The Image of Saint Petersburg in Tchaikovsky's Operas

Year 2024, Volume: 5 Issue: 1, 49 - 66, 30.03.2024

Stacy Jarvis

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10702637

Abstract

The theme of St. Petersburg in Russian literature is currently explored quite extensively, whereas in music it remains largely unexamined. This article investigates the portrayal of St. Petersburg in two operas by Pyotr Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades. The research subject is the ‘dualism’ as an essential characteristic of St. Petersburg in these two operas by Tchaikovsky, the bipolarity of its culture, the ambivalence of its image and the nature of interaction between these poles. The study is based on the works of Yuri Lotman and Vladimir Toporov the latter of whom introduced the concept of the ‘Petersburg text’ into scholarly discourse. Within the philosophical consideration of the image of St. Petersburg from a systemic approach, this work relies on the parameter of ‘temporality’. By analysing compositional techniques, the author identifies the peculiarities of depicting St. Petersburg in the two operas through the lens of temporal and spatial perception of the city as a holistic system of Tchaikovsky's era. After examining the content of Tchaikovsky's two operas and conducting searches for the essence of the phenomenon of St. Petersburg, a conclusion is drawn about the specific genesis of the northern capital, which lies in the unique combination of its European nature with Russian tradition. The study of the capital as a metaphor in contemporary musical art appears promising and sheds light on new possibilities for the development of urbanistic theories, and on the other hand, it continues the exploration of the sphere of musical content.

Keywords

Tchaikovsky, Saint Petersburg, The Queen of Spades, Eugene Onegin, temporality

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