Borys Pidhoretskyi - A Kupala Night's Spark (opera)

[Christopher]

I have posted in the Downloads section part of an opera by the Ukrainian composer Borys Volodymyrovych Pidhoretskyi (1873-1919) called Kupalna Iskra (Act I only), recently posted by Ukraine Radio on its website (recording from 1963).

The Ukrainian name ("Купальна іскра") refers to Kupala Night, a major summer festival in many Slav countries that often takes place on the summer solstice and dates back to pagan times, before being co-opted by Christian tradition (the full name is Ivan Kupala - believed to be a reference to John the Baptist (Kupala coming from a word meaning 'to bathe', which is what baptism was).  Think people jumping over fires which you might have seen on tv: the sparks of those fires are deemed to hold special significance, for example in Ukraine and Belarus, girls and boys hold hands and jump over the fire in pairs - if sparks flew behind them, it means they will marry. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kupala_Night)

(I was tempted to translate it as A Midsummer Night's Spark, but resisted, though the parallels with strange supernatural happenings at midsummer are there).

The opera's libretto, written by L. Yanovska, is of a fantastic and fairy-tale character, featuring water nymphs (rusalky) who entice the hero, Denys, to his death. During ritual festivities by the bonfire on Kupala Night, a spark falls upon his garment — and according to folk belief, whomever a spark touches on that night becomes the prey of the rusalky.

More on the composer here - https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Підгорецький_Борис_Володимирович (you'll need google translate).

[Christopher]

Contrary to what I wrote above, the recording may be the whole opera (and therefore a very short opera), not Act I only. 

A Ukrainian musicologist friend told me "It is a full opera - short operas were often staged in Ukraine because the russian empire government did not allow Ukrainians to have opera theatres, so composers were forced to write operas that were not too complex and were short enough to be staged in drama theatres, and the vocal parts were often adapted to the abilities of drama actors rather than opera singers".

[Mark Thomas]

How interesting. Even in this, surely unimportant, area of life, Russia was doing its best to stifle the Ukrainian identity. Is it any wonder that, after centuries of this treatment, Ukrainians seized their independence and now fight to retain it? 

[Christopher]

Indeed Mark. See, for example, the Ems Decree of 1876 issued by Tsar Alexandr II. This banned the use of the Ukrainian language in print (so, for example, making it very difficult to publish scores of operas by Ukrainian composers). Public lectures, plays, and song performances in Ukrainian were forbidden, as well as teaching of any discipline in Ukrainian  (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ems_Ukaz)  This built on an earlier decree of 1863 (the Valuyev Decree) which stated that the Ukrainian "language never existed, does not exist, and shall not exist".

This impacted, among others, Mykola Lysenko who has often been discussed on this forum. He had to publish some of his scores abroad, while performances of his music had to be authorized by the imperial censor. He insisted on using only Ukrainian for his operas, and was so intent on promoting and elevating Ukrainian culture that he didn't allow his opera Taras Bulba to be translated. Tchaikovsky (who was a huge fan of Lysenko) was so impressed by the opera that he wanted to stage the work in Moscow, but Lysenko's insistence on it being performed in Ukrainian, not Russian, prevented that from happening.