Mykola Lysenko - The Aeneid (opera)

[Christopher]

I have posted in the Downloads section The Aeneid, a 3-act opera by Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912) - Eneïda/Енеїда in Ukrainian.

It is not a direct telling of Virgil's Aeneid, rather a travesty-burlesque mock-heroic retelling of it by the Ukrainian writer/poet/playwright Ivan Kotliarevsky (1769-1838 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Kotliarevsky

A synopsis of the poem/opera can be found here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eneida

As per that wikipedia page, "Eneida is a parody of Virgil's Aeneid, where Kotliarevsky transformed the Trojan heroes into Zaporozhian Cossacks...Critics believe that it was written in the light of the destruction of Zaporozhian Host by the order of Catherine the Great. The poem was written during the formation of romanticism and nationalism in Europe. At that time, part of the Ukrainian elite was gripped by nostalgia for the Cossack time."

(In the downloads link I have also posted a PDF with the full ENglish translation of Kotliarevsky's poem, for those curious.)

About the opera (from my contact in Ukraine who gave me this 1975 recording):

"As for the history of the opera, the premiere took place in 1910. Again, despite the great popularity of the opera among the people, the censorship of the Russian Empire banned this work.
This opera was not staged for a very long time. The opera was not staged in Soviet theatres for a long time because the libretto was written by Lyudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska, who was brutally repressed by order of the Soviet leadership signed by Stalin. (She, a woman of over 70 years, was put into a cattle carriage that was supposed to take prisoners to a camp. On the way, her heart gave out, and her dead body was simply thrown out of the carriage. We still do not know the place of her death or the date).
It was only in 1959, when Stalin's crimes were partially exposed, that Lyudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska was posthumously partially released from the ban. That year, the Kyiv Opera House staged Lysenko's Aeneid.
The audience was delighted! And the opera was a sell-out. Until the party leadership came to one of the performances. They noticed a burlesque line in the opera that ridiculed the authorities.
The opera was based on the plot of Ivan Kotliarevskyi's poem of the same name, which ridiculed the authorities of the Russian Empire. As we can see, the Soviet government was not much different from the imperial government if it recognised itself in opera.
And opera was again banned until the mid-1970s.
This is the story of this opera."