The Futurist opera Victory over the Sun was a key event of the Russian avant-garde, notorious for its libretto, its unconventional score and its pioneering abstract sets and costumes. This volume brings together the first fully annotated translation of the libretto of this 'anti-opera' and other important primary source materials.
The Futurist opera Victory over the Sun was a key event of the Russian avant-garde, notorious for its libretto, its unconventional score and its pioneering abstract sets and costumes. This volume brings together the first fully annotated translation of the libretto of this 'anti-opera' and other important primary source materials.
Victory Over the Sun: The World's First Futurist Opera
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Victory Over the Sun: The World's First Futurist Opera
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Overview
The Futurist opera Victory over the Sun was a key event of the Russian avant-garde, notorious for its libretto, its unconventional score and its pioneering abstract sets and costumes. This volume brings together the first fully annotated translation of the libretto of this 'anti-opera' and other important primary source materials.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780859898393 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Exeter Press |
| Publication date: | 03/23/2012 |
| Series: | Exeter Performance Studies |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 360 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.70(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Victory Over the Sun
The World's First Futurist Opera
By Rosamund Bartlett, Sarah Dadswell
University of Exeter Press
Copyright © 2011 Rosamund Bartlett, Sarah Dadswell and the individual contributorsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85989-952-9
CHAPTER 1
Biographies of the Librettists, Set Designer and Composer
Velemir (real name: Viktor) Khlebnikov (1885–1922)
One of Russia's most distinguished poets and a noted eccentric, Khlebnikov wasborn in Astrakhan province. He studied mathematics and natural sciences at Kazan and St Petersburg universities, but did not graduate. He published his first poems in 1908, and one of his best-known poems appeared in 1910. The twelve lines of 'Incantation by Laughter' ('Zaklinanie smekhom') are made up of words which derive from the Russian root sme ('laugh'). In 1910 Khlebnikov became one of the leaders of the Russian Cubo-Futurists, and in 1912 contributed to their infamous manifesto A Slap in the Face of Public Taste. In 1913, the year in which Khlebnikov wrote the Prologue to Victory over the Sun, he also collaborated with Kruchenykh to write another Futurist manifesto: The Word as Such. Along with an abiding interest in new spatial dimensions, language and experimentation were among Khebnikov's main preoccupations. His negative attitude towards Western influences in the Russian language stimulated him to create a large number of neologisms based on Slavic roots, including 'Budetlianin' ('man of the future') in a desire to 'liberate words'. In his later years, Khlebnikov became entranced with mythology and numerology. He died penniless and forgotten in a provincial hospital.
Aleksei Kruchenykh (1886–1968)
Kruchenykh was one of Russia's most radical Futurist poets. Born in Kherson province to a peasant family, he studied painting at the Odessa Art School, but was imprisoned in 1905 for distributing revolutionary propaganda. In 1907 he started promoting Cubism with the Burliuk brothers and, along with David Burliuk, Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov, was one of the four authors of A Slap in the Face of Public Taste. A relentless innovator like Khlebnikov, he was one of the inventors of the Futurist 'transrational' language zaum (literally 'beyond the mind') and in 1913 he was the first to use the word in his essay 'New Ways of the Word' ('Novye puti slova'). In 1912 he married the artist Olga Rozanova, one of the avant-garde artists with whom he collaborated on the production of Futurist books. These experimented with typography, deliberately primitive or abstract illustrations and were printed on paper of differing or unusual textures. Kruchenykh died in obscurity in Moscow.
Kazimir Malevich (1878–1935)
Born in Kiev to parents who were originally Polish, Malevich started painting when he was twelve. In the 1890s he briefly attended the Kiev School of Art, and in 1904 was able to study for a year in Moscow. In 1907 he exhibited with artists such as Kandinsky, David Burliuk and Larionov, and from 1910 became involved with several avant-garde groups. He became a central figure in the Futurist movement, turning in his paintings from Neo-Primitivism to Cubo-Futurism. He later claimed that the abstract designs he produced for Victory over the Sun represented the birth of Suprematism, whose manifesto (From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism) he published in 1915. From this time onwards, Malevich's chief interest was pure form, best represented in his signature work Black Square, shown at 'The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings: 0:10' in Petrograd in 1915. After the Revolution he taught chiefly, in Moscow and in Vitebsk, and moved to Petrograd in 1922, where he also started designing Suprematist ceramics. In 1927 he went back to painting, and returned to representation. His paintings were last exhibited in 1932, by which time his work was heavily criticised. Malevich died of cancer in Leningrad in 1935. As he lay on his deathbed, he was surrounded by many of his paintings, with the Black Square hanging above his head. In accordance with his wishes, he was cremated and his ashes buried at his dacha outside Moscow. The grave is marked by a white cube with black square created by his friend and student Nikolai Suetin.
Mikhail Matiushin (1861–1934)
After growing up in Nizhny Novgorod, Matiushin entered the Moscow Conservatoire at the age of fourteen to study violin, and then played in the Court Orchestra in St Petersburg from 1881 to 1913. He began learning to paint in 1889, when he was able to afford it, and in 1909 founded the Union of Youth exhibition group with his wife, the artist and writer Elena Guro. After the couple met Malevich, Kruchenkyh and Mayakovsky in 1912, their home in St Petersburg became a centre for the avant-garde. The 'First Congress of Russian Futurists' was held at their dacha in Uuskirkko, Finland in the summer of 1913. Matiushin contributed to the Futurist collection A Trap for Judges (Sadok sudei) in 1912, and after Guro died in 1913 Matiushin founded his own imprint, under which he published several works in her memory. He also published the second volume of A Trap for Judges and Malevich's From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism. He wrote the music for Kruchenykh's Conquered Waras well as for Victory over the Sun, and then started to try to express in his paintings his ideas about the fourth dimension, which he linked to Cubism. This led him to set up a studio of spatial realism in 1918, and he continued to explore his ideas after the Revolution at the Petrograd Institute of Artistic Culture. One volume of his research into the relationship between form and colour was published in 1932, but he died before the second could be completed.
CHAPTER 2Annotated Translation of the Libretto of Victory over the Sun
Rosamund Bartlett
VICTORY OVER THE SUN
opera A. Kruchenykh music M. Matiushin
VIKTOR KHLEBNIKOV
PROLOGUE
Blackcreating Newsflashes
People! Those who have been born, but are not yet dead. Hurry and get to the show or the theatre
Man of the Future.
The theatre will lead you,
The stage is theatre,
A gathering of gloomy leaders
From tragedies and horror shows to vaudevilles and unearthly comedies and amusements – what will pass before the eyes of careful spectators and viewers and observers will be: dramas of the past, dramas of the present, choruses, dramas outside time, dramas of the future, dramas of invitation, dramas of majesty, dramas of fighting fate and children's dramas.
The dramas of invitation will call you, as will the halfheavenly otherworlders.
The dramas of the past will tell you who you once were.
The dramas outside time will tell who you are, and those of the present who you could be.
The children's plays, shows and dramas of the morning will tell you who you will be.
The dramas of never being will take place like a quiet dream.
The little dramas of command will lead you imperiously.
Here there will be dramas of the now and then and plays of the imagination.
And with them will be fantasies and documentaries.
Dramas with music and singing will wipe away tears.
Warrior, merchant and ploughman. The dreaming poet and sorcerer have thought for you.
Dramas and two-headed singers will captivate you.
The strong will replace the weak.
The first performances – then the theatre is transformer.
Dread-worded, swift-prophesying dramas of the future will stun you.
Actors of the show will pass by in full costume, led by the order of the director of the play wearing wonderful robes, showing the morning and the evening of the drama, according to the design of the dreamer, this poet of the play and author of the drama.
In the citadel of the 'Budeslavl' Theatre there is a prompter.
He will take care that the speeches and singing go smoothly and do not drag separately. And when they have the audience in their power, he will make sure the actors of the show release the anger of the critics.
The sets painted by an artist will create the clothing of nature.
Take your seats in the clouds and in the trees and on the backs of whales before the bell.
Sounds emanating from the orchestra will fly to you.
The cashier will greet you.
The music of a composer will fill the theatre.
The orchestra will obey the conductor.
The spores of the 'Budeslavl' Theatre will fly into life.
The stage is a mouth!
Be a spectator by listening (with a large ear)!
And be an observer.
VICTORY OVER THE SUN
Opera in two acts and six scenes. Music by M. V. Matiushin, sets by Kaz. S. Malevich
1st Act
Scene one: White with black – the walls are white [–] the floor is black.
(Two Strong Men of the Future rip up the curtain.)
First Strong Man
All is well that begins well!
Second Strong Man
And ends?
First Strong Man
There will be no end!
We are conquering the universe
We are arming the world against ourselves
We are organising a slaughter of scaremen
Just think of the blood! All those sabres!
And cannon bodies!
We are submerging mountains!
(They sing)
We have locked up
The fat beauties in the house
Let all those drunkards wander
Around there stark naked.
We have no songs
Or rewards of sighs
Which entertained the mould of
Rotten naiads!..
(The First Strong Man slowly exits)
Second Strong Man:
Sun you have given birth to passions
And burned with fiery rays
We will wrap you in a dusty veil
And board you up in a concrete house!
(Nero and Caligula rolled into one enters [–] he has only a left arm [,] raised and bent at a right angle).
Nero and Caligula (menacingly).
Kiuln surn der
I travelled lightly
Last Thursday
Roast [–] carve up what I did not cook through.
(He stands motionless in a noble pose, then sings [–] during the singing the Second Strong Man exits).
– I eat dogs
And white paws
Fried cutlets
And sickly old potatoes
Space is limited.
The press to be silent.
ZH SH CH
(The Traveller Through All Centuries enters on aeroplane wheels – he is wearing pieces of paper with the inscriptions stone age middle ages and so on ... Nero into space).
Nero and Caligula. Talking to old people like that shouldn't be allowed ...
Not putting up with that flying machine ...
Traveller
– Everything has become a friend Suddenly cannon
He sings.
– The lake sleeps
There is much dust.
Flood ... Look
Everything has become masculine.
The lake is harder than iron
Do not believe the old measure
(Nero and Caligula carefully look through a lorgnette at the iron wheels).
Traveller
(sings) – The storm has blown up
The veil billows
More quickly, a storm measurer!
Do not believe previous scales
They will seat you on the calf
If you don't reach the heels
Nero and Caligula. It shouldn't be allowed, speaking like that to old people! they love the young ...
Ah I have searched for a little piece of sea foam
Searched for a tiny sliver of glass – they have eaten everything, and haven't even left any bones ...
But what can one do [–] I will go sideways into the 16th century in inverted commas to here.
(He walks away half-turned towards the audience).
They have soiled everything, even the vomit of bones ...
(Takes off his boots [–] exits).
Traveller.
– I am going to travel across all centuries. I was in the 35th, where there is strength without violence and the rebels battle with the sun. There may not be any happiness there but they all look happy and immortal ... It is not surprising that I am covered in dust and diametrical. Spectral kingdom ... I am going to travel across all the ages, until I find myself a place, even if I have lost two baskets.
(A Certain Person with Bad Intentions sneaks up and listens).
In aphebes there is not enough room for me and it's dark underground. It was light ... But I have done enough travelling. (to the audience). It smells of rainy failure.
The eyes of lunatics are overgrown with tea and they blink at skyscrapers, and saleswomen have set up shop on the spiral staircases ... The camels of factories already threaten with fried fat, and I haven't yet been through one side yet. Something is waiting at the station. (Sings).
– No more, no less
How to stab scaremen.
Hold on hold on
Send your bullets pills,
From the spinning top
Oh, I am bold, I will cover my way and leave no trace ...
The new ...
(A Certain Person with Bad Intentions).
Come on [–] you're not really going to fly are you?
Traveller.
Of course I am! You don't think my wheels will find their nails?
(The Certain Person with Bad Intentions shoots. The Traveller staggers, shouts). – Garison! Catch the snoiu,
The spnees ... Z. Z. Z!–
(the Certain Person with Bad Intentions then lies down and covers himself with his gun).
I might not have shot myself – out of shyness –
But I have put up a monument to myself – I'm also not stupid!
A monument to me first – wonderful! ..
The black double-barrel is pointed straight at me.
(A machine gun from the future is shown, by the telegraph pole). – Oh, lamentation! What does this sight mean [–] to have taken the enemy unawares – I have thought about it ...
I am without continuation and imitation
(The Troublemaker enters, wanders about and sings).
– Loct locust
Pike pint
Pint pike
Don't leave your weapons, for lunch, at lunch,
Or for buckwheat kasha
You can't cut it? One to one
(The Certain Person with Bad Intentions falls, and silently shoots from his gun a few times).
– To battle!
Ha ha ha! Enemies, are you tired or don't you recognise me? Enemies, climb out of your cages and crevices and summon me to a duel. I have broken my throat myself, I am turning to dust, cotton wool, hooks and loops ... Or do you think a hook is more dangerous than cotton wool?
(Runs off and comes back a minute later).
Decks to the cabbage!..
Ah ... behind the fence! Drag him away, blue-nosed corpse
(The enemy drags himself away by the hair and crawls off on his knees).
Ah, what a coward, giving yourself up and leading yourself away!
(The troublemaker laughs aside).
Troublemaker: You despicable thing – how much grave dust and shavings there are in you, go and shake yourself off and get washed, otherwise ...
(The enemy cries)
Certain Person with Bad Intentions: Ah, the head of the enemy! You take me for a fork and laugh at my thoughts but I was waiting and didn't advance on you with my sword.
I am the continuation of my journeys.
I was waiting ... I buried my sword in the ground carefully. I took a new ball and threw it ...
(Shows a footballer's technique).
Into your pack. ... Now you are confused ... You have been fooled [–] you cannot distinguish your smooth heads from the ball [–] you have lost it and are clinging to the bench and the swords are crawling in fear themselves into the earth. The ball frightens them:
if you run off disloyally, you will have to strike your leader's head and he will run after it in a flower shop ...
2nd Scene. Green walls and floor.
(The enemy troops march in Turkish costumes – one in every hundred is lame – with lowered flags, some of which are very greasy-looking).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Victory Over the Sun by Rosamund Bartlett, Sarah Dadswell. Copyright © 2011 Rosamund Bartlett, Sarah Dadswell and the individual contributors. Excerpted by permission of University of Exeter Press.
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Table of Contents
List of IllustrationsAcknowledgements
About the Text
About the Contributors
Introduction
Rosamund Bartlett and Sarah Dadswell
Part I: Texts and Scores
1. Biographies of the Librettists, Set Designer and Composer
2. Annotated Translation of the Libretto of Victory over the Sun
Rosamund Bartlett
3. Pobeda nad solnstem: Facsimile of the Original 1913 Russian Publication, incorporating score fragments by Matiushin
4. Maria Ender's transcription of Matiushin's original score for Victory over the Sun
5. Contemporary Reviews
6. 'About the Opera Victory over the Sun'
Aleksei Kruchenykh
Part II: Essays
1. The Russian Cubo-Futurist Opera Victory over the Sun: Aleksei Kruchenykh's Alogical Creation
Michaela Böhmig
2. Entertainment and Enlightenment in Late Imperial Russian Theatre
Murray Frame
3. On the Eve: The Russian Stage 1911-1914
Laurence Senelick
4. Victories over the Sun: The Drama of the Russian Futurists
Robert Leach
5. Darkness and Light: Solar Eclipse as a Cubo-Futurist Metaphor
John E. Bowlt
6. Kazimir Malevich and the Designs for Victory over the Sun
Christina Lodder
7. Victory over the Sun: The Music
Catja Gaebel
8. 'Be a Spectator with a Large Ear': Victory over the Sun as a Public Laboratory Experiment for Mikhail Matiushin's Theories of Colour Vision
Margareta Tillberg
9. Branding the Futurists
Sarah Dadswell
10. The Collision of Italian and Russian Futurism: Marinetti's Visit to Russia
Aurora Egidio
11. Burnt by the Sun: The Transmutation of Performativity, Theatricality, and Framing in the Late Work of Kazimir Malevich
Anna Wexler Katsnelson
12. A Modern Victory: Reflections on the 1999 Staging
Julia Hollander and Jeremy Arden in conversation with Sarah Dadswell
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index