F. V Bulgarin and «Life for the Tsar» by Mikhail Glinka: private opinion and general prejudice.
On the basis of archival documents, containing polemic relating the theatrical per-formance of Mikhail Glinka’s opera «Life for the Tsar», the author analyses the legitimacy of stereotypes, prevailing in Russian musicology concerning the personality of F V Bulgarin, a musical theatrical critic, founder and editor-in-chief of the newspaper «Nothern Bee». The difference in the artistic views of the composer and the critic on the tasks of the opera theater graphically reflected the struggle between the «Rusomanians» and «Italomanians». This struggle was supplemented by the peculiarities of personal relationships, which became the reason for the widespread opinion about M. I Glinka and F V Bulgarin as heroes-antipodes. Method.The stated problem is considered through the prism of general aesthetic tendencies of Russian artistic culture of the 30s-40s of the XIX century. In December, 1836, three weeks after the premiere of «Life for the Tsar», in the newspaper «Nothern Bee», F. V. Bulgarin published an article «The Opinion on the New Russian Opera: Life for the Tsar, music composed by G. Glinka, the text by Baron Rosen». It was one article, separated, because of its spaciousness, into two adjacent journal issues and therefore remembered by Glinka as two publications. Earlier in the three issues of the same Bulgarin’s «Northern Bee» there was already published a detailed publication dedicated to Glinka’s opera, an article by another author, V. F. Odoevsky («Letters to a music lover about the opera M. Glinka: Life for the Tsar»). The article of Bulgarin, written as if in continuation to Odoevsky’s article, was clearly polemical. Together they formed a real newspaper discussion - the second one in the history of Russian music (the first was a newspaper musical discussion in 1830 on the performing of G. Sontag). Like Odoyevsky’s article, Bulgarin’s article had a clearly expressed panegyrical character. The author relentlessly stressed that the music of the opera as a whole is excel-lent, and Glinka has a true musical talent etc. Such a quantity of laudatory words in one article was a rarity for Russian music journalism of the 1830-s. What prompted Glinka to doubt the positive attitude of the journalist to the composer and his work? Bulgarin’s article consists of 2 parts. The first could be called aesthetic. The second one, critical, is dedicated directly to Glinka’s opera and the performance that took place on the imperial stage. To the work of Baron Rosen, as well as the choreographer A. Titius, Bulgarin, in contrast to Odoevsky, reacted extremely negatively. A lot of claims were from the journalist to costumes, especially Polish. It is indicative that not a word was said about the performance of the Glinka’s opera. Bulgarin, as we know, very reservedly evaluated the performing abilities of Russian artists, deliberately avoided the topic. From Bulgarin’s reasoning about the music of «Life for the Tsar» as a whole it followed: with all the un-derstanding of the significance of Glinka’s making, respect for his talent, awareness of the novelty and courage of the opera opus, the journalist remained on the other side of the aes-thetic barricades. The crucial point for him was the rejection of the dramaturgy of Glinka’s opera, which he described as a kind of potpourri. «Life for the Tsar» as a stage phenom-enom was, in Bulgarin’s view, much weaker than the actual music. The composer’s main mistake consisted, he believed, in the lack of musical diversity for the operatic genre, the excessiveness of long choirs, the shortage of arias and ensembles. The private opinion of Bulgarin, although not unique, still contradicted the opinion of the majority. The fact of his public presentation was also unique: Bulgarin, in fact, openly opposed the aesthetic mainstream, declaring his own artistic predilections. The heart and soul of the journalist belonged to the opera of vivid contrasts and strong pas-sions, high intrigue and spectacular scenes. They formed his musical taste; he remained faithful to them throughout his life. Closer to him remained the Italian opera tradition, by which aesthetic principles he judged the opera of Glinka. In this sense, for Glinka, who has already overcome the passion for Italianomania, the Italian passions of Bulgarin and his adherents could very well have become obsolete by the mid-1830s. Loving Italian was at that time unfashionable among patriotic contemporaries. Unlike the love of the Russian, the signs of which most people who attributed themselves to the advanced part of the capital’s society tried to demonstrate.Conclusions. From this point of view, the discrepancy between the views of Glinka and Bulgarin can be interpreted as a special case of the manifestation of the struggle between the «Rusomanians» and the «Italomanians» (read «progressivists» and «regres-sists», «connoisseur» and «ignoramuses»). The Russian composer, whose attitude to the Italian musical culture was, as is well known, historically changeable, attributed the Bulgarin’s article to the model of aesthetic counterbalance to his own tastes and views. For decades, a certain set of names of the best writers and cultural figures of the country were highlighted in the Russian humanitarian science. It’s «reverse side» was a set of names of the authors of the incompetent, spiteful, envious, unable to adequately assess the advanced phenomena of Russian culture. Thus, one of the versions of such a pair of heroes-antipodes were Pushkin and Bulgarin, where the first played the role of a light beginning, and the second, the role of the beginning of the dark. Neither musi-cology passed by this pair. Here, the «dark» figure of Bulgarin was contrasted with the bright, perfect figure of Glinka.