The engagement in the monastery
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| Title: | The engagement in the monastery |
| Original title: | Обручение в монастыре |
| Original language: | Russian |
| Music: | Sergei Prokofiev , Mira Mendelson |
| Libretto : | Sergei Prokofiev |
| Premiere: | 1941 |
| Place of premiere: | Art theater in Moscow |
| Playing time: | approx. 135 minutes |
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The engagement in the monastery (also Duenja ), op. 86 (Russian Обручение в монастыре, Obrutschenije w monastyre) is a "lyrical-comic" opera in four acts (nine pictures) by Sergei Prokofjew . The libretto was written by Sergei Prokofjew and Mira Mendelson based on the play The Duenna (1775), the libretto of which was written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan . The opera was written in 1940/41.
Emergence
After Prokofiev returned to the USSR in 1936, he composed four significant new operas - Semyon Kotko , The Engagement in the Monastery , War and Peace, and The Story of a Real Man . Immediately after the Semjon Kotko , Prokofiev carried out his next project; in an astonishingly short time, namely from spring to autumn 1940, the comic opera Die Verlobung im Kloster was written .
In the spring of 1940 Mira Mendelson suggested to Prokofiev that he write an opera based on a libretto by Richard Sheridan. The composer noted about this work:
- "The fine humor, the magical poetry, the pointed characterization of the characters, the dynamic of the plot, the exciting structure of the subject, in which the viewer waits for every twist with interest and impatience, all of this appealed to me."
In his revision of Sheridan's template, Prokofiev shortened the dialogues and sharpened them in order to subordinate them to the musical intonation; In this way he created “a fabric of sound that is full of humor and is rich in the unusual and inconsistent: it is capricious and constantly changing, is carefully chronometrically refined and possesses a proven rhythm and an impeccably clear organization. [...] The Duenna is a real theater festival that casts a spell over us with the wealth of brilliant colors and the sophistication of the style, ”wrote Natalja Swankina.
action
The four-act act is about the chaos of love in Seville in the 18th century. Two young couples only find each other after considerable turbulence, just like in the "great day" of Mozart's " Le Nozze di Figaro ". This is probably due to the fact that the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who wrote the play "La Dueña" and thus the original, was a contemporary of the French writer Pierre Augustin Beaumarchais - and thus also of Mozart.
The rich and old fishmonger Mendoza wants to marry Don Jeronimo's daughter Luisa. The father agrees, but Luisa loves the young and poor Don Antonio, her brother Ferdinand the beautiful Clara. Luisa's nurse Duenna also wants to conquer the fishmonger and tries to thwart Don Jeronimo's plans. Luisa puts on her wet nurse's clothes and lets her father chase her out of the house as such. The real Duenna in Luisa's clothes asks Mendoza to kidnap her and marry her. On the way to Don Antonio, Luisa meets her friend Clara, who feels offended by her friend Ferdinand and wants to go to the monastery. Antonio and Luisa want to get married, as does Mendoza with the supposed Luisa. Luisa and Mendoza ask Don Jeronimo for his consent to the marriage, which he gives without seeing through the real connections. The wedding is to take place in the monastery. There Ferdinand meets Clara and the two make up. The merrily celebrating monks are ready to marry the three couples Mendoza and Duenna, Antonio and Luisa, and Ferdinand and Clara. Don Jeronimo realizes the deception too late and finally has to make a good face to the bad game.
Discography (selection)
- Bolshoi Theater, Moscow, Alexander Lazarev, (Melodija)
- Betrothal in a Monastery (The engagement in the monastery), with Anna Netrebko , Larissa Diadkowa
Performance history
The first performance of the engagement in the monastery was supposed to take place in 1941, but did not take place due to the war. It finally took place on November 3, 1946 in Leningrad . Boris Emmanuilowitsch Chaikin conducted the orchestra . Of the eight Prokofiev operas, only The Love for the Three Oranges (1919) and The Fiery Angel (1927) have established themselves on the international stages, while The Engagement in the Monastery is rarely performed. Prokofiev's lyrical-comic opera “The engagement in the monastery”, completed only a year before Hitler's attack on Russia, was castigated as a “typical phenomenon of formalism” and was banned from performance in the USSR. For this sixth of his eight operas, the composer had chosen a cheerful, popular theme. The earliest performance of an opera by Prokofiev in the GDR took place in 1957 with the engagement in the monastery in Leipzig.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Liriko-komitscheskaja opera
- ↑ Ferdinand Zehentreiter: Composers in Exile: 16 Artists' Fates of the 20th Century . 2008, page 41
- ↑ Eckart Kröplin Early Soviet Opera :, 1985, page 325
- ↑ a b Natalja Swankina: The engagement in the monastery ( Duenja ). In: International Music Festival - Sergei Prokofiev and contemporary music from the Soviet Union. Program book. City of Duisburg, 1990, p. 170 ff.
- ^ Opernwelt - Volume 39, 1998, page 49
- ↑ Subversive undertones: Sergei Prokofiev's “The engagement in the monastery” in Dortmund
- ↑ Opera Today - Volume 9, 1986 - page 69
Undine (1907) | Maddalena (1913) | The Gambler (1917) | The love of the three oranges (1921) | The fiery angel (1923) | Semyon Kotko (1940) | The engagement in the monastery (1941) | Khan Buzay (1946) | War and Peace (1946) | The Story of the Real Man (1948)