Zhenitba

Nikolay Gogol
(1809–1852)

The idea to set Gogol's Marriage to music came from the advice and influence of Alexander Dargomyzhsky, who began to compose his own experimental opera, The Stone Guest, to Alexander Pushkin's tragedy just two years earlier (in 1866). Dargomyzhsky declared that the text would be set "just as it stands, so that the inner truth of the text should not be distorted", and in a manner that abolished the 'unrealistic' division between aria and recitative in favour of a continuous mode of syllabic but lyrically heightened declamation somewhere between the two.

In 1868, Mussorgsky rapidly set the first eleven scenes of Zhenitba, with his priority being to render into music the natural accents and patterns of the play's naturalistic and deliberately humdrum dialogue. Mussorgsky's aim was to create individual musical signatures for each character using the natural rhythms of the text. The composer noted:

I would very much like my characters on the stage to speak like living people, and in such a manner that the character and force of the intonation, supported by the orchestra and forming the background for their speech, would gain its object, that is, my music must be the artistic reproduction of human speech in all its subtle nuances.

The first act was completed in 1868 in a vocal score and the composer noted, that summer:

I have completed the first act. It rained without stopping for three days running and I worked without stopping in keeping with the weather. The Marriage gave me not a minute of calm – so I wrote it.

The score is inscribed with the following details: "The work began on Tuesday, June 11, 1868 in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), and was finished on Tuesday, July 8, 1868 in the village Shilovo, Tula Oblast."

The Marriage was one of Mussorgsky's first musical masterpieces. According to one critic, it was an experiment in Russian opera that used "satirical, grotesque musical language, with all its jolting contrasts and exaggerations, when the composer, in the best Russian-Petersburg tradition, mocks his characters but at the same time 'weeps' over them."[1]

1868, Saint Petersburg – Private performance

An early performance with Mussorgsky's participation took place in 1868 in the home of César Cui. Nadezhda Purgold accompanied on the piano. The cast included Modest Mussorgsky (Podkolyosin), Alexander Dargomyzhsky (Kochkaryov), Aleksandra Purgold (Fyokla Ivanovna), and Konstantin Velyaminov (Stepan). Aleksandra Purgold (later Molas) was the sister of Nadezhda Purgold (later Rimskaya-Korsakova).

1906, Saint Petersburg – Private performance

A later private performance took place in the home of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Nadezhda Purgold was now Nadezhda Rimskaya-Korsakova, through marriage to the composer; she again accompanied on the piano. The cast included Sigizmund Blumenfeld (Podkolyosin), A. P. Sandulenko (Kochkaryov), Sonya Rimskaya-Korsakova (Fyokla Ivanovna), and Gury Stravinsky (Stepan). Sigizmund Blumenfeld was the brother of conductor Felix Blumenfeld, Sonya Rimskaya-Korsakova was the daughter of Nikolai and Nadezhda Rimsky-Korsakov, and Gury Stravinsky was the brother of composer Igor Stravinsky.

1908, Moscow – World premiere

The first professional public performance took place on 12 December 1908 in the Great Hall of the Nobility in Moscow. The Rimsky-Korsakov edition (1908) was performed. Production personnel included Arkady Kerzin (producer). D. Veyss (Weiss) accompanied on the piano. The cast included Vladimir Lossky (Podkolyosin), Fyodor Ernst (Kochkaryov), Serafima Selyuk-Roznatovskaya (Fyokla Ivanovna), and Khristofor Tolkachev (Stepan).

In April 1973, at Cornell University's Barnes Hall, a Readers' Theater performance in Leonard Lehrman's English translation was presented in class with George Gibian as Podkolyossin, William Austin as Kotchkaryov, Laurel Fay as Fyokla Ivanovna and Jerry Amaldev as Stepan, with Leonard Lehrman at the piano. Alexander Tcherepnine subsequently asked Lehrman to translate into his English his completion of the opera. The work is still in progress.

• 1908, vocal score edition by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, V. Bessel and Co., St. Petersburg
• 1933, vocal score, original composer's version in the second issue of Volume IV of the Complete Works by M. P. Mussorgsky, Muzgiz together with Universal Edition, Moscow