History at the Opera

The genre of grand historical opera afforded a unique opportunity to combine Stalinism’s quest for monumentahsm and traditionalism in the arts with the system’s regard for national history Since the late 1930s authorities in both Moscow and Kiev favoured the idea of producing a Ukrainian patriotic historical opera that would provide Soviet Ukrainians with a truly imposing representation of their heroic past just as the 1939 production of han Susanin had done for the Russians Several attempts to rework the only Ukrainian classical historical opera, Lysenko’s Taras Bulba (1890), had not resulted in the kind of spectacle that was both ideologically sound and popular with the public ⁶⁶

In May 1948 the prospect of going to Moscow for the dekada forced the Ukrainian functionaries to prioritize the writing of a Soviet Ukrainian historical opera Significantly, with the post-war cult of the ‘Russian elder brother’ on the rise, the Ukrainian establishment preferred a new work celebrating union with Russia to yet another revival of the classic Taras Bulba, in which Russian help and tutelage were not portrayed In two months, the resourceful Kormichuk produced a verse libretto of Bohdan Khmelnytsky co-authored with his wife, Wanda Wasilewska The libretto was based on Kormichuk’s earlier play but stressed the Ukrainians’ desire to unite with the Russians In July the press reported that the composer Kost Dankevych was already hard at work on the score ⁶⁷

Ukrainian ideologues turned the writing of Bohdan Khmelnytsky into an affair of state As soon as the Odessan Dankevych had completed the score’s first draft on 27 January 1950, he telegraphed the news to both Second Secretary Kyrychenko and Nazarenko As early as 15 February the newspapers announced that the score’s first audition at the republic’s Committee for the Arts had been a success By August Dankevych had delivered the final version of the score ⁶⁸

Bohdan turned out to be a grand historical opera, a work that had little in common with the conventions of twentieth-century western musical theatre Based on national motifs, it imitated the form and dramatic structure of nine­teenth-century Russian and Western European operas Bohdan also contained direct musical quotations—Glinka’s ‘Glory’ from Ivan Susanin reverberated as the theme of the Muscovite ambassador and sounded again in the finale The plot developed against the background of the Cossack war with Poland, ending with the decision to ask the tsar for protection (but not the act of union itself) Both Ukrainian newspapers and internal reviews characterized the Kiev premiere of Bohdan Khmelnytsky in January 1951 as a triumph ⁶⁹

During the Moscow dekada of Ukrainian art in June 1951 the Kiev Opera Company performed Bohdan four times at the Bolshoi Theatre with apparent success ⁷⁰ Pravda, however, expressed reservations regarding this opera, which, as mentioned above, in the newspaper’s opinion did not sufficiently portray the Polish gentry as the enemy and did not have a single battle scene ⁷¹ At first, this comment might appear as nothing more than an isolated low-key critique of an otherwise laudable work Yet in the wake of Pravda’s editorial Against Ideological Distortions in Literature’ (2 July), all problems in Ukrainian culture suddenly acquired an ideological colouring While the ideological offensive in Ukraine was just beginning, Pravda intervened again on 20 July with an equally long editorial, ‘On the Opera Bohdan Khmelnytsky ’ Even then, the flagship of the party press did not call the opera nationalistic, nor did it demand a better portrayal of the Russian ‘elder brother ’ The editor praised the opera’s subject and music, as well as the singers’ performances, but also elaborated on several critical lacks no proper depiction of the enemies, no suffering of the masses, no battles, and no more than one duet ⁷²

Bewildered by the insignificance of these accusations, Ukrainian functionaries themselves broadened the critique of Bohdan, interpreting the pronouncements from Moscow to mean that the opera was guilty of insufficiently glorifying the historical Russian-Ukrainian friendship⁷³ This indictment reflected post-war Ukrainian ideologues’ obsession with the issues of historical memory and national identity, a concern reinforced by numerous previous reprimands from the Kremlin and insecurity concerning the ideological appropriation of Western Ukraine

By January 1952 Kornnchuk and Wasilewska had prepared a new libretto, but several exhaustive discussions of the text at the republic’s Writers’ Union, Academy of Sciences, Committee for the Arts, and Composers’ Union took months, each resulting in dozens of minor critical comments and further revisions The new libretto contained a new act 1, scene 1 portraying the execution of Cossack rebels and the people’s suffering under the yoke of the Polish lords Another addition, act 2, scene 2, showed the Polish gentry hatching their evil plans and Cossacks storming a Polish castle Finally, the Russian Don Cossack appeared on the scene, and a new act 4 depicted the Pereiaslav Council of 1654 as the apotheosis of the Ukrainians’ historical association with the Russian people ⁷⁴

Critical comments on the draft libretto in Ukraine reveal just how unanimously the republic’s officials and artistic elite had ‘developed’ Moscow’s vague critique The apparatus of the KP(b)U Central Committee, in particular, demanded a more elaborate depiction of fraternal assistance from Russia (the librettists decided to show the arrival of a cart with Russian weapons) The ideologues also felt that in the opera, ‘the word “Ukraine” was used too often ’⁷⁵ Less subtly, other Ukrainian reviewers suggested changing the last words of the final chorus from ‘Glory to Bohdan Khmelnytsky¹’ to ‘Glory to the Russian people¹’ which was duly imple­mented Nevertheless, the Ukrainian Composers’ Union still demanded ‘a more powerful representation [of the Ukrainians’] striving to unite with the great Russian people ’⁷⁶ As a result, work on Bohdan Khmelnytsky dragged on Like the History of the Ukrainian SSR, this impressive monument to Stalinist historical memory remained unfinished at the time of Stalin’s death in March 1953

At about the same time, polemics surrounding another Ukrainian opera high­lighted the limits of Moscow’s control, as well as the compromises inherent in Stalinist cultural production On 11 October 1950 the jubilee 500th performance of Semen Hulak Artemovsky’s classic, The Zaporozhian Cossack beyond the Danube (1863), in Kiev wis btoadcast throughout the Soviet Union Although this politically harmless and genuinely entertaining comic opera was sung in Ukrain­ian, sensitive bureaucratic ears in Moscow detected several ideological heresies The operas plot concerned Cossacks fleeing to Turkish-controlled territory be­yond the Danube after Catherine II ordered the destruciton of the Zaporozhian Host in 1775 After some humorous and romantic adventures, which are actually central to the plot, the sultan allows the Cossacks to return home in the finale To a Moscow official, these elements constituted a ‘slanderous story ’ Moreover, the ‘bourgeois historian Kostomarov, who wrote the dialogue for Hulak-Artemovsky’s opera, had ‘distorted historical reality’ In particular, Kostomarov portrayed the Cossacks as mercenaries of the sultan and made the mam character, Ivan Karas, boast of bloody Cossack victories over the Arnauts, who unfortunately turned out to be the ancestors of the modern-day fraternal Albanians The libretto inappropri­ately represented the sultan as a magnanimous ruler, friendly to the Cossacks, while ‘in reality, the Cossacks had been returned to their country thanks to the intervention of the Russian ambassador in Turkey’ It appeared, furthermore, that although Soviet censorship had banned the Russian text of The Zaporozhian Cossack libretto in 1948, the Kiev, Kharkiv, Lviv, and Odessa opera companies were continuing to use a slightly edited version of an old Ukrainian text, presum­ably owing to a bureaucratic error ⁷⁷

Meanwhile, in October 1951 the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre in Moscow premiered The Zaporozhian Cossack ‘in a new Russian translation by G Shipov’ that had been reviewed and approved by the apparatus of the VKP(b) Central Committee The newspapers advertised the new version as ‘prepared on the basis of historical documents ’⁷⁸ A closer look at the new Russian libretto, approved by the censors for publication and staging throughout the USSR three months after the premiere, reveals heavy-handed editing and rewrit­ing Ukrainian bureaucrats and intellectuals revered The Zaporozhian Cossack as their first national opera, Rylsky described in 1949 the ‘lofty patriotism that permeates this opera from the first note to the last ’ Shipov, however, redefined the work ‘popular musical comedy ’ He introduced a negative Cossack character, the clerk Prokop, as if to offset the new positive role — the Russian ambassador who sings the aria ‘The hour of liberation approaches ’ Throughout the libretto, Shipov skilfully cast aspersions on the Turks and made the Cossacks complain of their life in the Ottoman Empire To improve Hulak-Artemovsky’s work, he also included several of the most popular Ukrainian folk songs as additional anas ⁷⁹

The ‘musical comedy’ ran in Moscow with considerable success for two and a half years until Nazarenko attended a performance during one of his visits to the capital in April 1953 The theatre-loving Ukrainian ideologue indignantly stormed out of the house and immediately submitted a report to the party’s Central Committee The production, he wrote, had ‘little in common with the authentic version presented in Ukrainian theatres ’ Applying the rhetoric of ‘heritage au­thenticity’ to this Ukrainian operatic classic, Nazarenko demanded nothing less than the banning of the new Russian libretto However, the Moscow functionaries justified the company’s right to adjust’ (podvodii) classical operas by referring to the precedent of Russian works Ivan Susanin, Boris Godunov, and Khovanshchina at the Bolshoi At the same time, the Central Committee’s bureaucrats also saw the staging of two different versions of The Zaporozhian Cossack - one in Ukrainian in Ukraine and another in Russian in Russia - as inappropriate They suggested that a joint commission be appointed to work out a standard synopsis and libretto ⁸⁰ The archives, however, preserve no trace of such a commission Ten months later, the artistic director of the Kiev Opera referred at the local meeting to certain ‘discussions about a macaronic approach to the classics’ provoked by the Moscow production of The Zaporozhian Cossack, but that is all ⁸¹

Nazarenko’s motivation bears closer scrutiny He must surely have been aware of the various adjustments Ukrainian companies had made to the operas libretto and score In the mid-1930s, during Nazarenko’s tenure as secretary for propaganda of the Kharkiv provincial party committee, the local company had Ivan Karas curse Catherine II and Prince Potemkin for ordering the destruction of the Zaporozhian Host During the 1936 Ukrainian dekada in Moscow, the Kievans’ Karas also condemned Potemkin, that ‘oppressor of the Zaporozhian Host,’ although appar­ently not the tsarina This cue was, of course, absent from the original libretto and soon disappeared from the text with the rehabilitation of the Russian imperial tradition in the late 1930s ⁸² Even the post-war Ukrainian ‘authentic version’ was subject to minor ideological editing from time to time, of which Nazarenko must also have been aware In other words, the secretary was defending not so much the ‘authenticity’ of the Ukrainian cultural heritage as the exclusive right of local ideologues, poets, and musicians to edit ‘their’ classics

Remarkably, the clash between Moscow and Kiev over The Zaporozhian Cossack ended in an implicit compromise The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre staged the ‘new’ version of the opera, in which the Russian ambassador liberates the Cossacks, while the Ukrainian companies held to the traditional plot, with the sultan performing this feat Rylsky, who was also the Buev Opera’s literary consultant, made only two changes to the libretto, eliminating mention of the Arnauts and making one episodic character hint that the Cossacks had received letters from Muscovy⁸³

Given these alterations, the script Rylsky had to produce in 1951 for the Kiev Film Studios’ film version of The Zaporozhian Cossack, which would be seen in every corner of the Soviet Union, was necessarily much different Although the Russian ambassador did not put in an appearance, the overture was accompanied by the following explanatory text ‘Realizing that Russia would support the Cossacks’ demands and that the Zaporozhians were preparing an armed mutiny, the Turkish Sultan was forced to allow them to return to their homeland ’ In this script, Ivan Karas marks his first appearance with the announcement, ‘we and the Muscovites are of the same faith and blood, so perhaps we will attain a better life together’ (Ironically, just before making this important ideological pronounce­ment, Karas complains about having a terrible hangover and downs a shot of hard liquor) Furthermore, even the sultan acknowledges that ‘It is not easy to rule over [the Cossacks] They have a mighty defender ’ The Kiev Film Studios released the film in the summer of 1953, thus giving birth to a third version of the popular opera, a strange hybrid of the Kiev and Moscow productions ⁸⁴

Mindful of the imminent tercentenary celebrations planned for early 1954, Ukrainian authorities meanwhile were coordinating feverish efforts to stage a new version of Dankevych’s Bohdan Khmelnytsky On 27 September 1953 the Kiev opera company opened its new season with this Bohdan, more pro-Russian than ever A flood of lengthy reviews promptly announced that it was a ‘great achieve­ment’ of the Soviet Ukrainian musical theatre ⁸⁵ The subsequent lavish celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Pereiaslav Treaty cemented the opera’s place in the canon of Soviet Ukrainian culture The Kharkiv, Odessa, and Stahno (Donetsk) opera companies staged Bohdan - reportedly with phenomenal success - in the spring of 1954 In May the Kiev Opera went to Moscow for the dekada, where they presented Bohdan to great acclaim ⁸⁶ Soviet television broadcast Bohdan live from the Bolshoi on 10 May In his introductory comments, Dankevych claimed that the Kievans had come to the Bolshoi to express ‘their feelings of brotherly love and boundless gratitude’ to the Russian people The opera was also repeatedly broadcast in full on all-Umon and Ukrainian radio and released on gramophone records The festive tercentenary concert in Kiev included no fewer than three anas from Dankevych’s work The composer himself became a People’s Artist of the Soviet Union ⁸⁷

The lack of reliable sources makes it difficult to reconstruct historical opera’s influence on contemporary national memory Tens of thousands of Soviet Ukrainians attended performances of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and millions heard the opera on radio Yet no one carried out an independent poll of the listeners in 1954 to determine just how they ‘read’ this cultural product In January 1954 the Pans correspondent of the Ukrainian emigre newspaper, Novyi shltakh (New Path, Toronto), allegedly was told by visitors from Soviet Ukraine ‘One must buy tickets to the Kiev Opera three or four weeks in advance to attend Bohdan Khmelnytsky The public enthusiastically applauds the excellent Ukrainian settings and costumes, Ukrainians serving in the military greet the Cossack banners loudly And the whole house listens as if in a trance to Bohdan’s boring ana on the need to ‘reunite’ [with Russia] ’⁸⁸ Although some C anadian informants deemed this passage important enough to report to the Soviet All-Slavic Committee, which oversaw contacts with foreign Slavs,⁸⁹ no other source corroborates the emigre newspapers information Reading both the Soviet archival documents and the press of the time, one might just as easily conclude that Bohdan was popular precisely because it embodied the idea of a union of Russians and Ukrainians

The archives, however, shed interesting new light on the extent of the operas popularity The attendance records of the Kiev Opera for 1954 show that Bohdan was the public’s absolute favourite the company performed it 36 times that season with a total of 52,768 tickets sold, that is, to an average audience of 1,466 people In the same season, the company performed the ‘official* Russian patriotic opera Ivan Susanin 8 times for a total of 6,950 listeners (an average of 869 at each performance), Boris Godunov 7 times for a total audience of 7,183 (an average of 1,026), and Carmen 9 times for a total audience of 9,894 (an average of 1,099) ⁹⁰ A general statistical survey of all Soviet opera companies in 1954 reveals that 7 theatres - Kiev and 6 other smaller provincial houses, all of them in Ukraine - staged 129 performances of Bohdan for a total of 136,123 spectators, an average of 1,055 No Russian classical opera enjoyed such an average attendance Union wide that year Ivan Susanin, staged by all the largest opera houses, came close, with 15 theatres, 126 performances, and 128,276 patrons (1,018) Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, and other classics lagged far behind The opera most often performed on a Soviet subject, lulu Meitus’s The Young Guard, incidentally also a work by a Ukrainian composer, scored 9 - 87 - 49,980 (574) ⁹¹

These statistics are convincing Bohdan enjoyed unprecedented popularity in Ukraine How many listeners craved a Ukrainian patriotic opera and how many the authorities ‘organized’ to listen to a new and topical musical work about Russian-Ukrainian friendship are open to discussion But for all practical pur­poses, Bohdan did become the Ukrainian national historical opera in the 1950s Whatever its intended propaganda message, the operatic synthesis of the represen­tation of the nation’s past with grand spectacle and theatrical ritual filled an important niche among the cultural pillars of Ukrainian national memory While Bohdaris content duly glorified the ‘elder brother,’ the opera also exalted the heroic Cossack past and the homeland’s liberation from foreign oppression Thus, Bohdan Khmelnytsky offered Ukrainian listeners the experience of identifying with their glorious ancestors

In an angry and touching letter to Khrushchev, the singer Mykhailo Hryshko, unhappy with critics’ comments about his ‘static’ portrayal of Bohdan, expressed this sense of belonging to a historical community Hryshko had read the scholarly books, chronicles, and historical novels on the subject, sometimes almost feeling as if he were meeting Khmelnytsky’s colonels on the street The singer thought of himself as ‘a son of [his] people, in whose veins runs the blood of ancestors who passed into eternity and dreamt of seeing their Fatherland free and independent ’⁹² Similarly, the students of a small-town school wrote to Kormichuk in 1954 that his play Bohdan Khmelnytsky ‘teaches us to love and be proud of our people, who defended their independence in arduous struggle ’⁹³ It was precisely the possibility of such a selective reading of non-Russian representations of the national past that undermined the principal message encoded in the official memory, that of the Russian-dominated ‘friendship ’