An aesthetic, historical, and theoretical study of four scores, this text is a treatment of the topic of Russian opera in the Silver Age. Spanning the gap between the supernatural Russian music of the 19th century and the compositions of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, the book explores how Russian symbolist poets interpreted opera and prompted operatic innovation. The book shows how these works, though stylistically and technically different, reveal the extent to which the operatic representation of the miraculous can be translated into its enactment. The book treats these largely unstudied pieces ... More

An aesthetic, historical, and theoretical study of four scores, this text is a treatment of the topic of Russian opera in the Silver Age. Spanning the gap between the supernatural Russian music of the 19th century and the compositions of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, the book explores how Russian symbolist poets interpreted opera and prompted operatic innovation. The book shows how these works, though stylistically and technically different, reveal the extent to which the operatic representation of the miraculous can be translated into its enactment. The book treats these largely unstudied pieces by canonical composers: Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades; Rimsky-Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya; Scriabin's unfinished Mysterium; and Prokofiev's Fiery Angel. The chapters, revisionist studies of these composers and scores, address separate aspects of symbolist poetics, discussing such topics as literary and musical decadence, pagan-Christian syncretism, theurgy, and life creation, or the portrayal of art in life. The appendix offers a complete English-language translation of Scriabin's libretto for the Preparatory Act.