Shekspirshchina

Abstract

Although Shakespeare’s literary reception in nineteenth-century Russia has been well mapped, less attention has been given to his musical afterlife. This chapter examines Shakespeare’s place in nineteenth-century Russian music from three complementary perspectives. First, it will consider how Shakespeare’s characters and plots were taken up in the mid-century tone poem, with a particular focus on Balakirev’s overture to King Lear. Second, it will examine the use of music in stage productions of Shakespeare’s plays, taking by way of example not just Balakirev’s incidental music for King Lear, but also Tchaikovsky’s music for Hamlet (rather than his better-known tone poems, Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest). Finally, a third model of reception is explored in the form of a discussion of Musorgsky’s treatment of Pushkin’s Boris Godunov. Rather than setting Shakespeare directly, Musorgsky engages in a triangulation of literary influence, drawing on Pushkin’s historical drama (widely regarded as an attempt to import Shakespearean principles as a way of distancing himself from the precepts of French neo-classicism) as a way of distancing himself from Italian models of operatic action (including many on Shakespearean themes).