Bartlett R. Wagner and Russia

Cambridge University Press, 1995. — 405 p.Wagner is often held to have exerted a greater impact on modern culture than any other artist, yet the history of the reception of his works in Russia has until now remained largely unexplored. This book, which draws extensively on unpublished archival materials and other contemporary sources, aims to show that in certain important respects, Wagner's music and ideas found more fertile ground in Russia than anywhere else in Europe. Beginning with the first mention of Wagner's name in the Russian press in 1841, and ending almost 150 years later when the composer was finally rehabilitated during the years of glasnost, this study provides the first detailed account of Wagner's visit to Russia in 1863, and a history of the productions of his works in Russia both before and after the Revolution (including radical stagings by Meyerhold and Eisenstein). The book pays special attention to Wagner's important influence on the Russian Modernist movement, focusing particularly on his impact on the leading Symbolist writers, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Andrey Bely and Aleksandr Blok.List of illustrationsNotes on the text
List of abbreviationsWagner and nineteenth-century Russia
Reception and performance history, 1841 - 1863
Russia encounters the ‘music of future’
Wagner's visit to Russia
Wagner's concerts in the Russian press
Reception and performance history, 1863 - 1890
The first Russian Wagner productions
Bayreuth and its Russian critics
The first performances of the Ring in Russia
Wagner and nineteenth-century Russian literature
Wagner and Russian modernism
Reception and performance history, 1890 - 1917
The role of Russkaya muzykal'naya gazeta
Wagner and the ‘Silver Age’ of Russian culture
The first Russian Ring and the rise of Russian Wagnerism
Meyerhold’s production of Tristan und Isolde
From Wagnerism to Wagnerovshchina
Wagner and Russian music in the pre-revolutionary period
Wagner and the Russian Symbolists: Vyacheslav Ivanov
Wagner in Ivanov’s life
Ivanov’s concept of music
Wagner and Russian Symbolism
Ivanov’s art of the future
Wagner in Ivanov’s poetry
Wagner and the Russian Symbolists: Bely, Medtner and Ellis
Music dramas in prose: Bely's ‘Symphonies’
Medtner and Bely: a Wagnerian friendship
The slaying of the dragon: Bely as Siegfried
Bely, Medtner, Ellis and Musaget
Ellis and the ‘Russian Wagner’
Bely, Anthroposophy and the search for the Grail
Wagner and the Russian Symbolists: Aleksandr Blok
Wagner in Block's life
The forging of the sword: Wagnerian images in Block's poetry
Wagner and the regeneration of Russian theatre
Wagner and Soviet Russia
Reception and performance history, 1917 - 1941
The renaissance of Wagner
Wagner and art for the people
Wagner productions in the age of Constructivism
Wagner and the cultural revolution: the problem of ideology
Wagner and the Nazi-Soviet pact: Eisenstein's Die Walküre
Wagner and Russian literature during the pre-war Soviet period
Reception and performance history, 1941 - 1991
From the Zhdanovshchina to the ‘Thaw’
From the Brezhnev years to glasnost
Wagner and Russian literature during the post-war Soviet period
Appendices
Notes
Select bibliography