Iolanta / Undine - Schedule, Program & Tickets
Iolanta / Undine
IOLANTA
Lyric Opera in one act (1892)
Music by Peter Ilitsch Tschaikowski
Libretto by Modest Tschaikowski
Opera in concert in Russian
UNDINE
Opern-Fragment (1869)
Music by Peter Ilitsch Tschaikowski
Libretto by Vladimir Sollogub
Opera in concert in Russian
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Undina and Iolanta as a double-header on one evening show the beginning and end of his operatic composition: The Undina fragment is what remains of Tchaikovsky’s second opera. It was written in 1869 in the hope that it would be performed at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre, but this hope was disappointed. Tchaikovsky liked the novella Undina by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué very much and started work with great enthusiasm, but the theatre rejected the opera by the as yet unknown young composer and Undina was never performed there. In 1870 Tchaikovsky was able to present parts of the work in a concert in Moscow, but still no one showed any interest in performing the whole opera. Giving up, the composer reworked passages from it for inclusion in other works such as his 2nd Symphony, the incidental music The Snow Maiden for Alexander Ostrovsky’s play of the same name, and Swan Lake. He afterwards destroyed the score, and only a few numbers are extant. But when Tchaikovsky wrote Iolanta he was at the height of his fame — and almost at the end of his life: this was to be his final opera. The one-act opera was very important to the composer: “I shall write music to make the world weep,” he announced as he set to work. Comparison of the two works reveals not only Tchaikovsky’s stylistic path as an opera composer; they share more than that: Both are fairy tales in which the female protagonist lacks something fundamental: with Undina it is her soul, with Iolanta the power of sight which in Modest Tchaikovsky’s libretto is clearly equated with knowledge of the world and of God. Both can only be helped by love. For Undina it all goes wrong, Huldbrand betrays her and she becomes a spring at his grave, but Iolanta is healed thanks to the sincere love of Count Vaudémont. Iolanta is therefore one of Tchaikovsky’s few stage works — along with The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker — with a happy ending, and therefore comes across as an unintentionally positive artistic reckoning of the composer’s life.
Subject to change.
Lyric Opera in one act (1892)
Music by Peter Ilitsch Tschaikowski
Libretto by Modest Tschaikowski
Opera in concert in Russian
UNDINE
Opern-Fragment (1869)
Music by Peter Ilitsch Tschaikowski
Libretto by Vladimir Sollogub
Opera in concert in Russian
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Undina and Iolanta as a double-header on one evening show the beginning and end of his operatic composition: The Undina fragment is what remains of Tchaikovsky’s second opera. It was written in 1869 in the hope that it would be performed at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre, but this hope was disappointed. Tchaikovsky liked the novella Undina by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué very much and started work with great enthusiasm, but the theatre rejected the opera by the as yet unknown young composer and Undina was never performed there. In 1870 Tchaikovsky was able to present parts of the work in a concert in Moscow, but still no one showed any interest in performing the whole opera. Giving up, the composer reworked passages from it for inclusion in other works such as his 2nd Symphony, the incidental music The Snow Maiden for Alexander Ostrovsky’s play of the same name, and Swan Lake. He afterwards destroyed the score, and only a few numbers are extant. But when Tchaikovsky wrote Iolanta he was at the height of his fame — and almost at the end of his life: this was to be his final opera. The one-act opera was very important to the composer: “I shall write music to make the world weep,” he announced as he set to work. Comparison of the two works reveals not only Tchaikovsky’s stylistic path as an opera composer; they share more than that: Both are fairy tales in which the female protagonist lacks something fundamental: with Undina it is her soul, with Iolanta the power of sight which in Modest Tchaikovsky’s libretto is clearly equated with knowledge of the world and of God. Both can only be helped by love. For Undina it all goes wrong, Huldbrand betrays her and she becomes a spring at his grave, but Iolanta is healed thanks to the sincere love of Count Vaudémont. Iolanta is therefore one of Tchaikovsky’s few stage works — along with The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker — with a happy ending, and therefore comes across as an unintentionally positive artistic reckoning of the composer’s life.
Subject to change.
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