Semyon Kotko
Opera in five acts (seven scenes)
Music Sergei Prokofiev
Libretto Sergei Prokofiev and Valentin Kataev after the novella I, Son of the Working People by Valentin Kataev Musical director and conductor Valery Gergiev Stage director Yury Alexandrov Set designer Semen Pastukh
Semyon Kotko was Sergei Prokofiev’s fifth opera, following Maddalena, The Gambler, The Love for Three Oranges and The Fiery Angel. Written twelve yearsafter The Fiery Angel, Semyon Kotko marked a major change in the thinking of thecomposer, who decided to write a work about civil war in the Ukraine, a Soviet opera on arevolutionary theme. Prokofiev, who had recently returned to Russia after having lived inEurope, seemed therefore to be doing exactly what was expected of him creating a heroic and uplifting opera acceptable to the authorities. The difference, however, was thatProkofiev was a musical genius, the innovative creator of his own artistic universerunning parallel to the real world.
With a naivety encountered only in true geniuses, Prokofiev sincerely believed he could write fine music to Valentin Kataev’s novella I, Son of the Working People, a bland Socialist Realist tale set in Ukrainian village during the German occupation of 1918. The composer thought that he could humanise the heroes of the revolutionary subject – a sailor with an accordion, a commissar in a leather jacket, a cunning peasant elder – and portray real live human beings. Funnily enough, Prokofiev’s lyrical talent andinimitable musical humour did in fact largely overcome the cliches of a Soviet novel ofthe 1930s, sometimes even raising them to truly Shakespearean heights.
The culmination of the opera, the scene of national calamity, recalls the grand romanticoperas of the nineteenth century, which often incorporated fires and executions on stage. When viewed in the light of subsequent history, however, the scale of Prokofiev’sinterpretation and feeling for the events of the civil war turns this romantically efficacious scene into an apocalyptic tableau. Semyon Kotko then becomes a uniquetestimony to the disastrous establishment of Soviet power in Russia and an eery prophecy of the events of the second World War.
Semyon Kotko was premiered at the Stanislavsky Theatre of Opera in Moscoe on 23 June 1940 (conductor Mikhail Zhikov, stage director Serafima Birman, set designer Alexander Tyshler). The opera was mounted for the first time at the Kirov Theatre on 11 June 1960 (conductor Sergei Yel’tsin, stage directors Georgy Tovstonogov and AlexanderKireev, set designer Semen Mandel’).
In the new production of Semyon Kotko at the Mariinsky Theatre, conductor ValeryGergiev, stage director Yury Alexandrov and set designer semen Pastukh offer a symbolical and generalised interpretation of Prokofiev’s opera. Semyon Kotko is above all aSoviet tragedy, the victims of which are both the Russian people and the great composerhimself.
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