Not Russian Enough? | Rutger Helmers
3 March 2016
In the nineteenth century, Russian composers and critics were encouraged to cultivate a national style to distinguish their music from the dominant Italian, French, and German traditions.
Not Russian Enough? explores this aspiration for a nationalist musical tradition as it was carried out in the cosmopolitan world of opera. He discusses such issues as the influence of Italian and French opera, the use of foreign subjects, the application of local color, and the adherence to the classics, and considers how these related to a sense of "Russianness." Besides yielding new insights for each of these works, this study offers a fresh perspective on the function of nationalist thought in the nineteenth-century Russian opera world.
Not Russian Enough? Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century Russian Opera
- Rutger Helmers
- Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press
- ISBN: 978 1 580 46500 7