Nineteenth-century Russian music has often been considered something ‘special’. This is a conviction widespread among audiences, musicians, critics and scholars alike; a belief eagerly stimulated and exploited in the marketing of this music outside Russia, and that continues to contribute to its appeal to Western audiences to this day. As is well-known, nationalist ideology encouraged Russian composers to seek ways to actively distinguish their music from dominant Italian, French, and German traditions. Nineteenth-century nationalism, therefore, goes some way to explain why some of the most famous Russian pieces sound so recognizably Russian to the initiated listener. It does not, however, justify the strong tendency in later scholarship to limit discussions of Russian music to those aspects of the repertoire that could be contrasted to Western mainstream practice, or to put greater store on them because of their purportedly greater authenticity. In this thesis it is argued that the desire to develop a national style had to compete with other interests, principles, and tastes. In this sense, nationalism was always negotiated. The study of Russian music and the role of nationalism within it can profit from examining how the tensions between the widespread desire for a national style and the simultaneous adherence to international traditions and trends were played out. This central idea is applied to a selection of four operas, in case studies that deal with previously neglected or misinterpreted aspects of these works: the use of Italian conventions in Mikhail Glinka’s patriotic A Life for the Tsar (1836), the depiction of local colour in Aleksandr Serov’s biblical opera Judith (1863), the relation of Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of Orleans (1881) to French grand opera, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s turn to traditional forms and lyricism in The Tsar’s Bride (1899). On the one hand, this approach provides new insights for each of these operas; on the other, by considering the implications for the contemporary perception of their ‘Russianness’, it offers a fresh perspective on the functioning of national thought in the Russian opera world. The various views documented in the creation and reception of these works suggest that nineteenth-century Russian composers and critics, including the members of the so-called Mighty Handful, were generally speaking not as preoccupied with ‘Russianness’ as several subsequent generations of Western critics would be, and more concerned with characterization or local colour instead.
