The Stone Guest (Dargomyzhsky)

Alexander Dargomyzhsky

The Stone Guest(Каменный гостьinCyrillic,Kamennyj gost'intransliteration) is anoperain three acts byAlexander Dargomyzhskyfrom alibrettotaken almost verbatim fromAlexander Pushkin's 1830play of the same namewhich had been written in blank verse and which forms part of his collectionLittle Tragedies.

It was first performed at theMariinsky Theatre,Saint Petersburg,16 February 1872 (Old Style).

According to the composer's wishes, the last few lines of tableau 1 were composed byCésar Cui,and the whole was orchestrated byNikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.Many years later, Rimsky-Korsakov revised his own orchestration of the opera, rewrote a few of Dargomyzhsky's own original passages, and added an orchestral prelude. This version, completed in 1903 and first performed in 1907 at theBolshoi Theatre,is now considered the standard version.

Performance History

The Austrian premiere of the opera was given in 1928 at theSalzburg Festival,in a production by students of theLeningrad Conservatoire.In 1952 it was performed in Italian, at theMaggio Musicale FiorentinoFestival. The United States premiere of the opera was presented in 1986, by theChamber Opera Theater of New Yorkat theMarymount Manhattan Theaterin New York City with Ron Gentry as Don Juan, Randolf Messing as Don Carlos,Sally Stevensas Donna Anna, and Vladimir Kin conducting.

• 
  Komissarzhevsky
  and Petrov
• 
  Fyodor Komissarzhevsky
  as Don Juan
• 
  Yuliya Platonova
  as Donna Anna
• 
  Platonova
  and Komissarzhevsky

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast 16 February 1872 (Old Style) (Conductor:Eduard Nápravník)
Don Juan	tenor	Fyodor Komissarzhevsky
Leporello, his servant	bass	Osip Petrov
Donna Anna	soprano	Yuliya Platonova
Don Carlos	baritone	Ivan Melnikov
Laura	mezzo-soprano	Mariya Ilyina
A Monk	bass	Vladimir Sobolev
First Guest	tenor	Vasiliy Vasilyev(Vasilyev II)
Second Guest	bass	Mikhail Sariotti
Statue of the Commander	bass	Vladimir Sobolev

Style

Title page of the score ofThe Stone Guest
(V. Bessel and Co.,Saint Petersburg)

As an opera,The Stone Guestis notable for having its text taken almost word-for-word from the literary stage work which inspired it, rather than being set to a libretto adapted from the source in order to accommodate opera audiences which would have expected to hear arias, duets, and choruses. Consequently, the resulting musical drama consists almost entirely of solos given in turn by each character, as in a spoken play.

This procedure amounted to a radical statement about the demands of spoken and musical drama and was seen by some as a devaluation of the musical genre of opera, and distinct from the literary genre of spoken drama.Tchaikovskyin particular was critical of the idea; in response to Dargomyzhky's statement that "I want sound directly to express the word. I want truth", he wrote in his private correspondence that nothing could be so "hateful and false" as the attempt to present as musical drama something that was not.

The value of the opera

The opera was written at the time of the formation of realism in art, andThe Stone Guestcorresponded to this genre. Dargomyzhsky used the ideas of the society ofThe Five.

The great innovations of this opera are seen in its style. It was written without arias and ensembles (not counting two small romances sung by Laura) and it is entirely built on the "melodic recitative" of the human voice put to music. This was immediately noted by Russian musical specialists César CuiandAlexander Serov.

Opera has been greatly important in the formation of Russian musical culture which, built entirely on European music, found its place in the world's musical culture.

The innovations begun by Dargomyzhsky were continued by other composers. Firstly, they were taken up and developed byModest Mussorgskywho called Dargomyzhsky "the teacher of musical truth".Later the principles of Dargomyzhsky's art were embodied by Mussorgsky in his operasBoris GodunovandKhovanshchina;Mussorgsky continued and strengthened this new musical tradition. Other Russians operas have also incorporated the same stylistic elements, including settings of the three remainingLittle Tragediesof Pushkin. These areMozart and Salieriby Rimsky-Korsakov (1898);Feast in Time of Plagueby Cesar Cui (1901); andThe Miserly KnightbySergei Rachmaninov(1904).

The modern Russian music critic Viktor Korshikov thus summed up:

There is not the development of Russian musical culture withoutThe Stone Guest.It is three operas -Ivan Soussanine,Ruslan and LudmilaandThe Stone Guesthave created Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, andBorodin.Soussanineis an opera, where the main character is the people,Ruslanis the mythical, deeply Russian intrigue, andThe Guest,in which the drama dominates over the softness of the beauty of sound.

Recordings

Audio

• 1946, Aleksandr Orlov (conductor), USSR Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Dmitriy Tarkhov (Don Juan), Georgiy Abramov (Leporello), Nina Aleksandriyskaya (Laura), Daniil Demyanov (Don Carlos), Gugo Tits, V. Nevskiy (Guests),Natalya Rozhdestvenskaya(Doña Anna), Konstantin Polyayev (Monk), Aleksey Korolyov (Commander)
• 1959, Boris Khaikin (conductor), Moscow Radio Opera and Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Alexei Maslennikov (Don Juan), Georgi Pankov (Leporello),Irina Arkhipova(Laura), Vladimir Zakharov (Don Carlos),Galina Vishnevskaya(Doña Anna), Alexei Korolev (Monk), Gennady Troitsky (Commander), Alexei Usmanov (First Guest), Andrei Blagov (Second Guest)
• 1977,Mark Ermler(conductor), Bolshoy Theatre Orchestra and Chorus,Vladimir Atlantov(Don Juan),Alexander Vedernikov(Leporello),Tamara Sinyavskaya(Laura), Vladimir Valaitis (Don Carlos), Vitaliy Vlasov, Vitaliy Nartov (Guests), Tamara Milashkina (Doña Anna), Lev Vernigora (Monk), Vladimir Filippov (Commander)
• 1995, Andrey Chistyakov (conductor), Bolshoy Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, Nikolay Vasiliyev (Don Juan), Vyacheslav Pochapsky (Leporello), Tatyana Yerastova (Laura), Nikolay Reshetnyak (Don Carlos), Marina Lapina (Doña Anna), Boris Bezhko (Monk), Nikolay Nizyenko (Commander)

Video

• 1979,Mark Ermler(conductor), Bolshoy Theatre Orchestra and Chorus,Vladimir Atlantov(Don Juan),Tamara Milashkina(Doña Anna),Alexander Vedernikov(Leporello),Tamara Sinyavskaya(Laura), Vladimir Valaitis (Don Carlos), Vladimir Filippov (Monk, Commander), Andrey Sokolov, Pyotr Glubokiy (Guests)

References

Notes

Further reading

• Taruskin, Richard (1998), "The Stone Guest"inStanley Sadie,(Ed.),The New Grove Dictionary of Opera,Vol. Four, pp. 550 – 553. London: Macmillan Publishers, Inc. 1998ISBN0-333-73432-7ISBN1-56159-228-5
• Taruskin, Richard (1981), "The Stone Guestand its Progeny "inOpera and Drama in Russia as Preached and Practiced in the 1860s.Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.

External links

• The Stone Guest:Scores at theInternational Music Score Library Project
• Russian libretto in.zip file for Word
• The Stone Guest,an English translation.