Opera in Ukraine
A national school of opera in Ukraine first emerged during the last third of the 19th century, and was based on the traditions of European theatre and Ukrainian folk music. The first opera by a Ukrainian composer was Maxim Berezovsky's Demofont, based on an Italian libretto, which premiered in 1773. The oldest opera in the Ukrainian musical repertoire, A Zaporozhye Cossack on the Danube by Semen Hulak-Artemovsky, was written in 1863. The composer Mykola Lysenko, the founder of Ukrainian opera, composed a number of works, including Natalka Poltavka, Taras Bulba, Nocturne, and two operas for children, Koza-dereza and Mr Kotsky.
Ukrainian opera flourished and developed after the creation of the first professional opera houses in the 1920s, with Borys Lyatoshynsky's The Golden Ring being one of the most notable works produced there during the first half of the 20th century. From 1930 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, operatic performances and the creation of new works occurred under the dominance of Soviet socialist realism. During this period, Ukrainian opera was modelled on such works as The Young Guard by Yuliy Meitus, premiered in 1947. Ukrainian opera was able to develop once more during the Khrushchev Thaw from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. Works by Vitaly Kyreiko, Vitaliy Hubarenko, or Yevhen Stankovych's folk opera When the Fern Blooms adopted more modern themes and musical expressions that were used during the Stalinist period. Of works written during the 21st century, Moses by Myroslav Skoryk is alone in retaining its place in the local repertoire.
Ukraine has seven opera houses, which include the Taras Shevchenko National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre of Ukraine in Kyiv, the Odesa Opera House, and the Lviv Opera House. In Ukraine, operas are staged in opera studios in the country's music conservatories and largest theatres.
Origins
The first operas to be performed in what is now independent Ukraine were Italian and French operas staged during the 18th century in the estates of the wealthy nobility. The first known opera known to be written by a composer from Ukraine, Demofont by Maxim Berezovsky, an Italian-style opera with a libretto by Pietro Metastasio, was premiered in 1773 in Livorno. Between 1776 and 1787, Dmytro Bortnyansky wrote three operas in Italian and three operas in French.The earliest opera house in the present territory of Ukraine was the Lemberger Oper, opened in Lemberg in 1772. German operas were staged in Lemberg from 1774 to 1872, and Polish operas were performed there from 1780 to 1939. The Polish composer Henryk Jarecki worked there as the assistant and then the principal conductor from 1873 to 1900.
In Kharkiv, the first opera house was opened in 1780, and a similar establishment was opened in Kyiv by 1803. The Odesa Opera House, built by the Russian Opera Society, was established in 1802. Odesa became an important centre of Italian and French opera due to its international importance as a trade centre. At first, opera houses in Ukraine did not employ their own artists, but instead hosted touring artists from abroad, the majority belonging to Italian opera companies. Local composers wrote operas in Italian, which until the beginning of the 20th century was the language used for all operatic performances in this part of the Russian Empire. In 1877, a German-language professional theatre opened in Chernivtsi, at that time Czernowitz and part of the Austor-Hungarian Empire. The heyday of opera in Czernowitz is associated with the violinist and composer Vojtěch Hřímalý, who staged his own operas in Czech.
Until the emancipation reform of 1861, only the nobility in the Russian Empire parts of Ukraine could afford to keep orchestral players and actors, who were generally serfs. After the abolition of serfdom, the released musicians were able to work elsewhere. Alexey Verstovsky's opera Askold's Grave was staged on 27 October 1867, with musicians hired from the disbanded slave orchestra of and others brought from Saint Petersburg. Russian opera was staged in Kharkiv from 1874 until 1886, when the Kharkiv Theatre fell into disrepair; it was rebuilt in 1890. The Czech-born Russian composer Václav Suk conducted his opera Lesův pán in Kharkiv in 1892. In Odesa, Russian operas were first staged in 1873. Following its destruction in a fire in 1883, the theatre there was rebuilt in 1887.
Russian composers influenced by Ukrainian culture include Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Alexander Borodin. Within Ukraine, these operas were perceived by nationalists as possessing little of Ukrainian's culture.
'''' (school drama)
Ukrainian first emerged at the beginning of the 17th century. They originated from the Jesuits and were influenced by the practices of the Polish Catholic Church and those institutions run by the Russian Orthodox Church, including the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.Students performed Christmas and Easter dramas, mystery plays, and allegorical and historical dramas. All of which had vocal, instrumental, and dance components. They were performed in a theatre built with two levels—serious acts occurred at an upper level —with the characters performing in Church Slavonic, Polish, Russian or Latin. Between the serious acts, characters performed on the lower level stage, using the local language. The music used often included Ukrainian folk tunes.
'''' (nativity scenes)
The tradition of producing nativity scenes in theatres was established in Ukraine during the 17th century. Similar in format to the school drama, the vertep consisted of a religious section and a secular one, physically performed on two levels. The vertep developed after 1765 after school dramas were banned. Accompanied by live music, it consisted of a puppet show, and was typically earthy, involving humorous situations and particular characters. Vertepy often included folk songs and dances.Vaudeville
The playwright and poet Ivan Kotlyarevsky, who played a key role in the creation of Ukrainian theatre, wrote the first Ukrainian satirical poem—Aeneid —the first major work to be written in the Ukrainian language. In 1819 Kotlyarevsky wrote two comedies for the Poltava National Theatre, Natalka Poltavka and '. The plays, both examples of vaudeville, contain songs taken by Kotlyarevsky from well-known urban and rural folk tunes. Kotlyarevsky used Ukrainian interlude, nativity, and folklore traditions. Natalka Poltavka became the most popular comedic character of its time, and was played by both amateur and professional actors; the 19th century playwright and theatre director Ivan Karpenko-Karyi referred to as her "the mother of the Ukrainian national theatre".Kotlyarevsky's comedies were followed by similar works, such as ' and Shelmenko the Batman, by Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, and the Black Sea beating in the Kuban by the Cossack general. During the second half of the 19th century, vaudeville, folk operetta, historical dramas, and choral works gained in popularity in Ukrainian theatres. Vaudeville flourished most notably during the 1880s, at a time when attendances in theatres in Ukraine was increasing. In Russia during the last decades of the 19th century, vaudeville became an old-fashioned form of entertainment, but in Ukraine, as in western Europe, vaudeville remained relevant and popular with audiences.
Operetta
spread quickly from the French court so that by the early 1860s it was already popular in Lemberg's theatres. When a professional Ukrainian theatre opened there, the composer Mykhailo Verbytsky began producing operettas based on Ukrainian vaudeville. His operetta Pidhiryany became popular, and other works soon appeared, including Rural Plenipotenti. Another well-known composer of Ukrainian operettas was Sydir Vorobkevych, who wrote Hnat Pribluda, Bidna Marta, and Zolotyi Mops.In Ukraine, early examples of operetta include Sewn in Fools and Eyelashes, comic works by Mark Kropyvnytsky, or For Neman I Go and Hryts, Do Not Leave the Party by.
Modern Ukrainian composers who have since written operettas include Kyrylo Stetsenko, Oleksandr Bilash, Kostiantyn Dankevych,, Oleksandr Krasotov, Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky,, Anatoliy Kos-Anatolsky,, Vitaliy Hubarenko, and Lev Kolodub.
Obstacles to the development of Ukrainian-language opera
opera failed to develop during the 19th century in part due to a lack of suitable venues, and because Ukrainians formed the minority of the population in the majority of Ukraine's cities. The tsarist government's policy of curtailing Ukrainian cultural activities, especially following the unsuccessful Polish uprising of 1863, was a further obstacle to the development of Ukrainian-language opera. In 1876, the Ems Ukaz prohibited any theatrical productions in Ukrainian—a ban which lasted until 1881.During much of the 19th century, the centre of Ukrainian musical and theatrical culture was in Lemberg, then under Austrian control. In 1864 the first permanent Ukrainian theatre was established there. It worked under the auspices of a Ukrainian cultural and educational society known as Rusʹka Besida.
The repertoire of Ukrainian theatres was dominated by music, but lacked the resources to stage full-fledged operas. Some theatres could hire up to 50 actors, but orchestras were small in size, and talented singers soon moved on to work away from the provinces.
In 1882, Marko Kropyvnytsky's travelling theatre was established. The success of the theatre, the first where professional actors spoke in Ukrainian, contributed to the emergence of new travelling theatre companies under the direction of Mykhailo Starytsky,,. and Karpenko-Kary. Sadovsky's company, established in 1907, was the first of its kind to be in Kiev, and his theatre, although it had a small troupe, did attract graduates of the music and drama school founded by the composer Mykola Lysenko.
The political situation in Russia discouraged Ukrainian composers from writing operas. The themes that it was possible to write about were limited due to tsarist censorship, which tolerated funny or sentimental folk tales, but prohibited more serious social and historical ideas from being set to music. There were few trained singers or large orchestras in Ukraine, and until 1917 only works sung in Russian could be performed in the opera houses.