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Date: | Wed, 6 Sep 2000 12:56:06 +0100 |
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The subject line reminded me of one of my favourite entries in Grove Opera:
the biography of Tolstoy. It opens thus:
Tolstoy, Lev [Leo] Nikolayevich
(b Yasnaya Polyana, 28 Aug/9 Sept 1828;
d Astapovo railway station, 7/20 Nov 1910).
Russian writer, distinguished hater of opera. He had some musical
education: he could play the piano after a fashion and even composed
waltzes. Sensitive not only to the pleasures of music but also to
its `hypnotic' influence and hence its power to uplift or corrupt,
he maintained that there could be no aesthetic judgment without an
ethical component. Good art was art that communicated simple ideas
and emotions directly and intelligibly, uniting artist and audience
in accord with Christian teachings. For Tolstoy opera, with its
mongrel mixture of media, its needless complexity, its irreality and
its reliance on flamboyant convention, epitomized the falsity of art
at its most debased and stood as metaphor for falsity in social
relations. The scene of Natasha Rostova's moral downfall in his
novel Voyna i mir (`War and Peace', 1869) is set fittingly against
the background of an opera performance ...
The article goes on to comment on the irony of Tolstoy's works being
used as the basis for operas. The author was Richard Taruskin.
Mike Gibb
WWW: http://operabase.com/en
House/booking/season details for 600 houses/festivals, maps,
timelines, artist schedules, reviews from leading newspapers.
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