surrounded by his military, and he is, in fact, part of the military.

Putin has betrayed his people. Russians are fleeing, and he has nearly destroyed Ukraine. He is turning Ukraine into a petite Russie, and former Soviet nations bordering the Adriatic Sea and the Baltic Sea could be attacked. Finland is afraid. It shares a border with Russia.

Mazepa and the Battle of Poltava

Ukrainians, however, are a nation and Ukraine is a country. They have heroes, perhaps the main one being the great Yvan Mazepa (Wikipedia).

Mazepa lost the Battle of Poltava to Russian emperor Peter the Great. It was the final battle. Mazepa also inspired other composers and writers, and a 1993 film features Mazepa.

Lord Byron – Mazeppa, poem (1818)
Alexander Pushkin – Poltava, poem (1828–1829)
Victor Hugo – Mazeppa, poem (1829)
Juliusz Słowacki – Mazeppa, drama (1840)
Franz Liszt – Mazeppa, symphonic poem (1851); Transcendental Étude No. 4.
Marie Grandval – Mazeppa, opera (1892)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Mazeppa, opera (1881–1883)
Michael William Balfe – The Page, cantata (1861)
Taras Shevchenko
Kondraty Ryleyev
A Ukrainian-language film by Yuri Ilyenko, loosely based on historical facts and called Молитва за гетьмана Мазепу (Molytva za hetmana Mazepu), was released in 2002.
The Italian composer Carlo Pedrotti wrote a tragic opera titled Mazeppa in 1861, on a libretto by Achille de Lauzières.

(See Mazepa, Wikipedia)

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The Art and Music of Russia (page)

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Tchaikovsky’s opera is on YouTube. It cannot be inserted in a post.

The Zaparozhye Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan *oil on canvas *358 × 203 cm *signed b.c.: И.Репин 1880-91

Pushkin, Bilibin, and Rimsky-Korsakov

24 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by michelinewalker in Russian Art, Russian Literature, Russian Music

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Alexander Pushkin, Ivan Bilibin, Mir iskusstva, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Operas, Programmatic Music, Sergei Diaghilev, The Five, The Tale of the Golden Cockerel, The Tale of Tsar Saltan

Tsar Dadon meets the Shemakha Queen by Ivan Bilibin (WikiArt.org)

The 19th century was the century of nationalism. The Brothers Grimm went from German-language land to German-language land to collect folklore, which they believe would help reveal distinct German roots. Germany had yet to unify and become the German Empire.

As for The Five, our Slavic composers, they attempted to express Eastern Russia. Music in Russia had been westernized since Peter the Great. The Five did not turn their back fully on classical harmony and counterpoint, but they started using whole-tone scales leading Western composers to create new scales.

The Programme

However, the “programme” remained to be established. In the 19^th century, several composers favoured “programmatic” music. Music had to tell a story. Despite his early death, in a duel, poet Alexandre Pushkin (1799-1837), wrote poems that were Russian fairy tales, whatever their origin. A nation acculturates folktales.

Our examples are Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas entitled The Tale of the Tsar Saltan, which premiered in 1900, and The Tale of the Golden Cockerel first completed in 1907 and premiere in 1909, with a set designed by Ivan Bilibin. Ivan Bilibin who had gained notoriety in 1899, when he published illustrations of Russian fairy tales, including The Tale of the Tsar Saltan and The Tale of the Golden Cockerel (Le Coq d’or). The Tale of the Golden Cockerel had Arabic roots, the Legend of the Arabian Astrologer. It had been retold by Washington Irving (The Tales of Alhambra), Friedrich Maximilian Klinger (Der goldene Hahn [1785]) and Russian fabulist Ivan Krylov (Kaib [1792]). Yet, it was Russian folklore. It had been acculturated.

“In turn, all of them borrowed from the ancient Copts legend first translated by the French Arabist Pierre Vattier in 1666 using the 1584 manuscript from the collection of Cardinal Mazarin.”

(See The Tale of the Golden Cockerel, Wiki2.org)

Ivan Bilibin had studied at the Anton Abže Art School in Munich and had been influenced by Art Nouveau and Japanese prints. But he also studied under Ilya Repin. However, he became interested in folklore. It was a magnet. He graduated from the Anton Abže Art School after publication of his illustrations of Russian fairy tales. He was associated with Mir iskusstva, an association and a magazine. Bilibin fled Russia, during the October Revolution in 1917. In 1925, he settled in Paris where he worked for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and decorated private mansions and Orthodox churches. But he was homesick. After decorating the Soviet Embassy, in 1936, he returned to Soviet Russia. He died of starvation during the Siege of Leningrad, in the land whose fairy tales he had illustrated.

Ivan Bilibin‘s 1909 stage set design for Act 2: The Tsardom of Tsar Dadon, Town Square (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Comments

At first, we associate The Tale of the Tsar Saltan and The Tale of the Golden Cockerel with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas. But operas are programmatic music or program music. So, the full dimension of the above-mentioned operas is not revealed until we know that their programmes were fairy tales written by legendary poet Alexander Pushkin. The libretto, in Russian and French, of The Tale of the Golden Cockerel, is by Vladimir Belsky.

As for Ivan Bilibin‘s delightful illustrations of Pushkin’s fairly, they are yet another lovely and universally enjoyable expression of a ‘distinct’ Russia.

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