On the unrealized performances at the Small (Maly) Opera Theatre in the middle of the 1930s

After the great success of Ernst Krenek's operas "Der Sprung uber den Schatten" (1927) and "Jonny spielt auf" (1928) at the stage of the Maly Opera Theatre it repeatedly tried to stage the new western opera. The production of Hindemith's opera "Neues vom Tage" began. The collaboration with Darius Milhaud was planned. But there were no these experimental performances at the real stage. If those unrealized performances were subjects of discussions in the press, some others were not even the theme of research. After the famous performance of A. Berg's "Wozzeck" at the Leningrad Academic Opera & Ballet Theatre (1927) at the threshold of the 1920s - 1930s, the Maly Opera Theatre began to think of its performance of "Wozzeck". A fragment of the letter from B. Asafiev to N. Smolich connected with this plan is given in the article. Some years later the Maly Theatre was on the verge of solving the problem of the staging of Berg's opera. On January, 1935, Leningrad's "Krasnaya Gazeta" published a big article by I. Sollertinsky which contained not only the announce of the future performance of Berg's opera, but also the thoughts about the opera and its author. In the middle of the 1930s, on the background of the great ideological revision of the values Sollertinsky remains Berg's apologist, renewing only the ideological argumentation of the interest of the Theatre to "Wozzeck" - it is deeply motivated: "Wozzeck, of course, is the best of the modern western opera productions". The idea of the "new Wozzeck" was not realized. It was especially sorrowful, because it could be one of the last performances during the composer's life. This period of the strong interest in the USSR to the western opera coincides with the last culminate period of the creative activity of the great check composer L. Janacek. In the 1930s, as the new archive materials show, there was a preparation to the new performance of "Jenufa" by Janacek at the Maly Opera Theatre. But the change of the creative atmosphere in 1936 did not allow to implement the interesting project. Undoubtedly, there were common things in Janacek's "Letters from the Dead House" and Shostakovich's "Lady Macbeth of the Mtzensk District". It seems probable that this opera by Janacek was well-known to Shostakovich. The article "Chaos instead of music" and obstruction of "Lady Macbeth" were the reasons to reject the search of the new ways, connected with the original reinterpretation of the western ideas of the new musical drama. The first performance of "Jenufa" in the USSR took place more than thirty years after the events described.

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