CLXXXIX. PROKOFIEV, Sergei: Semyon Kotko, opera in five acts, Op. 81

CLXXXIX. PROKOFIEV, Sergei (1891-1953)

Semyon Kotko, opera in five acts, Op. 81 (1938-39)
Kirov Opera and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre
Valery Gergiev, cond.
(2:16:46)

Prokofiev wanted to write a real Soviet opera. The libretto is by Prokofiev and Valentin Katayev after Katayev's story I am the son of working people ...

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Vsevolod Meyerhold. The name resonates throughout Russian history during the time of Stalin. It is worth going through the history, because it relates to this amazing opera:

Stanislavsky had asked Meyerhold to be his assistant. As he was dying in 1938, he wished that "Meyerhold be taken care of ... he is my sole heir in the theatre -- here or anywhere else."

As he was working with Prokofiev on staging this opera, he was instructed to choreograph a spectacle in Leningrad involving 30,000 athletes. On June 17, 1939, he gave a speech on formalism in art, which was heard by Vyshinsky, the state prosecutor.

He was arrested on June 20th. His wife was stabbed to death. Meyerhold was then taken to NKVD headquarters and tortured by Shvartzman.

After the Soviet dissolution, this letter was found:

"The investigators began to use force on me, a sick 65-year-old man. I was made to lie face down and beaten on the soles of my feet and my spine with a rubber strap. They sat me on a chair and beat my feet from above, with considerable force. For the next few days, when those parts of my legs were covered with extensive internal homorrhaging, they again beat the red-blue-and-yellow bruises with the strap and the pain was so intense that it felt as if boiling water was being poured on these sensitive areas. I howled and wept from the pain. They beat my back with the same rubber strap and punched my face, swinging their fists from a great height. The intolerable physical and emotional pain caused my eyes to weep unending streams of tears. Lying face down on the floor, I discovered that I could wriggle, twist and squeal like a dog when its master whips it. When I lay down on the cot and fell asleep, after 18 hours of interrogation, in order to go back in an hour's time for more, I was woken up by my own groaning and because I was jerking about like a patient in the last stages of typhoid fever. "Death, oh most certainly, death is easier than this!" the interrogated person says to himself. I began to incriminate myself in the hope that this, at least, would lead quickly to the scaffold."

He was executed by firing squad on February 2, 1940. He was cleared of all charges in 1955, during the first wave of de-Stalinization.

All this on the charge of being a formalist.

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So, the production of the opera was troubled from then on. The Nazi-Soviet pact further complicated things, necessitating a change of the villains from Germans to Ukranian nationalists.

And that sort of brings us to the present day.

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Semyon Kotko is set in a Ukrainian village in 1918. The revolutionary government in Moscow has made peace with Germany, but much of the Ukraine is still under German occupation. The Red Army is advancing, supported by scattered partisan units. Semyon is a soldier who returns home to this confused situation. He hopes to marry the daughter of the wealthy peasant Tkachenko, unaware that his prospective father-in-law is plotting with the Germans to restore the old order. After the betrayal and execution of two revolutionary friends, Semyon joins a group of partisans who, after a desperate struggle, manage to liberate the village.

Prokofiev pushes the drama ahead with an almost cinematic technique. Episodes of wartime brutality give scope to the violent aspects of his style, while the village people are the first truly human characters -- as opposed to obsessives and grotesques -- to appear in his operas.

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Not yet available on YouTube, this DVD/Blu-ray captures a spectacular performance by Gergiev and Company.