The Themes of Destiny and Providence in Piotr Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta”
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Abstract
The article examines the religious and spiritual problem range of Piotr Tchaikovsky’s opera “Iolanta.” Analysis of
the libretto reveals the Gospel-generated model in the plot – the parable of the blind-born (John, 9), with its theme
of the Divine ordaining of suffering, which turns out to be not a punishment for an unknown sin, but a means for
salvation, bringing the blind person to recovery of eyesight, faith and cognition of God. The manifestation of the
present theme in “Iolanta” is traced out on the level of dramaturgy through the impact of semantically conditioned
elements of the musical text representing respectively the tragic and the sacred spheres of imagery, correlated in the
opera with the concepts of Destiny and Providence. The connection of the first sphere with the poetics of the tragedy
of fatality, presented my gradual means in the opera’s Introduction, is revealed, and also presentation is made of the
moments and principles of refutation of the fateful dramaturgical model by means of transformation of the musical
elements with the “negative” semantics into musical symbols of mystical imagery. During the course of the analysis
the systematic quality of the composer’s content-directed work with the musical text is revealed, and in the latter
the dramaturgical vector of the opera is formed – from the tragedy of fate to the final “liturgical” act. The article
comes to the conclusion about the fact that the problem of overcoming fate carried a profound motivation for the
composer, being based on his world perception, which was conducive to the special religious-spiritual accentuation
of his final opera.
Keywords: Tchaikovsky, the opera “Iolanta,” operatic dramaturgy, the tragedy of fate and the theme of destiny in
music, sacred musical elements.
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