Anton Rubinstein’s opera The Demon, though rarely performed in the western hemisphere, features oft-repeated themes amongst a triumph of human spirit. Why did it become so beloved in Russia while being a rarity here? To find out, let’s travel back to the 1820’s and meet a promising young poet.
In 1829, a teenage schoolboy named Mikhail Lermontov would write this poem, one of his most memorable works, and revise it off and on for the next ten years before his passing. It was finally published in 1842, a year after his death. Parts of this and of his other works are thought to be drawing inspiration from Lermontov's life, with the unrequited love that plays a key role in this poem showing up elsewhere as well. The poem was subsequently banned by state censors until 1860.
Not quite twenty years later (coincidentally, around 1860!), Rubinstein would found the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the city of the same name, where he would create and premiere four major compositions over the course of ten years. In the tenth year, the composition would be The Demon, written in part to impress the ‘The Five’, a Russian Nationalist group who controlled the culture and were not particularly fond of Rubinstein’s work, thinking it was not Russian enough and did not establish him enough as a composer. As it happens, they felt the same way about The Demon. While the opera would go on to be performed over a hundred times in the following decade, and eventually received much positive criticism in the composer’s native land, at the time, Rubinstein simply had to ignore his detractors, and tour the United States performing the works of his peers to make a living. His work, fortunately for us, would go on to stand the test of time.
The opera was published in 1876, premiered in Moscow in 1879, and a updated publication came in 1968. The Demon made its Philadelphia premiere in 1922 at the Forrest Theater and was performed again in 1928. It then wasn’t heard again in Philadelphia until the Russian Opera Workshop, led by AVA’s own Ghenady Meirson (who also is the music director for this production) produced a concert version in 2015. Recent performances in the ‘Western World’ include London back in 2009; additionally, La Monnaie in Belgium offered a concert production earlier this year. It was also recently performed in Russia in repertory in Moscow at Novaya Opera from 1999-2010.
January 30, 2015
Dmitri Hvorostovsky as The Demon
Asmik Grigoryan as Tamara
As many sources note, the thrilling score offers echoes of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and is ‘dramatically potent’, as one critic deemed it. So why isn’t what seems to be considered Rubinstein’s greatest work performed more often? The answer appears to be two-fold.
One possibility brought up by many critics is that Rubinstein was overshadowed by his contemporaries, which may or may not have to do with him falling in and out of favor with the authorities (not that many artists/composers of the day didn’t have to contend with this). His influence on those he would eventually be overshadowed by would come to include his student Tchaikovsky, whom he taught many composition techniques that would later become iconic under the younger man. As Rubinstein’s contemporary Paderewski later would remark,"He was prone to indulge in grandiloquent cliches at moments of climax, preceded by over-lengthy rising sequences which were subsequently imitated by Tchaikovsky in his less-inspired pieces.” Sergei Rachmaninoff also was heavily influenced by Rubinstein - he first attended Rubinstein's historical concerts as a twelve-year-old piano student. Forty-four years later he told his biographer Oscar von Riesemann, "His playing gripped my whole imagination and had a marked influence on my ambition as a pianist." As Rachmaninoff explained to von Riesemann, "It was not so much his magnificent technique that held one spellbound as the profound, spiritually refined musicianship, which spoke from every note and every bar he played and singled him out as the most original and unequalled pianist in the world."
Others propose that the concept of a piece entitled The Demon may have been not quite as acceptable (despite the ending) to majority Christian countries like the United States and England in the 20th century, particularly being a Russian opera at the height of the Cold War. In any case, the opera has not only survived, but thrived.
Come on out and see it starting December 10 at AVA’s Helen Corning Warden theater with piano accompaniment by Ghenady Meirson. It’ll be worth the wait.
Tickets available at http://www.avaopera.org/productions/2016/the-demon/.
Gabriella Rose Balsam is a fourth year student at Temple University and an intern in AVA's Marketing Department.
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