Iosif Lapitsky and Mikhail Bikhter – Concerning the Story of Artistic Cooperation of the Opera Producer and the Conductor
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Abstract
On December 12, 1912 the Theater of Musical Drama opened up in St. Petersburg with a production of Piotr
Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.” Its creator, producer Iosif Lapitsky viewed the Theater of Musical Drama as a
foothold for opera reform, a space for artistic experiments and innovations, touching upon all the elements of the
theatrical performance. Lapitsky found for himself an ideal supporter and associate in Mikhail Bikhter, a young
graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, who became the musical director of the theater.
Lapitsky and Bikhter saw the main goal of their work with the artists of the theater as the achievement of
meaningfulness of singing and scenic authenticity. At his job as musical director Bikhter, following Lapitsky’s advice,
carried out scrupulous individual coaching not only for the soloists of the Theater of Musical Drama, but also with the
choral singers.
According to his contemporaries, Bikhter’s rendition of the musical repertoire as a conductor was distinguished by
its high level of freedom in terms of tempo and rhythm and an abundance of unusual accents and nuances. The innovative
ideas, countering the traditions of interpretations of Piotr Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” Modest Mussorgsky’s
“Boris Godunov” and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Snow Maiden” aroused plenty of lively debates in the press
and posed before the opera critics of that time the question of the permissible level of freedom for the artist-interpreter.
In various ways, the “battle against the routine” declared by Lapitsky and Bikhter, their struggle against the
engrained performance clichés, served as one of the catalyst elements of renewal of the operatic genre.
Keywords: I.M. Lapitsky, M.A. Bikhter, opera, Theater of Musical Drama, musical interpretation, opera conducting.
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