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Dramatic Musical Versions of Dostoevsky: Sergei Prokopev's the Gambler

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Dramatic Musical Versions of Dostoevsky: Sergei Prokopev's the Gambler DRAMATIC MUSICAL VERSIONS OF DOSTOEVSKY: SERGEI PROKOPEV'S THE GAMBLER by Vladimir Seduro * I The Russian composer Sergei Sergeevich Prokof'ev (1891-1953) stands as a pioneer in the creation of large operatic works based on Dostoevsky. The composer Nikolai Iakovlevich Miaskovskii (1881-1950) also dreamed of an opera based on Dostoevsky. While working on his operatic version of The Idiot, Miaskovskii even considered to whom he would assign the roles of Nastas'ia Filip- povna and Aglaia. He first conceived the part of Nastas'ia for the actress V. N. Petrova-Zvantseva, and he had the singer E. V. Kono- sova-Derzhanovskaia in mind for the role of Aglaia Epanchina. But his constant directorial and teaching duties and the distraction of his symphonic work absorbed his attention and his energies in other musical activities. But the idea of basing an opera on Dostoevsky's The Gambler was realized before the Revolution in Russia. It is true that before Prokof'ev there was a Russian opera based on Dostoevsky's story «The Little Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree.» The opera The Christmas Tree [«Yolka»] by Vladimir Rebikov was produced in 1903 at the Moscow «Aquarium» Theatre nm by M. E. Medvedev, and in 1906 it saw the footlights of theaters in Prague, Brno, and Berlin. But the contents of The Christmas Tree were only indirectly linked to Dostoevsky's story. Rebikov's one act, three scene opera joined the theme of Dostoevsky's story to the plot of Hans Christian Andersen's story «The Girl with the * Dr. Vladimir Seduro, Professor of Russian at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is the author of several books, the most recent of which are Dostoevski's Image in Russia Today (Nordland, 1975) and Dostoevski in Russian Emigre Criticism (Nordland, 1975). This article is a chapter from his recently completed book Dostoevski in Russian and World Theater. 118 Matches,» and as a result the hero was turned into a girl. The Christmas Tree was done in the traditional genre of the sentimental melodramatic Christmas pageant and laid no claims to being a genuine musical version of Dostoevsky's story. The prize for first place in this endeavor undoubtedly belongs to Prokof'ev and his opera The Gambler. Prokof'ev conceived his opera The Gambler at his conservatory desk. After he finished the conservatory piano and directing courses in 1914, during his stay abroad Prokof'ev set out his intentions to compose an opera based on The Gambler for the famous Russian theater figure Sergei Diagilev. But Diagilev replied that the opera was rather outmoded as a form, and that the future belonged to the ballet.' Prokof'ev's agreement with Diagilev's suggestion that he compose a ballet for the latter's troupe distracted the musician from his operatic plans. But the composer did not abandon his idea and set about realizing it at the first chance he got. Prokof'ev was inspired in this work by the director of the Mariinskaia Opera in Petersburg, Albert Coates, whose father was English and whose mother was Russian. He was not frightened by innovation and, sensing the inclination to musical invention in the young composer and approving of his temperamental and willful character, he said to Prokof'ev, «Write your Gambler, and we will produce it.»2 Sergei Sergeevich decided not to miss so lucky a chance. He reread the novel, wrote the libretto himself rather quickly, and in the autumn of 1915 began to compose the music starting with the words from the middle of the first act, «virtuous father.» His ac- quaintance with S. V. Rakhmaninov provided a new stimulus to his work — the reknowned composer offered him a friendly helping hand and approved his work on the opera. Working from the mid- dle of November, the composer finished the first act by December 1, 1915. By February of 1916 the second act was ready, and the third act was completed in March of the same year. Complications slowed the work on the fourth act. The roulette scene had no general plan. The writer B. N. Demchinskii tried to help the com- poser, added something that was not in the story, and the fourth act was done in May of 1916. Thus the work on the opera was completed in five and a half months. The young musician tried to make the language of his music leftish, standing for the advanced elements of the day, i.e. marked by 1 S. S. Prokof'ev. Materialy, dokumenty, vospominaniia [S. S. Prokof'ev. Materials, documents, and Reminiscences], Second edition, enlarged (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe muzykal'noe izdatel'stvo, 1961), p. 150. 2 Ibid., p. 153. 119 youthful energy, the joy of life, and a fresh enthusiasm and charm that would strike the conservative musical world as an extravagant distortion of melody. The musical criticism of V. Karatygin, which was more sensitive to innovation, characterized Prokof'ev's music during the period of his work on The Gambler as follows: He remains true to «grotesque metricalism» even in pieces which bear no specific name. If you were to take his Etudes, Opus 2, his excellent Second Sonata d-moll, the colorful Symphonetta, the mar- velous Cello Ballad, or the Piano Toccata — they all have the same striving for extreme characterization, for stormy dynamics, for a sharp and pointed rhythm, for precisely and rigorously modeled but unusually whimsical melody, for the combination of a creature of musical thought so ultra-fantastic that the matter comes to a point, caricature, to almost unreal figures that do not interfere with the psyches of mere mortals — this he combined with such clearness and vitality in showing all these strange things to an audience of listeners that it almost turns into an audience of viewers which sees and feels the sounds pouring out before it as though the auditory nerves were accidentally crossed with other brain centers. A remarkable art! It bites, nips, stings, stabs and pinches with its pointed «sarcasm,» it subjects you to the tortures of living — with horns and tails — infernal demons and «delusions,» and you become a part of the spiritual «underground» and enjoy your «torments» instead of despising your pitiful position. What is the meaning of this paradox? Of course it lies in the magical power of true art. Reading Dostoevsky or Рое or looking at the nightmarish etchings of Goya, we derive a particularly acute and profound pleasure from recognizing the unlimited power of art over the human soul. If all these abysses of woe, torments, tears, despair, and horrors about which Dostoevsky, Рое, and Goya tell us are turned into the purest pearls of poetry by the power of art, then where are the borders for the imaginative powers of a genius? I will not compare Prokof'ev's talent to the intensity of the creative forces of Dostoevsky, Рое, and Goya since the diseased quality that belongs at least to the first two artists I named, simply does not exist in Prokof'ev. Yet something of the «cruelty» of these world famous talents does lie in the soul of Prokof'ev. In his Sarcasm and The Scythian Suite there is an obvious spiritual affinity with the grotesque elements of the famous American. And can we really consider it a coincidence that it is precisely Prokof'ev who first conceived the idea of an opera based on Dostoevsky? Unflagging strength, enormous temperament, very rich thematic fantasy, remarkable harmonic imagination, sharply expressive ar- tistic individuality which for some time has been working on the grounds of a broadening of classical tradition and only quite re- cently has seemed to move toward a break with tradition, an ex- traordinary corpus of musical and artistic ideas, the striving for the characteristic and grotesque — these are the fundamental contours of Prokof'ev's art. Joining elegance and simplicity, a com- plex whole with schematization and simplification of the parts, writing in broad strokes with a careful avoidance of any details that might blur lines and colors of the whole, a somewhat Straussian «decorative counterpoint» that consists of a bold joining of many themes only approximately matched to one another without articulat- ing a detailed «purity» of voice development — these are the pro- perties of Prokof'ev's composition. In sum, his music often achieves 120 a striking power, scope, bright color, colossal energy, and grandiose eruptions which alternate with blinding flashes of humor that is either bright and gay or gloomy and sinister. Prokof'ev's gifts are particularly evident in such monumental works as both his Cohcerti, the Second Sonata, in the biting Sarcasm, the magnificent and elementally powerful Scythian Suite, The Gambler, certain scenes of which, for example in the gambling house, approach in their feverish and convulsive impetuosity the psychology of the work of that brilliant «cruel talent» of Russian literature.3 We owe some respect to the penetrating criticism of V. Karatygin as well as to that of N. Miaskovskii and B. Asaf'ev who perceived the spiritual soundness of the young Prokof'ev's music and his independent talent which was quite equal to the task of a musical adaptation of Dostoevsky. Prokof'ev actually sought and was ca- pable of finding a strong language for expressing strong emotions. He succeeded in finding a musical equivalent for the very Russian image of «Babulen'ka» in the plot of The Gambler. The composer paid particular attention to the stage flexibility of his work avoiding the conventions of existing operas that made the genre immobile and, in the opinions of several musicians of the time, particularly I. Stravinskii and S.
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