Nicholas Crowe (Cambridge), Pastoral Opera Comique in Eighteenth-Century Russia
For all the socially-oriented awareness and progressiveness vaunted in Soviet scholarship, the Russian comic opera, as conceived in the eighteenth century, is a hybrid on the same terms as the Russian eclogue, or indeed any of the generic moulds fostered by a neo-classical system. In this case the country of origin, to most intents and purposes, was France. It was here that the form was developed and perfected, ready for export. The French touring company which was in St Petersburg from 1764 to 1768, for example, testifies to a large and sympathetic interest.
There has been something of a scramble for definitions of the term 'comic opera' ('opera-comique', 'комическая опера'). It is clear enough, however, that as a general rule comic opera, as a technical term which does not mean 'funny opera', is closer to a play than to an opera of the conventional 'grand opera' type, because in most cases the score was incidental to the libretto. In Russia, these entertainments were plays, dramatic texts, punctuated opportunely by bursts of music. They are in the tradition of the 'comedies melees d'ariettes', in many senses their proper nursery. The tunes were often medleys, gathered from various places, of whatever was in the air at the time. As one might expect, it is this aspect which expedited their assimilation: the strangeness to Russians of the dramatic pastoral predicament was mitigated.
Soviet critical endeavours in the field of comic opera tend to advance the Russian, or Slavonic, sources of the form over the Western ones. at various times. P. N. Berkov has pointed to the importance of 'народные игрищи' (Лодка, Комедия о царе Максимилиане, and so on), and of a new antiquarian interest in collecting folk songs. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that without the pervasive presence in the third quarter of the century - in terms of performance and imitation - of the great French practitioners, Favart, Duni, Monsigny, Philidor, Gossec, Gretry, and others, the comic opera could not have emerged distinct in Russia. It is important also to remember J.-J. Rousseau's comic opera Le devin du village, premiered in Paris in 1752, and staging an opposition of country to city. This is the first fillip to a distinctly 'pastoral' type of play.
The first native example, Popov's Анюта (1772), presents and solves its difficulties quite in the wonted French manner. The pastoral convention is nicely set up. Aniuta is to marry the rude farmhand Filat. but a showy aristocrat from the city, Viktor (the type of the 'monsieur de la ville') dazzles her and disrupts everything. Actually he reveals at length that the girl is gentle-bom, and fitted therefore to a fine match with him. Thus all settles again: pure pastoral.
Spectacle, the 'зрелищная сторона', is central to comic opera, and nowhere is it more scrupulously organised than in Nikolev's Розана и Любим (1778). Here the pastoralised stage-directions give a sort of painting-by-numbers guide to the canvases of painters like Boucher and Watteau. In this piece the arcadian nuptial plans of Rozana and Liubim are shattered by another seigneurial disturbance, this time in the august person of one Shchedrov. Rozana is actually rather impressed by him, and as it were conspires in the loss of paradise. psychologising, it ought to be pointed out, is rare in these plays, and Розана и Любим is conspicuous in crossing the conventional/symbolic with the individual/psychological - even if it does so in a small way. Shchedrov, true to his name, releases the girl, and the dust settles. Again the play belongs to the category of pastorals pure and simple. What marks them is the absolute interchangeability of their formulaic plots: all we need is disruption, then restoration. How this is contrived is not important. what does matter is that some sort of trick must be seen to cloud a staged aboriginal felicity in such a way as to motivate a 'pastoral' impulse. "If only things were like that in real life". What it comes down to is that the pastoral is more an aesthetic than an ethical construction. It panders to the arcadian rather than the utopian imagination. Its political importance is therefore secondary: a point insufficiently understood. What these plays do is to recapitulate the old pastoral concerns. They dramatise the ironic distance between real and imaginary, town and country, here and there. They use the force of artifice and spectacle to conflate these and leave the spectator with a sense of longing.
A rejuvenation of the old pastoral, the comic opera was also a popular theatrical entertainment. Ablesimov's Мельник - колдун, обманщик и сват (1779) is a landmark in the integration process in terms of the centrality to its plot of a native 'device': the 'однодворец'. A marriage is menaced because the fiance, Filimon, is a farmer who alienates representatives both of gentry and peasantry. The all-important miller, however, a russified 'devin', resolves the problem by pointing out that that as an 'однодворец' - an independent freeholder - Filimon is most eligible. At once he works the land and collects the rent. A wholly Russian trifle ('безделка') is said to have marred, and then made the peace. To have collapsed the whole dynamic of the play into a single word was a masterstroke on Ablesimov's part.
Contemporary mores are implicated directly in Kniazhnin's comic opera Нещастье от кареты (1779). Here we see the Firiulins about to ruin the marriage plans of Aniuta and Luk'ian by preparing to sell the young man into the army. The Firiulins are half-witted gallomanes and intend to spend the money on a brand new French carriage, the 'dernier cri' in Paris. Here the silver lining is woven by a village wag who primes the couple with a few modish French words, so that they are able to present themselves to the Firiulins as creatures of exquisite sensibility. Of course the plan works. Kniazhnin, like a cleverer sort of Firiulin, sees value enough in the literary heritage of the French.
Further examples would underline the formulaic sameness of plot in comic opera. one could range randomly among the forty or so pastoral examples of comic opera listed in rossiiskii featr up to the end of the century, and not come up with any departures from the line. See one Aniuta, and you have seen them all. Once witnessed, the individual lineaments of detail melt away, as they were designed to do in court masques. The hard fact of pastoral longing - the need to revisit an 'always already' lost arcadia - remains, and is set to do so.