Anyuta is a one-act comic opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 to a libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Mikhail Popov

Mikhail Vasilyevich Popov

Mikhail Ivanovich Popov was a Russian writer, poet, dramatist and opera librettist of the 18th century.-Biography:Born into a merchant family, he was a pupil of Fyodor Volkov. After 1757 he was an actor at the Court Theatre in St Petersburg. He entered Moscow University in 1765, and began to...

. First performed in 1772, it was one of the first operas written in the Russian language

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 .

The collection of Popov's poems, translations and plays called Dosugi (Досуги – Leisure Hours) was published at the request of Empress Catherine II. This collection also contained the libretto to the opera Anyuta.

The music hasn’t survived and the composer is unknown, however it has sometimes been attributed to Vasily Pashkevich

Vasily Pashkevich

Vasily Alexeyevich Pashkevich also Paskevich was a Russian composer, singer, violinist and teacher who lived during the time of Catherine the Great.-Biography:...

 or even to Yevstigney Fomin

Yevstigney Fomin

Yevstigney Ipat'yevich Fomin was a Russian opera composer of the 18th century.-Biography:...

  although at that time he was just 11 year old. It is known that the music was a selection of popular songs as specified in the libretto.

Performance history

The premiere took place at the Chinese Theatre, Tsarskoye Selo

Chinese Village (Tsarskoe Selo)

The Chinese Village in the Alexander Park of Tsarskoye Selo, Russia was Catherine the Great's attempt to follow the 18th-century fashion for the Chinoiserie....

, on September 6 [OS August 26] 1772. It was one of the most successful.

Plot

It is a story about a girl called Anyuta, brought up in a peasants’ household, who turned out to be of noble birth, eventually marrying her nobleman beloved, Victor, to the sound of wedding bells.

Sources

• Leach, Robert and Borovsky, Victor, A History of Russian Theatre, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 72. ISBN 0521432200
• Polovtsev, A.A. Russian Biographical Dictionary (Русский биографический словарь А.А.Половцова) published 1896-1918.
• Seaman, Gerald R., "Russian opera before Glinka", Russia: Essays in History and Literature, Lyman Howard (ed.), Brill Archive, 1972, pp. 62–63.