Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands

Stephen Muir is a Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Leeds, UK. His research focuses on the music of Russia and Eastern Europe (particularly Rimsky-Korsakov and Dvořák), the critical editing of music, and Jewish liturgical music. Recent publications include a chapter on Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Pan Voyevoda in a collection of essays in honour of Julian Rushton (Boydell and Brewer, 2010), and studies of the musical source material for Dvořák’s opera Tvrdé palice in preparation for a scholarly edition of the opera in Bärenreiter’s New Dvořák Edition. Dr Anastasia Belina-Johnson is a Head of Classical Music at Leeds College of Music and a member of LUCOS (Leeds University Centre for Opera Studies). She is a musicologist, writer, presenter, and opera director. Her research interests include nineteenth-century music, opera, Wagner and his influences on Russian composers, modern operas written on Greek dramas, and twentieth-century British music. She is the author of Die tägliche Mühe ein Mensch zu sein (Wolke Verlag, 2013) and A Musician Divided: André Tchaikowsky in his own Words (Toccata Classics, 2013. She is currently working on the authorized biography of Andé Tchaikowsky and is co-editing with Derek Scott a volume of essays, The Business of Opera, for Ashgate. As opera director, Belina-Johnson focuses on rarely staged works; her productions include Taneyev’s Oresteia (2009), Salieri’s Les Danaides (2010), and Vaughan Williams’ The Poisoned Kiss (2012). She is an International Artistic Director of Koncerty Urodzinowe Chopina (Chopin Music Festival), Warsaw.

• Chapter 1 ‘One can learn a lot from Wagner, including how not to write operas’: Sergey Taneyev and his Road to Wagner, Anastasia Belina-Johnson; Chapter 2 ‘The end of opera itself’: Rimsky-Korsakov and Wagner, Stephen Muir; Chapter 3 How Russian was Wagner? Russian Campaigns to Defend or Destroy the German Composer during the Great War (1914–1918), Rebecca Mitchell; Chapter 4 Prophecy of a Revolution: Aleksey Losev on Wagner’s Aesthetic Outlook, Vladimir Marchenkov; Chapter 5 1The quotation is adapted from an interview with Dvo?ák given to Paul Pry of The Sunday Times, 10 May 1885, p. 6. The complete interview is reprinted in an appendix to (ed.), Rethinking Dvo?ák: Views from Five Countries (Oxford, 1966), pp. 281–8. The original version of the quotation is given below (see footnote 28)., Jan Smaczny; Chapter 6 Wagnerism in Moravia: Janá?ek’s First Opera,Šárka, Michael Ewans; Chapter 7 ‘Where the King Spirit becomes manifest’: Stanis?aw Wyspia?ski in Search of the Polish Bayreuth, Rados?aw Okulicz-Kozaryn; Chapter 8 The Reception of Wagner’s Music and Ideas in Poland during the Communist Years(1945–1989), Magdalena Dziadek;