Authors

Discussion

The Moscow Private Opera was born as a part of the artistic mecenat by the merchant class that emerged in Russia at the end of the 19th century, and was based in Moscow under the leadership of its founder, Savva Marmontov (1841-1918). Mamontov was deeply influenced by Richard Wagner, who advocated the significance of comprehensive art work (Gesamtkunstwerk), especially opera, which is a high-dimensional art form that includes not only music but also theater and art as important components. Having founded his own private opera, Mamontov developed it into a pioneer of the modernist movement of the “Silver Age” by presenting innovative opera productions.

Thus, this paper focuses on the Moscow Private Opera, which had a great influence on Russian artistic culture from the end of the 19th century to the early 20th century, and analyzes its opera performance data, mainly based on archival materials collected and viewed in Russia. First, the date of premiere, total number of performances and the span of performances of each opera will be shown to clarify the era settings and thematic trends of operas that the Moscow Private Opera actively featured. Then this paper will consider the historical background of the opera performances. In addition to this, the influence of foreign singers, especially Marie van Zandt (1858-1919), will be analyzed by looking at the trends in ticket revenue from the programs in order to examine their huge contribution to the development of Russian opera culture, which has far not been explored in the previous research.