During her regency she significantly expanded the land holdings of the Kievan grand princely house.
Olga was the first member of the Rus ruling dynasty to accept Christianity. Scholars have debated when and where she was converted, as the sources give conflicting accounts, but there is some evidence that she became a Christian in Constantinople in 954 or 955 and was hosted by Con-stantine Porphyrogenitus as a Christian ruler during a subsequent visit in 957. According to the Primary Chronicle account, which is likely intended to mirror her rejection of Mal, Olga eludes a marriage proposal from Constantine by resorting once again to cunning, although this time her actions are nonviolent and motivated by Christian chastity rather than revenge.
Despite considerable effort, Olga was unable to establish Christianity in Rus, and failed to secure help to that end either from Byzantium or the West. In 959 after her Byzantine efforts had yielded no results, she requested a bishop and priest from the German king, Otto I. Although a mission under Bishop Adalbert was sent after much delay, it was not well received and departed soon afterwards. When her regency ended, Olga continued to play an influential role, as Svyatoslav was frequently away on military campaigns.
Olga died in 969 and was eventually canonized by the Orthodox Church. The Primary Chronicle does not report where she was buried, but Jakov the Monk writes in his Memorial and Encomium to Vladimir that her remains later lay in the Church of the Holy Theotokos (built in 996) and that their uncorrupted state indicated that God glorified her body because she glorified Him. One of the most enduring images associated with Olga is first encountered in the Sermon on Law and Grace (mid-eleventh century) by Metropolitan Hilarion, but repeated often in later works. In praising Olga and Vladimir, Hilarion compares them to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine, and his mother Helen, who discovered the Holy Cross. See also: KIEVAN RUS; PRIMARY CHRONICLE; RURIKID DYNASTY; SVYATOSLAV I; VLADIMIR, ST.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Franklin, Simon, and Shepard, Jonathan. (1996). The Emergence of Rus, 750-1200. London: Longman. Hollingsworth, Paul. (1992). The Hagiography of Kievan Rus’. Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University. Poppe, Andrzej. (1997). “The Christianization and Eccle-siatical Structure of Kyivan Rus’ to 1300.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 21:311-392. Cross, Samuel Hazzard, and Sherbowitz-Wetzor, Olgerd P., ed and tr. (1953). The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text. Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America.
Opera reached Russia in 1731, when an Italian troupe from Dresden visited Moscow. In 1736 it was established at the tsarist court in St. Petersburg. Early Russian opera was mostly in Italian and French. Works in Russian were usually set in Russia, but representations of Russian history on the operatic stage began only in 1790 with The Early Reign of Oleg, a collaboration of the court composers Vasily Pashkevich (a Russian), Carlo Canob- bio, and Giuseppe Sarti (both Italians) on a Russian libretto written by Catherine II.
The popularity of the court theaters in the early nineteenth century made their stages a possible venue of propaganda. This potential was fully realized in Mikhail Glinka’s first opera (1836), with a libretto written by Baron Rosen, secretary of the
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Soviet opera singers perform Rock Flower in 1950. © YEVGENY KHALDEI/CORBIS successor to the throne. Initially named for its protagonist, Ivan Susanin, the opera was renamed A Life for the Tsar when Glinka dedicated it to Nicholas I (Soviet legend had it that the new title was imposed against Glinka’s will). In its wholesale affirmation of the doctrine of “official nationality” as proclaimed by Nicholas, the opera became a symbol of Russian autocracy.
Opera was now the most popular form of entertainment in Russia, but apart from Glinka there were no notable domestic composers. To satisfy the demand, a new Italian troupe was established in St. Petersburg in 1843. Its repertory was the same as that of other Italian enterprises abroad; except for censorial changes to libretti, there was nothing Russian about it. This artistic showcase, cherished not only by the aristocracy but also by the radical intelligentsia, slowed down the development of Russian opera (and Russian music in general). Russian musicians, then mostly amateurs (composers and performers alike), even suffered from legal dis1108
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crimination: Until 1860, “musician” was not a recognized profession; moreover, for a long time a limit was imposed on the yearly income of Russians (but not of foreigners) in the performing arts, and Russian composers were expressly forbidden to write for the Italian company. Only after the establishment of conservatories in the 1860s did Russian opera become really competitive; performance standards rose, and gradually a Russian repertory accumulated.
The first successful Russian opera after Glinka was Alexander Serov’s Rogneda (1865). Its fictional plot unfolds against the background of the “baptism of Russia” in 988. As affirmative of the official view on Russian history as A Life for the Tsar, it earned its creator a lifelong pension from Alexander II. Soon after, three composers from the “Mighty Handful” embarked on operas based on Russian history: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Maid of Pskov (based on Ivan IV, after Lev Mey, 1873), Modest Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov (after Alexander Pushkin’s play, 1874), and Alexander Borodin’s Prince Igor (premiered posthumously, 1890). While Prince Igor affirmed autocracy, the other two works did not; furthermore, their protagonists were Russian tsars, whose representation on the operatic stage was forbidden. The ban was partly lifted, which made the production of the two operas possible. It remained in force for members of the House of Romanov, however, and that is why, in Musorgsky’s second historical opera, Kho-vanshchina (unfinished; produced posthumously in 1886), the curtain falls before an announced appearance of Peter I; the same happens with Catherine II in Peter Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades (1891). The representation of Orthodox clergy was also forbidden; while the Jesuits in Boris Godunov presented no problem, the Orthodox monks had to be recast as “hermits,” and a scene set in a monastery was omitted. But before 1917 no Russian composer ever withdrew an opera instead of complying with the censor’s demands, nor did anyone try to circumvent the censorship by having a banned Russian opera performed abroad.
After the accession of Alexander III, the crown’s monopoly of theaters was revoked (1882), and private opera companies emerged; Savva Mamontov’s in Moscow became the most famous. In 1885 the Italian troupe was disbanded. Russian opera took over its representative and social functions as well as its repertory. While opera continued to be a favorite of the public, leading Russian composers gradually lost interest in it, turning to ballet and instrumental genres instead. Fairy-tale operas were favored over depictions of Russian history, but Rimsky- Korsakov’s last opera, The Golden Cockerel (after Pushkin, Moscow 1909), is often seen as a satire on Russian autocracy.
Censorship was restored after the 1917 revolution, although it took a different turn. A Life for the Tsar was banned until revised as Ivan Susanin with a new libretto by Sergei Gorodetsky (Moscow 1939). Other pre-1917 operas underwent minor modifications. There were also new operas interpreting history in Soviet terms and even “topical” operas intended to educate the public. Ivan Dzerzhinsky’s “song opera” Quiet Flows the Don (Moscow 1934, after Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel) was held up as a model against Dmitry Shostakovich’s anarchic Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934; not based on history, but in a realistic historical setting), which was banned in 1936. Josef Stalin’s megalomania shows through Sergei Prokofiev’s War and Peace (after Leo Tolstoy’s novel). Composed in response to the German invasion of 1941, this most ambitious of Soviet operas was revised several times and was staged uncut only after the deaths of Stalin and Prokofiev (Moscow 1959).
During the Stalinist era an effort was made to establish national operatic traditions in the various Soviet republics. Russian composers were sent to the republics to collaborate with local composers on operas based on local folklore (and sometimes on local history) that generally sound like Rimsky-Korsakov.
In the post-Stalinist decades, major composers rarely tried their hand at opera. In the late 1980s Alfred Schnittke wrote Life with an Idiot, a surrealist lampoon on Vladimir Lenin after a story by Viktor Yerofeyev. It was premiered abroad (Amsterdam 1992), but in Russian and with a cast including “People’s Artists of the USSR.” Since the fall of the Soviet Union the musical has superseded opera as the leading theatrical genre. It even serves as a medium for patriotic representations of Russian history, such as Nord-Ost, the show staged in Moscow whose performers and audience were taken hostage by Chechen terrorists in 2002.
Outside Russia, Russian history has rarely served as the subject matter for opera. The earliest example is
