Bohuslav Martinů
The Marriage (Ženitba)
A comical opera based on "The Marriage" by N. V. Gogol
Conductor: Martin Doubravský
Director: Josef Novák as a guest
Set design: Vladimír A. Šrámek j.h.
Costume design: Jitka Linhartová
Musical preparation: Jiřína Permanová, Irina Borkum
Characters
PODKOLYOSIN Oldřich Kříž , as guest
STEPAN Jiří Sehoř
KOCHKARYOV Robert Šicho
AGAFJA Monika Cahová
ARINA Dagmar Hodačová
FYOKLA Blanka Černá
DUNYASHKA Hana Zemanová
IVAN Pavel Vančura
ANUCHKIN Stanislav Dašek
ZHEVAKIN Jiří David
and the Orchestra of Divadlo F. X. Šaldy
Lighting Design: Ivan Desenský
Sound: Vít Prýmek
Chief of Stage Operation: Ivan Desenský
Costumes, Make up, Properties: Jitka Linhartová, Alena Poláková, ing. Ladislav Říha
Chief of Preparations: Václav Benda
Chief of Decoration: Václav Michl
Martinů was inspired by the works and ideas of Gogol's for an entire decade. In the 1920's in a little village close to Dikanka, he adapted Gogol's "A May Evening" as a libretto, using the translation of Stanislav Minařík.
In this television opera, working with a smaller symphonic orchestra (and with the piano), he wrote the music in his own style. This style was an exception of his regular works. His primary trademark in his compositions is the element of parody - happy, yet in some parts impudently daring. In this work, there is an absence of some sentimentality. He brought Gogol's humour to his compositions - Musorgsky tried to put "The Marriage" to music in 1868, and later informed Martinů about the play. But Musorgsky was not successful in his first attempt. Not even Ravel, although it was his idea in 1911, achieved this, except for his unacceptable published notes.
On February 7, 1953, the day after the New York premiere, he wrote to his siblings in Polička: "In the evening, I had the premiere of the opera of Gogol's "The Courtship", - the small book you sent me. Of course, I put the text into English. It was wonderfully performed on television, and I think that many thousands of people have seen it. The reviews were very good and I enjoyed that very much. We were in the studio and it really made a wonderful impression. Now, maybe I will put it somewhere on the stage, maybe, the first will be in Europe. It is possible that it will be in a festival in Venice in the Spring. It was a lot of work, and now I can take a little breather again. The singer who sung the main role in N., is also Czech; that is to say, she was born here, but her parents are from Prague - and she still speaks Czech."
From the book by Miloš Šafránek "Divadlo Bohuslav Martinů"
He Marriage (Ženitba)
From his very first composition, Martinů has always tried to place special emphasis on the clarity and purity, the melody, and on the precise expression of the absolute basic musical elements. He doesn't try to find effects, but rather actual elements; he doesn't look for a release, but perhaps for more of a restriction - a discipline that chooses a way that is quite simple - parts that are to a certain extent primitive, individual components are not considered to be most important (harmony, polyphony, rhythm, colour), but one that always makes itself subordinate to the organic development and the whole; from here, the sense of a certain creation of the form and sense of the pronunciation and organic character of individual compositions, even individual movements. The melody is often very solid, precise constructions and compositions which can seem stringent and unsentimental against the free romantic music; it withdraws from practically everything - excessive emotional outbursts, from all passions, meanwhile retaining the composition within the possibilities that are absolutely musical, occupying itself only within the relationship of the musicals.
The comical opera "The Marriage", based on the work of N.V. Gogol, was composed for NBC Television in New York in 1951-1952, and was aired on February 7, 1953. The first stage performance was on March 13, 1954, at the State Opera in Hamburg. The television version of the Janáček Theatre production was broadcast on Czechoslovakian television on February 7 and May 22, 1960. The opera had to have a definite length - more concentrated shape and instrumental adaptations of the technical possibilities of the recording studio. For this reason, we primarily shortened and condensed Gogol's text... The music sounds new in this opera. Martinů found his own style once again, adequate to the world of Gogol's little people, expressing rational emptiness, wrenching itself out of the logic of the normal person. The entire opera has an atmosphere somewhat like a glass that has inside a tendency of absurd little characters of a play about absurd situations. And here it expresses its own composition seen by the world through spectacles that are somewhat grotesque and very surrealistic. Before, it is a glance at a world that is amiable, poetic and philosophical. In all events, Martinů created the piece that was able to connect Gogol's irony with a proper look at a model containing a sense for parody.
A Short Autobiography
My home town is Polička in the former Czechoslovakia. There, my father was a shoemaker and the town watchman. He lived in the church tower and, in that tower on December 8, 1890, I was born. My first violin teacher was the town tailor and I resolved to become a great virtuoso of the violin, much the same as Jan Kubelík, who was at that time a great favourite of mine. My ideal did not work out, and so I set out for the conservatory in Prague. For several years, I played second violin with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. When I arrived in Paris in 1923, I sold my instrument. I had it in my head to stay in Paris for only three months, but I eventually stayed there for 17 years until 1940. Paris at that time was experiencing very interesting performances including Rites of Spring, the great Russian ballet, and also the compositions of the Big Six. At that time, I composed the orchestral works Halftime, La Bagarre. I dedicated the last named work to Charles Lindberg; Sergej Kusevicky first presented it in 1927 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. When I came to New York in 1941, they still remembered these pieces and immediately accepted me, thus I have been living in New York for a very long time. Even during the time before we left to the United States, we found ourselves in the refugee camp in Pratteln at our friends', the Sachers. There, in Schonenburg, I composed a Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras , Piano and Timpani, and dedicated this piece to Mr. Sacher. When the war broke out, I was able, after many difficulties, to leave for America. In spite of the fact that I couldn't speak English, Kusevicky trusted me with the composition class in the festival in Tanglewood in the year 1942. In 1947, I was employed at the Princeton University as a professor of composition. I taught there for three years.
My work was presented by the greatest American orchestras under the guidance of Kusevicky, Charles Mucha, Eugene Ormandy, Friz Reiner, Artur Rozinsky, Vladimír Golschmann, Dimitri Mitropulis, and Erich Leinsdorf. I received the New York Critics Award twice for comic opera on the bridge and for the Symphonic Fantasy, which I dedicated to Charles Mucha. In 1956, I was honoured as being elected as a member of the Institute of Arts and Literature. In 1953, we returned to Europe and lived in Nice. I composed The Epic of Gilgamesh and dedicated it to Maja Sacherová. From 1956 to 1957, I was given the title of composer in residence in the American Academy in Rome. We have lived with our friends, the Sachers in Schonenberg, since autumn, 1957. I have just finished completing an opera, The Greek Passion, based on the novel of Nikolas Kazanzaki, as well as a piano concert for Margit Weber.
Schonenberg (Pratteln) in November 1957
N. V. Gogol: Author's Note
I cannot with certainty say that my own mission is that of a true writer. I only know only that over the years when I thought about my future (and I began thinking about my future at a very early age, even in the time when everyone else thought that my contours still lay upon children's games), it never occurred to me that I would become a writer - even when I had the impression that I certainly was becoming famous...
I thought to myself that I was entering the course of an official and that I was reaching out to everything in the state service. That is why I was so enthusiastic in my youth for that official course... My first attempt, my first compositional exercise, that I became used to writing at the end of my school life, was almost exclusively in a lyrical and serious genre. Neither myself not my friends who were also learning how to write at the same time as I was had ever thought of becoming a comical and satirical writer.
I had never created anything imaginative in my own fantasies, and nothing was every really given to me. I thrived on what I took from my experiences - from those things I knew very well. I could understand a person only when I imagined how he looked - even to the smallest details. I never painted a portrait like a common copy. I created it, but I created it on my basic observations and considerations, not at all a fantasy. The more things I brought into consideration, the truer my work was. I had to know far more that every other writer, because it was enough for me to overlook some details and not bring them into consideration - and the make-believe immediately appearing to me on the surface as more expressive than anything else.
It occurred to me, and even now it still seems to me, that a citizen of Russia must know the matters of Europe. But I was always convinced that unless we forget about nearly all the praiseworthy eagerness, we will not obtain the necessary knowledge, and in place of this, they our ideas will go astray, lost and scattered. I was very early on convinced, that it is very necessary and to deeply identify our Russian substance and that only thanks to that recognition will it be possible to come to feel what we should concretely take from Europe and continue on with it, because Europe will not tell us herself.
It has always seemed to me that it is necessary, that before we began to establish something new, we need to recognise everything that is old, otherwise we cannot advantage from even the most beneficial discovery. For this reason, I created my language above all beginning with the older material.
Text © Divadlo F. X. Saldy, Liberec