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Vladimir Odoevskii as Opera Critic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

David Lowe
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Extract

The range of topics that Vladimir Odoevski treated in his fiction and journalistic pieces is impressive. His interests embraced what we today think of as the more or less discrete categories of the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. His acquaintances referred to him as “the Russian Faust.“ Included in his oeuvre is a substantial body of music criticism, and indeed, he may rightly be considered Russia's first music critic. Odoevskii's opera criticism, an admittedly narrow topic, is the subject of this article.

There is good reason for concentrating on Odoevskii's writings about opera. For the operaphile there is the vicarious pleasure (and occasional mortification) of sharing a musically literate listener's reactions to then contemporary or nearly contemporary masterpieces by Mozart, Gluck, Rossini, Bellini, Verdi, Wagner, and others. On a less visceral level, an acquaintance with Odoevskii's opera criticism enhances our overall appreciation of the broad patterns underlying Odoevskii's complete literary output as well as Russian cultural history in the nineteenth century.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , Summer 1982 , pp. 306 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1982

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References

1. Most of Odoevskii's writings on music are assembled in Odoevskii, V. F., Muzykal'no-literaturnoe nasledie, ed. G. B. Bernandt (Moscow, 1956Google Scholar) (hereafter cited as Nasledie). The pieces carefully excluded from this otherwise excellent anthology are those that concern Russian sacred music. Additional information on Odoevskii's opera criticism can be found in T. N., Livanova and V. V., Protopopov, Opernaia kritika v Rossii, vol. 1, fasc. 1 (Moscow, 1966Google Scholar). This superb work is marred only by the predictable tendentiousness required of Soviet scholars. I am greatly indebted to these two sources for much of the material covered in this article. Odoevskii is one of the few Russian belle lettrists to have been equally influential in the realms of literature and music. The only other such figure who comes readily to mind is Mikhail Kuzmin.

2. These works, all to be found in Odoevskii, Nasledie, include “K redaktoru ‘Vestnika Evropy'” (1822), “Vzgliad na Moskvu v 1824 godu” (1825), “Ital'ianskii teatr” (1825), “O muzyke v Moskve i o moskovskikh kontsertakh v 1825 godu” (1825), “Nemetskii teatr” (1833), “Pis'mo k liubiteliu muzyki ob opere g. Glinki: Ivan Susanin” (1836), “Novaia russkaia opera: Ivan Susanin” (1837), “O novoi stsene v opere Tvan Susanin'” (1837), “Eshche o predstavlenii ‘Normy'” (1837), “Oberon, opera Vebera” (1838), “Ruslan i Liudmila” (1842), “Zapiski dlia moego pravnuka o literature nashego vremeni i o prochem” (1842), “Prilozhenie k biografii M. I. Glinki” (1857), “Pis'mo k V. V. Stasovu o ‘Ruslane i Liudmile’ Glinki” (1858), “Lagrua v roli Donny Anny” (1859), “Vagner v Moskve” (1863), “Pervyi kontsert Vagnera v Moskve” (1863), “Rikhard Vagner i ego muzyka” (1863), “18-oe predstavlenie ‘Iudifi'” (1863), “Uslyshim li my operu Iudif v Moskve?” (1864), “Novaia pevitsa na stsene Moskovskoi opery” (1865), “Debiut g-zhi Aleksandrovoi v roli Antonidy” (1865), “Primechanie k pis'mu M. I. Glinki k V. F. Odoevskomu” (1866), “Russkaia ili ital'ianskaia opera?” (1867), “Rogneda i drugaia novaia opera Serova” (1868), “Sebastian Bakh” (1835), and “Pis'mo k E. Lagrua” (1860). Information about place of original publication and pseudonyms can be found in the notes to Odoevskii, Nasledie.

3. For the general background on the influence that German Romantic philosophy, particularly in its Schellingian formulation, exerted on Russian thought in the early nineteenth century, see Ralph Matlaw, “Introduction,” in Vladimir, Odoevsky, Russian Nights (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; Stammler, A, “Nachtwort,” in Wladimir Odojewskij, Russische Ndchte (Munich, 1970 Google Scholar); Martin, Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), especially pp. 69–98 Google Scholar; Alfred Rammelmeyer, “V. F. Odoevskij und seine ‘Russischen Nachte,'” in V. F. Odoevskii, Russkie nochi (Munich, 1967); Iu. V., Mann, Russkaia filosofskaia estetika (Moscow, 1969Google Scholar); Wsewolod, Setschkareff, Schellings Einfluss in der russischen Literatur der 20er und 30er Jahre des XIX. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1939Google Scholar); and the still classic Sakulin, P. N., Iz istorii russkogo idealizma (Moscow, 1913), especially vol. 1, part 1, pp. 103–324 Google Scholar.

4. See Sakulin, , Iz istorii, p. 174Google Scholar.

5. Cited in ibid., p. 168. Odoevskii's article “Opyt teorii iz'iashchnykh iskusstv” was also inspired by Schelling (see ibid., pp. 164-67). As both Sakulin and Setschkareff point out, in 1823 Odoevskii had not yet actually read Schelling (ibid., p. 132 and Setschkareff, Schellings Einfluss, p. 36). Nonetheless, he had heard and read a great deal about Schelling, and as Setschkareff suggests, even in later life Odoevskii did not move away from many of his early Schellingian notions (Setschkareff, Schellings Einfluss, p. 39).

6. “Lagrua v roli Donny Anny,” Nasledie, p. 247. The translation is my own, as are all subsequent translations.

7. Ibid., p. 247; emphasis in the original

8. “Russkaia ili ital'ianskaia opera,” ibid., p. 313.

9. Setschkareff, , Schellings Einfluss, p. 4Google Scholar. The Russian term for Geist is dukh.

10. “Uslyshim li my operu Iudif v Moskve?” Nasledie, pp. 287-89.

11. “Russkaia ili ital'ianskaia opera,” ibid., p. 313.

12. Cited in Sakulin, Iz istorii, p. 110.

13. “Dni dosad” was first published in Vestnik Evropy, 1823, nos. 9, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18. Extensive discussion of this story can be found in Livanova and Protopopov, Opernaia kritika, pp. 106-11 and in Sakulin, Iz istorii, pp. 199-213. The quotation adduced here is reproduced in Protopopov, Livanova and, Opernaia kritika, p. 109Google Scholar.

14. “O muzyke v Moskve i o moskovskikh kontsertakh v 1825 godu,” Nasledie, p. 98.

15. All of Schelling's early writings are permeated with polarities and parallels.

16. For a detailed but biased and overly sociological treatment of the “Mozart-Rossini” controversy, see Protopopov, Livanova and, Opernaia kritika, pp. 155–60Google Scholar.

17. A discussion of the interplay between the Rossini-Mozart polemic and Pushkin's Mozart and Salieri lies outside the scope of this article.

18. “Kontserty” (1837), Nasledie, p. 138.

19. Odoevskii first used the term in “Smes” ’ (1838), ibid., p. 161.

20. “Eshche o predstavlenii ‘Normy,'” ibid., pp. 149-50.

21. Odoevskii to E. Lagrua, ibid., pp. 510-11.

22. “Lagrua v roli Donny Army,” ibid., p. 243.

23. “Pervyi kontsert Vagnera v Moskve,” ibid., p. 257.

24. “18-oe predstavlenie Iudifi,” ibid., p. 286.

25. “Uslyshim li my operu Iudif v Moskve?” ibid., p. 287.

26. “Rogneda i drugaia novaia opera Serova,” ibid., p. 341.

27. “Primechanie k pis'mu M. I. Glinki k V. F. Odoevskomu,” ibid., p. 307.

28. Odoevskii, V. F., Russkie nochi (Leningrad, 1975), p. 127 Google Scholar.

29. “Russkaia ili ital'ianskaia opera,” Nasledie, p. 314.

30. See, for instance, Sakulin, , Iz istorii, p. 169Google Scholar.

31. See Odoevskii, , Russkie nochi, pp. 126–28Google Scholar.

32. “Russkaia ili ital'ianskaia opera,” Nasledie, p. 314; emphasis in the original.

33. “Ital'ianskii teatr,” ibid., pp. 92-95. Not all of Odoevskii's information about the background of the Don Juan legend is accurate, but Odoevskii was relying on then authoritative sources (see the notes to ibid., pp. 538-39).

34. “Nemetskii teatr,” ibid., p. 111.

35. See Vladimir, Markov, “Mozart: Theme and Variations,” in The Bitter Air of Exile, Simon Karlinsky and Alfred Appel, Jr., eds. (Berkeley, 1977), pp. 442–43 Google Scholar.

36. “Oberon,” Nasledie, p. 151; emphasis in the original.

37. “Pervyi kontsert Vagnera v Moskve,” ibid., p. 258.

38. “Rikhard Vagner i ego muzyka,” ibid., pp. 260-73.

39. See ibid., pp. 596-97.

40. “Prilozhenie k biografii M. I. Glinki,” ibid., pp. 230-32.

41. Ibid., pp. 230-32.

42. “Pis'mo k liubiteliu muzyki,” ibid., p. 119; emphasis in the original.

43. “Novaia russkaia opera: Ivan Susanin,” ibid., pp. 127-28; emphasis in the original.

44. “Zapiski dlia moego pravnuka,” ibid., p. 212.

45. “Uslyshim li my operu Iudif v Moskve?” ibid., p. 288.