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Of Gypsy Barons and the Power of Love: Operetta Programming and Popularity in the Postwar Soviet Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2019

Kiril Tomoff
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Abstract

This article utilises a nearly unique collection of material (theatre box office data) and the reports of Soviet bureaucrats charged with overseeing musical theatre to analyse the programming and reception of operetta performed in the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1948, a period during which Soviet society shifted from world war to Cold War, and music, musical life and musical theatres underwent ideological scrutiny and endured intervention by the Communist Party’s Central Committee. It argues that although official programming and audience preferences were rarely in sync, their disjuncture followed a surprising pattern according to which Russian operetta-going audiences proved both more conservative and more patriotic than those responsible for the programming in operetta theatres. Marked differences between this Russian pattern and patterns observable in other republics – Ukraine gets particular attention – also attest to the diversity of taste and official ambitions for musical programming in the postwar Soviet Union.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 29 - 59
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

*

Kiril Tomoff, University of California, Riverside; [email protected]I would like to thank the participants at the ‘Popular Music in 20th-Century Russia and the Soviet Union’ (University of Chicago, 26–7 January 2007) and ‘1948 and All That: Soviet Music, Ideology and Power’ (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge, 27–8 November 2009) conferences for their thoughtful feedback on earlier versions of this article, as well as Gaya Khmoyan and Lee G.K. Singh for invaluable research assistance. Research support was provided by Fulbright-Hays and the Academic Senate of the University of California, Riverside.

References

1 Kazimzadeh, Aydin, ‘Arshin Mal Alan: The Rich Screen Life of Uzeyir Hajibayov’s Operetta’, Visions of Azerbaijan 4 (2009), 88–97 Google Scholar .

2 For example, in their immense and extremely useful tome on musical theatre, Kurt Gänzl and Andrew Lamb move blithely between ‘musical theatre’, ‘operetta’, ‘opéra-bouffe’, ‘opéra comique’, ‘musical’, ‘ballad opera’, ‘musical comedy’ and ‘comic opera’ without providing much guidance about the characteristics and differences (other than country of origin) between them: Gänzl’s Book of the Musical Theater (London, 1988).

3 Orelovich, A.A., ‘Operetta’, Muzykal’naia entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1978), 51–60 Google Scholar .

4 Orelovich, ‘Operetta’, 51. Massovo-bytovaia muzyka, which I have translated literally as ‘mass-everyday music’, and estradnaia muzyka, which I have left untranslated, are Soviet euphemisms for what in the West would be described by the even less precise term ‘popular music’. The first two and last sentences of the original are as follows: ‘[Оперетта] – один из видов муз. т-ра, муз.-сценич. представление, в к-ром муз.-вок. и муз.-хореографич. номера перемежаются разговорными сценами, а основу муз. драматургии составляют формы массово-бытовой и эстрадной музыки (гл. обр. куплетная песня и танец). В О. используются и специфич. оперные формы – арии, ансамбли, хоры, но они обычно более просты и тоже выдержаны в песенно-танц. характере. … Родственная опере с разговорными диалогами, О. отличается от нее общедоступностью музыки, тесно связанной с муз. бытом соответствующей страны и эпохи.’

5 Khristiansen, L., ‘“Svad’ba v Malinovke” v Moskovskom teatre operetty’, Sovetskaia muzyka 5 (1938), 70–71 Google Scholar . The original Russian of the passage containing the quotations is as follows: ‘Музыкальный язык Александрова чрезвычайно прост и доходчив. Этой простоты ему удалось достичь благодаря тесной связи с народной песней.’

6 Sollertinskii, I., ‘Na putiakh izucheniia operetty (O knige M. Iankovskogo – “Operetta”)’, Sovetskaia muzyka 5 (1938), 101 Google Scholar ; the article reviewed Iankovskii, M.O., Operetta: Vozniknovenie i razvitie zhanra na Zapade i v SSSR (Leningrad, 1937)Google Scholar . The original Russian of the quoted phrases is as follows: ‘[использование] городского фольклора, бытовых песенок и т.д.’ and ‘[взаимодействия] парижского и венского городского фольклора’.

7 Aleksandrov, N., ‘Tvorcheskie voprosy teatra operetty’, Sovetskaia muzyka 5 (1938), 77 Google Scholar . The original Russian passage from which the quotations are taken is as follows: ‘Однако, то, что советский зритель считал достоинством, некоторые опереточные “идеологи” внутри театра считал минусом. “Это не оперетта, это – водевиль с музыкой” – говорили они про “Женихов”. Иначе говоря, понятие оперетты, как жанра, этими людьми отождествлялось только и целиком с венской ф о р м о й оперетты.’

8 Orelovich, ‘Operetta’, 51; Micaela Baranello, ‘Operetta’, Oxford Bibliographies (2016); Andrew Lamb, ‘Operetta’, Grove Music Online.

9 Orelovich, ‘Operetta’, 51, 54; Baranello, ‘Operetta’; Lamb, ‘Operetta’.

10 Tobias Becker considers the period from the very late nineteenth century to the First World War as one in which operetta played a crucial role in cultural globalisation. See Becker, Tobias, ‘Globalizing Operetta before the First World War’, The Opera Quarterly 33 (2017), 7–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

11 Baranello, ‘Operetta’.

12 Lamb notes that Die lustige Witwe’s ‘gave the genre its most glittering international success’: Lamb, ‘Operetta’. On the ‘routes of trade’ that generated that success for Die lustige Witwe and its successors, see Becker, ‘Globalizing Operetta’, 11–13. On Die lustige Witwe as not just the paradigmatic operetta that it became, but also an encapsulation of the instability of both the operetta genre and the Viennese society when it was first produced, see Baranello, Micaela, ‘Die Lustige Witwe and the Creation of the Silver Age of Viennese Operetta’, Cambridge Opera Journal 26 (2014), 175–202 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

13 For a rich examination of the entanglements – in plot and score – of gypsy, Hungarian and Turkish thematics in Der Zigeunerbaron, see Hooker, Lynn, ‘Turks, Hungarians, and Gypsies on Stage: Exoticism and Auto-Exoticism in Opera and Operetta’, Hungarian Studies 27 (2013), 291–311 CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Exceptions to the rule that masking tends to obscure social status or rank are partially provided by Hervé and even more so by Strauss in Die Fledermaus. Hervé’s masking does not obscure social rank so much as propriety and so is at least a partial exception to the trend; and in Die Fledermaus the bourgeois couple and their milieu disguise themselves for fun and in jest, sometimes assuming personae of a higher social status, but never seriously so.

14 Becker argues that cosmopolitan settings were crucial to operetta’s global mobility before the First World War: Becker, ‘Globalizing Operetta’, 14–23.

15 On Russian uses of orientalist musical codes, see Taruskin, Richard, Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays (Princeton, 2000)Google Scholar ; Morrison, Simon, ‘The Semiotics of Symmetry, or Rimsky-Korsakov’s Operatic History Lesson’, Cambridge Opera Journal 13 (2001), 261–293 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Frolova-Walker, Marina, ‘“National in Form, Socialist in Content”: Musical Nation-Building in the Soviet Republics’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 51 (July 1998), 331–371 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; and Tomoff, Kiril, ‘Uzbek Music’s Separate Path: Interpreting “Anticosmopolitanism” in Stalinist Central Asia, 1949–52’, Russian Review 63 (2004), 212–240 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

16 See, for example, Vasilii Feodos’evich Kukharskii, ‘“Arshin mal alan” na Moskovskoi stsene, Pravda, 4 Jan 1953’, in V. Kukharskii o muzyke i muzykantakh nashikh dnei: Stat’i i vystupleniia, ed. E. Sazonova (Moscow, 1979), 297–300.

17 Muzykal’naia entsiklopediia 2: 101, 6: 260–2.

18 See Khristiansen, ‘“Svad’ba v Malinovke” v Moskovskom teatre operetty’, 69. The 1967 Lenfilm version is also available at www.youtube.com/watch?v/sL7vWJMdOF8.

19 M.D. Sabinina, ‘Operetta’, in Istoriia muzyki narodov SSSR, vol. 4, ed. Iu. V. Keldysh and M.D. Sabinina (Moscow, 1973), 159–60.

20 Sabinina, ‘Operetta’, 161–2.

21 On the complexities of repertoire formation, see Pauline Fairclough, Classics for the Masses: Shaping Soviet Musical Identity under Lenin and Stalin (New Haven, 2016); on structures of oversight in the arts, see Kiril Tomoff, Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939–1953 (Ithaca, 2006).

22 On postwar high politics and Zhdanovshchina, see Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk, Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953 (Oxford and New York, 2004) especially 32–8; on the party’s incursions into scholarship, see Ethan Pollock, Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars (Princeton, 2006).

23 ‘Postanovlenie Orgbiuro TsK VKP(b), “O repertuare dramaticheskikh teatrov i merakh po ego uluchsheniiu”’ (26 August 1946), Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (henceforth RGASPI), fond (collection, henceforth, f.) 17, opis’ (inventory, henceforth, op.) 116, delo (file, henceforth, d.) 272, listy (sheets, henceforth, ll.) 25–30, reprinted in Andrei Artizov and Oleg V Naumov, eds., Vlast' i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsiia dokumenty TsK RKP(b)–VKP(b), VChK-OGPU-NKVD o kul'turnoi politike, 1917–1953 gg. (Moscow, 1999), 591–6.

24 On the 1948 resolution and its aftermath, see especially Tomoff, Creative Union, 122–51; Marina Frolova-Walker, Stalin’s Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics (New Haven, 2016), 222–57; Patrick Zuk, ‘Nikolay Myaskovsky and the Events of 1948’, Music & Letters 93 (2012), 61–85.

25 See, for example, ‘S 15 marta 646 teatrov perevodiatsia na samookupaemost’, Sovetskoe iskusstvo (13 Mar 1948); and the short reports from all across the Soviet Union gathered together in ‘Teatry nachinaiut rabotat’ po-novomu’, Sovetskoe iskusstvo (20 Mar 1948). The policy guidance was VKI Prikaz #121 (17 Mar 1948), described in Glavnoe upravlenie muzykal’nykh teatrov, Otdel Teatrov muzykal’noi komedii, ‘Rabota teatrov muzykal’nykh komedii v 1948 godu’ (1948), RGALI, f. 962, op. 11, d. 486, ll. 1–86, here l. 12.

26 See, for example, ‘Interesy teatra i zritelia ediny’, Sovetskoe iskusstvo (13 May 1948).

27 One of the two musical comedy theatres in Kazakhstan, the only one in Tadzhikistan, and three of the four in Uzbekistan were all shuttered.

28 Glavnoe upravlenie muzykal’nykh teatrov, Otdel Teatrov muzykal’noi komedii, ‘Rabota teatrov’, 1: 3.

29 ‘Rabota teatrov’, 2: 4–5.

30 ‘Rabota teatrov’, 2: 4–5.

31 RGALI, f. 2452, op. 1, d. 44 (1940), d. 51 (1941), d. 60 (1943), d. 63 (1944), d. 69 (1945), d. 76 (1946), d. 83 (1947), d. 89 (1948).

32 The most comprehensive study of development of musical repertoire in the Soviet Union to date is Fairclough, Classics for the Masses.

33 See, for example, ‘Rabota teatrov’, 2: 14, 19.

34 ‘Rabota teatrov’, 1: 14.

35 ‘Rabota teatrov’, 1: 15.

36 ‘Rabota teatrov’, 1: 48.

37 ‘Rabota teatrov’, 2: 15, 22, 33.

38 These patterns also cannot easily be explained by the end of wartime rationing and currency reform of December 1947, which did affect prices of consumer goods but would have created a more sudden and universal pattern.

39 Lamb, ‘Operetta’. On Gilbert and Sullivan’s staying power, see C. Bradley, Ian, Oh Joy! Oh Rapture! The Enduring Phenomenon of Gilbert and Sullivan (Oxford and New York, 2005)Google Scholar .

40 For various studies of Soviet history that place Ukraine at the centre of analysis, see for example Plokhy, Serhii, The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (New York, 2015)Google Scholar ; C. Fowler, Mayhill, ‘Yiddish Theater in Soviet Ukraine: Reevaluating Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in the Arts’, Ab Imperio (2011), 167–188 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Yekelchyk, Sergy, ‘A Communal Model of Citizenship in Stalinist Politics: Agitators and Voters in Postwar Electoral Campaigns (Kyiv, 1946–53)’, Ab Imperio (2010), 93–120 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Yekelchyk, Serhy, Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination (Toronto, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Brandenberger, David, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar ; Weiner, Amir, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, 2002)Google Scholar .

41 Fairclough, Classics for the Masses, 191–227, esp. 226.

42 See, for example, Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 214–25, and 226–39.

43 Frolova-Walker, Stalin’s Music Prize, 284–93, especially 290.

44 Other theatres were running deficits as high as one and a half times their gross income. See Glavnoe upravlenie muzykal’nykh teatrov, Otdel Teatrov muzykal’noi komedii, ‘Rabota teatrov’, especially 1: 37.