12.10.2018
Iolanta on Arts Square
The close ties between Iolanta and the Mikhailovsky Theatre will be immediately obvious to any inquisitive theatregoer interested in the performance history of this Tchaikovsky opera. After finishing work on The Queen of Spades in 1890, Tchaikovsky moved on to Iolanta, which would be his tenth and final opera. At the same time, he was working on the music to Hamlet, which he wrote specifically for the Mikhailovsky, and which was performed here by a French opera company. The composer was a frequent visitor to Mikhailovsky Square, and when he was out of town, he would ask his brother Modest to take notes for him on any new productions at the „Théâtre Michel“.
The libretto is based on a drama by the Danish poet Henrik Hertz, King René’s Daughter. Iolanta was not a creation of Hertz: she is part real and part imaginary. King René really did rule over Provence, and he really did have a daughter called Iolanthe, but there is no historical record of her being blind. All we know is that the girl was betrothed to the Duke of Burgundy. King René was fond of gardening, and this is why the opera is set in a garden. Indeed, the score is inscribed: „Beautiful garden with lush vegetation. Blooming rose bushes at front of stage.“
The work was translated into Russian by the eminent translator Fyodor Miller, who also authored a counting rhyme still popular among Russian children to this day. Tchaikovsky was familiar both with the original play by Hertz and with its Russian translations. An 1876 German-language edition published in Berlin was also found in the composer’s library in Klin. However, we still do not know when the composer first came across the story. Modest Tchaikovsky’s libretto is based on Vladimir Zotov’s reworked version of the drama, staged at the Maly Theatre in Moscow, although he also made a number of additions. One of these was Robert’s aria („Who can compare to my Mathilde?“), which subsequently became highly popular.
Iolanta was commissioned by the then director of the Imperial Theatres Ivan Vsevolozhsky. The production premièred at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg under the baton of Eduard Nápravnik on 6 December 1892, the very same evening that The Nutcracker had its première. Vsevolozhsky had anticipated that the opera would première during the 1891–92 season, but in 1891, the composer departed on a tour of America to conduct his own music, shifting the schedule back by a year.
Iolanta stands quite apart from other notable Russian operas of that period. It is unusual, for instance, that the play’s Russian libretto was based on the work of a Danish author. The Danish character of the original can still be felt in Tchaikovsky’s work. When the Danish princess Dagmar (later to become Empress Maria Fyodorovna, wife to Alexander III of Russia) came to visit Russia in 1866, Tchaikovsky wrote an honorary overture based on the Danish national anthem.
What really sets the composer’s last opera apart is its sunny mood. Unusually for Tchaikovsky’s operas, the ending here is happy. As we can see from his letters and from the writings of his contemporaries, towards the end of his life, the composer found contentment. His world view was no longer as tragic as it had been when he wrote his Symphony No. 5. While working on Iolanta, he wrote to one of his correspondents that happy endings are possible: „I will show the whole world that lovers ought to remain alive at the end of operas, and that is the genuine truth. You think that’s funny, you sceptic? Let’s see if you’re still laughing when you see my new opera and its finale...“
