The Opera “The Captain’s Daughter” by C.A. Cui and the Novel by A.S. Pushkin (Experience of the Libretto and Literary Source Comparative Analysis)

Main Article Content

Maria V. Kholodova
Eugenia D. Sementsova

Abstract

This article is part of a range of topical studies that are devoted to various issues of artistic interpretation of the literary source in a musical and scene piece. Multifold exploration of the libretto text gives a unique opportunity to penetrate into the composer’s creative laboratory, to comprehend his concept. The opera “The Captain’s Daughter” by C.A. Cui, composed in 1909 is an original phenomenon in the domestic theater of the early XX century. However, up to date, the composition of an outstanding representative of the New Russian School (as well as his musical and theatrical heritage as a whole) has not received a detailed understanding in musicology yet. The paper first presents a comparative analysis of the libretto of the opera “The Captain’s Daughter” and its literary source. The article considers main techniques of the composerʼs work with the text of the Pushkin novel, which include lexical and syntactic transformation, stopping, migration, composing. A rather careful attitude of C.A. Cui to the primary source was revealed that is embodied in preserving the main dramaturgical lines and collisions, despite numerous interventions in the literary original, including reduction, addition, displacement of semantic accents.
As the study showed, as a result, the composer created an original artistic interpretation that became the first experience of embodying the historical novel by A.S. Pushkin on the musical stage.


Keywords: the opera “The Captain’s Daughter”, C.A. Cui, A.S. Pushkin, libretto, dramaturgy.

Article Details

How to Cite
Kholodova М. В., & Sementsova Е. Д. (2023). The Opera “The Captain’s Daughter” by C.A. Cui and the Novel by A.S. Pushkin (Experience of the Libretto and Literary Source Comparative Analysis). Music Scholarship / Problemy Muzykal’noj Nauki, 51(2), 116–125. Retrieved from https://musicscholar.ru/index.php/PMN/article/view/1451
Section
Musical Theater
Author Biographies

Maria V. Kholodova, Hvorostovsky Siberian State Academy of Arts, Krasnoyarsk, Russia

PhD (Arts), Associate Professor

Eugenia D. Sementsova, Hvorostovsky Siberian State Academy of Arts, Krasnoyarsk, Russia

Student of Music History