L'histoire d'un homme véritable

Description

“I dedicate my new opera on the subject of B. Polevoy’s Story of a Real Man, which deeply moved me, to the Soviet man, to his immense courage. This story impressed me more than any other literary work in recent times.” Sergei Prokofiev Today, this confession published in the newspaper Moscow Evening in 1947 might seem like an anachronism, like an ideological “duty.” But one would be wrong to doubt the sincerity of these words with which the composer described his last opera. By a twist of fate, Story of a Real Man became the least known stage work by this 20th-century Russian classical composer, even though its literary source remains popular among Russian readers. The idea of inner struggle, of the victory of “spirit” over “body,” is the red thread of the opera. It represents the main dramatic conflict of this work, in which there are no battle scenes, nor any open confrontations of any kind. In reality, Story of a Real Man is a kind of chamber opera, a monodrama in which the theme of war is developed only through the protagonist’s personal drama. The opera’s musical language follows the heroic-epic line of the cantatas Alexander Nevsky and Zdravitsa, as well as the music for the film Ivan the Terrible. The opera’s only performance during the composer’s lifetime took place behind closed doors at the Kirov Theatre (today the Mariinsky) on December 3, 1948; it resembled more a “rough” rehearsal and did not satisfy the composer himself (“at times I did not even recognize my own music”), which sealed the fate not only of the opera but also of the composer, who was branded a “formalист.” It was only in 1960 that Story of a Real Man, in a renewed version, both musically and in terms of the libretto, was staged for the first time at the Bolshoi Theatre.