Rothschild's Violin
Encyclopedia
Rothschild's Violin is a one-act opera by Russian composer
Veniamin Fleishman
(1913-1941) set to the Russian libretto by the composer after the short story Rothschild's Fiddle by Anton Chekhov
.
The opera centres on the bitter central character, Yakov Ivanov, a coffin-maker and amateur fiddler, his gradual understanding of life and his bequest of his violin to Rothschild, who also plays in the Jewish band with Ivanov and whom he has treated with contempt.
's most promising students at the Leningrad Conservatory
, where he composed his first work, a one-act opera entitled Rothschild's Violin. His mentor had suggested Anton Chekhov
's story as the basis for the libretto. Setting his tale in an Eastern Europe "shtetl
" at the end of the 19th century, Fleishman paid a musical homage to a world on the verge of extinction.
On June 22, 1941, Hitler, violating the non-aggression pact he had signed with Stalin in August 1939, invaded the Soviet Union
. Young Fleishman joined the civil brigades formed to defend Leningrad
and was among the first to be killed in action.
Evacuating Leningrad on Stalin's order, Shostakovich
managed to salvage Fleishman's unfinished score. In memory of his talented student, Shostakovich rescued the manuscript from besieged Leningrad, finished it and orchestrated it in 1943–1944. Shostakovich dated his completion of the score February 5, 1944. Later, he exerted influence so that the opera should be published and performed.
This work is represented by Boosey & Hawkes
in the UK, Commonwealth of Nations
(excluding Canada
), Republic of Ireland
, mainland China
, Korea
and Taiwan
; and by Hans Sikorski
for Europe
.
Veniamin Fleishman: Rothschild's Violin with Sergei Leiferkus
, Konstantin Pluzhnikov
, Ilya Levinsky, Marina Shaguch, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, RCA
Red Seal 09026 68434-2
Rothschild's Violin is about an opera by Veniamin Fleischman and the dramatic circumstances in which this little-known work was composed. Both a historical work and a piece of operatic fiction, Rothschild's Violin describes a work of art and the context in which was composed. The reconstitution of Fleischmann's opera is the core of the film, which Cozarinsky chose to film using post-synchronization so as to leave himself the greatest possible leeway in filming the opera's dramatic and visual elements.
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
Veniamin Fleishman
Veniamin Fleishman
Veniamin Iosifovich Fleishman, was a Soviet composer.While studying under Dmitri Shostakovich at the Leningrad Conservatory , he began a one-act opera Rothschild's Violin based on Anton Chekhov’s short story about Bronza, a Russian country coffin-maker and violinist, and his combative relationship...
(1913-1941) set to the Russian libretto by the composer after the short story Rothschild's Fiddle by Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
.
The opera centres on the bitter central character, Yakov Ivanov, a coffin-maker and amateur fiddler, his gradual understanding of life and his bequest of his violin to Rothschild, who also plays in the Jewish band with Ivanov and whom he has treated with contempt.
History of creation
Between 1939 and 1941, the young Fleishman was one of Dmitri ShostakovichDmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
's most promising students at the Leningrad Conservatory
Saint Petersburg Conservatory
The N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory is a music school in Saint Petersburg. In 2004, the conservatory had around 275 faculty members and 1,400 students.-History:...
, where he composed his first work, a one-act opera entitled Rothschild's Violin. His mentor had suggested Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
's story as the basis for the libretto. Setting his tale in an Eastern Europe "shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
" at the end of the 19th century, Fleishman paid a musical homage to a world on the verge of extinction.
On June 22, 1941, Hitler, violating the non-aggression pact he had signed with Stalin in August 1939, invaded the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Young Fleishman joined the civil brigades formed to defend Leningrad
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
and was among the first to be killed in action.
Evacuating Leningrad on Stalin's order, Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
managed to salvage Fleishman's unfinished score. In memory of his talented student, Shostakovich rescued the manuscript from besieged Leningrad, finished it and orchestrated it in 1943–1944. Shostakovich dated his completion of the score February 5, 1944. Later, he exerted influence so that the opera should be published and performed.
First performances
- The opera's World Premiere concert performance took place on June 20, 1960, at the USSR Union of Composers, MoscowMoscowMoscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, with the soloists and members of the Moscow Philharmonic Society. - The first staged performance took place at the Leningrad Conservatory on April 24, 1968, by the Experimental Studio of Chamber Opera. The artistic director was Solomon VolkovSolomon VolkovSolomon Moiseyevich Volkov is a Russian journalist and musicologist. He is best known for Testimony, which was published in 1979 following his emigration from the Soviet Union in 1976...
, and the conductor Maxim ShostakovichMaxim ShostakovichMaxim Dmitrievich Shostakovich is a Russian conductor and pianist. He was the second child of Dmitri Shostakovich and Nina Varzar.Since 1975, he has conducted and popularised many of his father's lesser-known works....
.
- The first fully staged British performance took place at the Covent Garden Film Studios, LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
on May 3, 2007, by Second Movement OperaSecond Movement Opera- About the Company :Second Movement was founded in 2004 as a London based chamber opera ensemble performing unorthodox opera productions in unusual spaces in the UK's capital. It is a charitable organization with a mission to provide opportunities for talented young singers and professionals in...
.
Roles
- Yakov Matveeyevich Ivanov (nicknamed Bronze), coffin-maker and violinist, – bass
- Rothschild, flautist then violinist – tenorTenorThe tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
- Moisei Ilyich Shakhes, gravedigger – tenor
- Marfa, Ivanov's Wife, Mezzo-SopranoMezzo-sopranoA mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
- Members of the orchestra (6-8 tenors and basses)
Scoring
Baritone, 2 tenors, mezzo soprano; male chorus of 6-8 voices 3 flutes, (III= piccolo), 3 oboes (III = cor anglais) 3 clarinets (III = Eb clarinet/Bass clarinet) 3 bassoons (III = contrabassoon) - 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, 3 percussion (side drum, bass drum, crash cymbals, suspended cymbal, tambourine, glockenspiel, xylophone) 2 harps, strings.This work is represented by Boosey & Hawkes
Boosey & Hawkes
Boosey & Hawkes is a British music publisher purported to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world. Until 2003, it was also a major manufacturer of brass, string and wind musical instruments....
in the UK, Commonwealth of Nations
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
(excluding Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
), Republic of Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
, mainland China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
and Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
; and by Hans Sikorski
Hans Sikorski
Internationale Musikverlage Hans Sikorski is an international sheet music publishing company with headquarters in Hamburg, Germany.The music publishing firm of Hans Sikorski was founded in 1935 and now comprises more than 30 publishers in several European countries and in the USA...
for Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
.
Arrangement
For chamber ensemble (1.0.1.1 – 0.1.1.0 – piano, strings (1.1.1.1.1) by Gerd Jünemann.Synopsis
There is a wedding in a merchant’s house. A band of local musicians are playing in the street, but a quarrel breaks out between them. The old coffin-maker, Ivanov (known as 'Bronza'), accuses the young Rothschild of spoiling the music. But the others turn against him and eventually, in disgust, Bronza packs his violin and goes home. Alone, Bronza laments his poverty and the lack of respect that others show him. His wife Marfa returns from the river with a bucket of water and collapses from exhaustion. While the remaining musicians go into the merchant’s house, Rothschild stays in the street outside, playing his flute. Marta, lying in bed, reminds Bronza of their little fair-haired daughter who died fifty years ago while still a child. Bronza knows he will have to make a coffin for his wife this day. The musicians reappear and strike up a lively dance. They send Rothschild to persuade Bronza to come and join them, but Bronza throws Rothschild out of his house. Children in the street chase after the young musician, shouting: 'Jew! Jew!' In a long monologue, Bronza grieves for the waste of his life, for the destruction of the former woods around the town, and for his own mistreatment of his wife and of Rothschild. Staring at his violin, he hopes that after his death it will 'sing new songs of happiness', for he cannot take it with him to his grave. Rothschild returns once again to implore Bronza to come and join the musicians. Instead the old Russian coffin-maker gives him his violin and the young Jewish man begins to play.Quotations
- "...I love Chekhov, I often reread "Ward Six." I like everything he wrote, including the early stories. And I feel sorry that I didn't as much work on Chekhov as I had wanted to. Of course, my student Benjamin Fleishman wrote an opera based on Chekhov's "Rothschild's Violin". I suggested he do an opera on the subject. Fleishman was a sensitive spirit and he had a fine rapport with Chekhov. But he had a hard life. Fleishman had a tendency to write sad music rather than happy music, and naturally, he was abused for it. Fleishman sketched out the opera but then he volunteered for the army. He was killed. He went into the People's Volunteer Guard. They were all candidates for corpsehood. They were barely trained and poorly armed, and thrown into the most dangerous areas. A soldier could still entertain hopes of survival, but a volunteer guardsman, no. The guard of the Kuibyshev District, which was the one Fleishman joined, perished almost completely. Rest in peace. (Dmitri ShostakovichDmitri ShostakovichDmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
TestimonyTestimony (book)Testimony is a book that was published in October 1979 by the Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov. He claimed that it was the memoirs of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich...
", p.225)
- "I'm happy that I managed to complete "Rothschild's Violin" and orchestrate it. It's a marvellous opera -- sensitive and sad. There are no cheap effects in it; it is wise and very Chekhovian. I'm sorry that our theatres pass over Fleishman's opera. It's certainly not the fault of the music, as far as I can see..." (Ibid)
- "...I never did learn to live according to Chekhov's main tenet. For Chekhov all people are the same. He presented people and the reader had to decide for himself what was bad and what was good. Chekhov remained unprejudiced. Everything inside me churns when I read "Rothschild's Violin." Who's right, who's wrong? Who made life nothing but steady losses? Everything churns within me." (Ibid)
- "The opera is a marvel, pure and subtle. Chekhov’s bittersweet lyricism is presented in a style that could be described thus: mature Shostakovich." (Solomon VolkovSolomon VolkovSolomon Moiseyevich Volkov is a Russian journalist and musicologist. He is best known for Testimony, which was published in 1979 following his emigration from the Soviet Union in 1976...
, preface to the TestimonyTestimony (book)Testimony is a book that was published in October 1979 by the Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov. He claimed that it was the memoirs of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich...
, p. xiii)
- On the premiere staging: "It was a stormy and rousing success and with glorious reviews... Then the official administrators of culture accused all of us of ZionismZionismZionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
..." (Solomon VolkovSolomon VolkovSolomon Moiseyevich Volkov is a Russian journalist and musicologist. He is best known for Testimony, which was published in 1979 following his emigration from the Soviet Union in 1976...
, preface to the “TestimonyTestimonyIn law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. All testimonies should be well thought out and truthful. It was the custom in Ancient Rome for the men to place their right hand on a Bible when taking an oath...
”, p. xiii)
- "Shostakovich did not allocate an Opus number to his orchestration of Rothschild's Violin, as he had done with some of his other orchestrations. Perhaps it will never be possible to define the extent of Shostakovich’s insight into the fabric of the music of Fleishman, as Fleishman's manuscript of Rothschild's Violin has not survived. However, it is possible to speak successfully of Fleishman's insight into the fabric of the music of Shostakovich, as from that time Shostakovich had begun to show a special interest in Jewish folklore (upon which Fleishman’s Opera was based), starting with Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio Op.67 (1944), his First Violin Concerto Op. 77 (1948) and the cycle in From Jewish Folk Poetry Op. 79 (1948), etc." (Dmitri N. Smirnov, "My Shostakovich", footnote)
CD
Sergei Leiferkus
Sergei Leiferkus is an operatic baritone from Russia, known for his dramatic technique and powerful voice particularly in Russian and Italian language repertoire. He is most notable for his roles as Scarpia in Tosca, Iago in Otello, Grand-prétre de Dagon in Samson et Dalila and Simon Boccanegra...
, Konstantin Pluzhnikov
Konstantin Pluzhnikov
-References:*-External links:...
, Ilya Levinsky, Marina Shaguch, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra is a Dutch symphony orchestra based in Rotterdam. Its primary venue is the concert hall De Doelen. The RPhO is considered one of the Netherlands' two principal orchestras of international standing, second to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam...
, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
Red Seal 09026 68434-2
- 1. Wedding Band
- 2. What Are You Playing
- 3. This Small Town Is Worse Than A Village Listen: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/music/clipserve/B000003G19001003/1
- 4. Band Music Listen: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/music/clipserve/B000003G19001004/1
- 5. Do You Remember Iakov Do You Recall Listen: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/music/clipserve/B000003G19001005/1
- 6. God Had Given Us A Little Girl
- 7. Band Music/Make That Trumpet Merrier
- 8. Down Here On Earth Everything Flies So Fast
- 9. Rothschild Runs Away
- 10. Loss One Coffin For Marfa Ivanova
- 11. If They Could Live Without Hatred Or Evil
- 12. It's Better To Die
- 13. Be Kind To Me Don't Hit Me
- 14. Rothschild Plays The Violin
Film
- “Le Violon de Rothschild”, directed by Edgardo Cozarinsky.
Rothschild's Violin is about an opera by Veniamin Fleischman and the dramatic circumstances in which this little-known work was composed. Both a historical work and a piece of operatic fiction, Rothschild's Violin describes a work of art and the context in which was composed. The reconstitution of Fleischmann's opera is the core of the film, which Cozarinsky chose to film using post-synchronization so as to leave himself the greatest possible leeway in filming the opera's dramatic and visual elements.
- Director: Edgardo Cozarinsky
- Scenario: Edgardo Cozarinsky
- Image: Jacques Bouquin
- Montage: Martine Bouquin
- Music: Fleischmann, Chostakovitch, Budapester Klezmer Band
- Interprétation: Sergei Makovetski, Dainius Kazlauskas, Miklós Székely, Zoltán Zsoter, Mari Törőcsik, Ferenc Jávori, etc.
- Production: Les Films d'Ici
- Droits mondiaux: Les Films d'Ici
- Serge Lalou
- 12, rue Clavel
- F-75019 Paris
- 1996 - 35 mm - Couleur et noir et blanc - 110'