Soviet Сlassical Opera: Ideas and Realities

Ekaterina S. Vlasova
Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory (Moscow, Russia)
0000-0001-5600-9870
Abstract

The task of creating the Soviet classical opera had the highest priority in music in Stalin’s period. It was determined by prescriptive documents— acts of Central Committee of Russian national Bolshevist’s Communist Party and leading articles in the newspaper “Pravda”. The birth of the Soviet opera was supposed to become the indicator of efficiency of the national policy concerning music. Therefore, the Soviet government did everything for the fulfillment of this task including organization and financial support, which was permanently concentrated in the main theatrical and musical institute of the country— the Bolshoi Theater. The accomplished and non-accomplished opera projects and leading articles in the newspaper “Pravda”, which were dedicated to Soviet operas, are examined; the stereotypical signs of the Soviet opera genre in Stalin’s era are discovered. The conclusion is that the collapse of the project of “Soviet classical opera” resulted primarily in the fact that ideological motivations in the “Government opera order” finally dominated over the artistic criteria.

Keywords
Soviet classical opera
Stalin
the Bolshoi Theater
leading articles
newspaper “Pravda”
composers
money
premieres
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