The Snow Maiden
The Russian playwright Alexander Ostrovsky, born in Moscow in 1823, is generally considered the most important figure in the Russian theatrical tradition between Gogol and Chekhov.. He studied Law at University but was forced to give up the course after a disagreement with one of the Professors, and started his career as a legal clerk, a job which gave him insights into the social interaction of the Russian merchant class and civil service; these he made use of in his first comedies. Later he turned to more serious drama, for example the tragedy Groza (1859) portraying the predicament of the young wife of a despotic merchant.
Though some of his works were initially banned by the authorities, he prospered under the more liberal reign of Alexander II and enjoyed the patronage of Alexander III. In addition to his literary work he became an important administrator of the Russian stage. He became the director of the famous Maly Theatre in Moscow; interested in music, he also founded the Society of Russian Dramatic Art and Opera Composers. Ostrovsky’s Snegoruchka – Vesennyaya Skazka (The Snow Maiden – a Spring Fairy Tale), to give it its full title, stands rather apart from his more realistic works. The Maly Theatre was closed for renovation in early 1873 and its dramatic troupe had to work at the neighbouring Bolshoi Theatre, which housed the opera and ballet companies. The Bolshoi management put it to Ostrovsky that he should create a spectacle involving all three arts – acting, dancing and music. The Snow Maiden was the result, and in it he drew upon a wide range of Russian folk-tales to create a sparkling mythic synthesis. For the first production, which took place on 11 May 1873, an important score of incidental music was commissioned from the 32-year-old Tchaikovsky, who was still in the process of establishing his reputation as a composer. Although he was teaching 27 hours a week at the Moscow Conservatoire, it took him just three weeks to write the music, which he composed as soon as he received each fresh batch of text from Ostrovsky, completing it in early April.
In the event it turned out to be Tchaikovsky’s contribution, more than Ostrovsky’s, which impressed the play’s first audiences. The gorgeous production was mounted at a cost of 15,000 roubles, but was judged tobe rather static, without much dramatic action. The Snow Maiden had four performances in the spring season of 1873, and four more in the winter season of 1873–4. After one further performance, however, it disappeared from the repertoire, probably because of the expense of using all three performing companies.
Tchaikovsky’s friend and mentor Nikolai Rubinstein, who admired the score, conducted it in concert, and it has occasionally been revived without Ostrovsky’s play. Tchaikovsky himself had great affection for this music. For some years after the production he planned to expand the incidental music into an opera, and he was highly incensed when he found that Rimsky-Korsakov had written an opera of his own on Ostrovsky’s play. He wrote to his brother Modest ‘… it’s as though they’ve taken from me by force something that is innately mine and dear to me, and are presenting it to the public in bright new clothes. It makes me want to weep!’ Much later, in 1891, he would re-use some of the music of The Snow Maiden in his incidental music to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
The story of The Snow Maiden, which has some similarities to that of Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’, deals with the opposition of eternal forces of nature and involves the interactions of mythological characters (Frost, Spring, the Wood-Sprite), real people (Kupava, Mizgir, Brussila), and those in-between beings who are half-mythical, half-real (the Snow Maiden, Lel the Shepherd, and Tsar Berendey). The Snow Maiden can only live if her heart remains cold, unwarmed by love. But wishing to experience a life like other girls, she enters the world of human beings and innocently ruins a wedding when the bridegroom sees her and falls in love with her. Accused by the bride, of seducing her intended husband, the Snow Maiden is brought before the Tsar, Berendey, for judgement, and she decrees that she must marry the man – with whom she has meantime fallen in love. But love’s warmth has made her vulnerable to the rays of the Sun God, and when exposed to them she melts away to nothing.
Tchaikovsky composed a large quantity of music to accompany Ostrovsky’s play. Much of it is vocal and choral, including songs for Lel and the peasant Brusilo, and a monologue for Frost. The choral contributions include such attractive inspirations as the chorus of shivering birds, the chorus of flowers, and the choral carnival procession, a picture of Russian peasant life. All the dances are attractive and in fact give a hint of the great ballet composer Tchaikovsky would soon become. In composing this score for a play based on Russian fairytale, Tchaikovsky made more lavish use of Russian folksongs than in any previous work there are about a dozen of them, which he placed in colourful settings. The Introduction, however, is borrowed from his earlier, unsuccessful opera Undine, which also provided the material for Lel’s first song.
In a letter of 1879 to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky wrote that The Snow Maiden was ‘one of my favourite offspring. Spring is a wonderful time; I was in good spirits, as I always am at the approach of summer and three months of freedom. I think this music is imbued with the joys of spring that I was experiencing at the time’.
Malcolm MacDonald, 2010
01. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – I. Introduction
02. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – II. Dance & Choruses Of The Birds
03. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – III. Winter’s Monologue
04. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – IV. Carnival Procession
05. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – V. Melodrama
06. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – VI. Interlude
07. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – VII. Lehl’s First Song
08. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – VIII. Lehl’s Second Song
09. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – IX. Interlude
10. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – X. Chant Of The Blind Bards
11. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – XI. Melodrama
12. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – XII. Chorus Of The People And Courtiers
13. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – XIII. Round Of The Young Maidens
14. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – XIV. Dance Of The Tumblers
15. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – XV. Lehl’s Third Song
16. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – XVI. Brussila’s Song
17. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – XVII. Apparition Of The Spirit Of The Wood
18. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – XVIII. Interlude. The Spring Fairy
19. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – XIX. Tsar Berendey’s March & Chorus
20. Incidental Music to the play by Ostrovsky, ‘The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka)’ – XX. Final Chorus
Natalia Erassova – Mezzo-Soprano
Alexander Archipov – Tenor
Nikolai Vassiliev – Baritone
Russian State Chorus & Orchestra
Andrei Chistiakov – Conductor