![]() “We see it as a psychological accessing of the feelings as opposed to a straightforward narrative,” he said. “In some sense it is part of a very longstanding tradition of a kind of moral panic about women being visited by someone where they might have an erotic experience,” Ms. The duet is a striking back-and-forth between the leading characters, even if the focus on feminine virtue is not the opera’s most novel element. They speak in long alternating speeches, an unusual form that inspired the final scene of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.” (Rubinstein’s melodic style was also an inspiration for that masterpiece by his student.) Particularly interesting is the final act, which largely consists of a long duet for the Demon and Tamara, in which her prized virtue is pitted against his salvation. But musically ‘Demon’ is one of the most popular Russian operas.”Ĭompared to the Five’s preference for declamation over melody, Rubinstein’s conservative taste for tunes, ensembles, dances and identifiable arias makes “Demon” highly accessible. “He actually preceded the Five, but because of bad publicity, he was kind of demoted in historiography. “Rubinstein is a composer we usually forget about,” Ms. (In the 20th century, Stravinsky spent decades trying to shed the label of “Russian composer.”) Rubinstein therefore doesn’t fit into the way we often discuss his country’s repertory. Germans and other Western Europeans are often said to write music that’s generic - in the best way - and universally accessible, while we evaluate Russian music based on its Russianness it is inextricably marked by its creators’ nationality. That national flavor is what the Five, who were all self-taught, wanted, and to some extent we still approach Russian music on their terms. “He was a patriot, but he was not an ethnic nationalist.” Unlike his younger competitors, Rubinstein “didn’t sport an eastward-looking definition of the Russian sensibility,” Mr. César Cui, another member of the Five (along with Mily Balakirev), would credit Rimsky-Korsakov with the first Russian symphony, even though Rubinstein had completed his first more than a decade earlier. ![]() They and their propagandist, the critic Vladimir Stasov, condemned Rubinstein in print. What to Rubinstein had been the professionalization of composition was for this group unwelcome Westernization. Rubinstein would have been more attracted to an international language of culture and audience that wasn’t simply an instrument of national assertion.”īut the generation of Russian composers that followed him, particularly the group known as the Five, or Mighty Handful (including Rimsky-Korsakov as well as Mussorgsky and Borodin), favored aggressively nationalistic music, grounded in folk inspiration. “He didn’t particularly believe in folk melody or folk rhythm as an inspiration. 643, 647.“His melodic and harmonic practices were from a Western point of view,” Mr. Les Curiosités esthétiques de Robert de Montesquiou. Ida Rubinstein: Une inconnue jadis célèbre. Bowlt in Russian Jewish Artists in a Century of Change, 1890–1990. "Art: Museum of French Art Opens." New York Times (January 20, 1931), p. "Museum of French Art: 'Romanticism to Surrealism'." New York Times (January 25, 1931), p. ![]() Portraiture: Examples at the French Museum and Elsewhere." New York Herald Tribune (January 25, 1931), p. "Un Rénovateur de la décoration théatrale: Léon Bakst (1866–1925)." La Revue de 'art 47 (February 1925), p. "Art in the Current Exhibitions of Paintings." New York Times (December 10, 1922), p. "Leon Bakst's Works at Private View." New York Times (December 6, 1922), p. 94, calls it the most recent portrait of Mme Rubinstein, in the collection of Comte Robert de Montesquiou. "Bakst, artificier, décorateur et portraitiste." La Renaissance de l'art français et des industries de luxe 2 (March 1919), ill. ![]()
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