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Emelian Pugachov. Scene from the opera. On the left: Ivan Yashugin (Pugachov). Molotov (Perm). 1942
In Perm the premiere of Marian Koval’s opera Emelian Pugachov was to be dedicated to the November holidays. During the War plots on heroic battles with the enemy – from Ivan Susanin and Prince Igor to Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky – were in particular demand. In accordance with Soviet ideology, the image of Pugachov in the opera was made heroic, Pugachov’s resistance staged as a folk uprising. Koval – formerly an active participant of the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) – did not disguise his attachment to the so-called democratic movement in music. A composer of songs and song cycles to verse by Soviet poets, for several years he was Artistic Director of the Russian National Pyatnitsky Chorus. For the opera he was only able to compose the piano score, which was orchestrated by Dmitry Rogal-Levitsky, a professor at the Moscow Conservatoire, a brilliant connoisseur of the orchestra and author of theoretical treatises on instrumentation. Critics noted the lack of correspondence between the “splendidly picturesque and somewhat ‘French’ colour of Rogal-Levitsky’s score and the form of Koval’s music – at times deliberately boorish and primitive in terms of harmonies.”*
* V. Bogdanov-Berezovsky. The Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre. Leningrad–Moscow, 1959. P. 212