Opera from Eastern Europe was unknown to Met audiences prior to the arrival of Giulio Gatti-Casazza as General Manager and Arturo Toscanini as his principal musical advisor in 1908. In the managerial team’s first season, Gustav Mahler conducted the company premiere of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, which was presented in German but with a Czech leading soprano, Emmy Destinn, and a Czech choreographer, Ottokar Bartik, for the important dance sequences. Mahler then followed up the next season leading the first Met production of a Russian opera, Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades.
In 1913, Toscanini conducted the United States premiere of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, which firmly established its place in the repertory and was subsequently performed in 17 consecutive seasons. During the 1909–10 season, dancers such as the legendary Anna Pavlova and Mikhail Mordkin and choreographers Michel Fokine and Marius Petipa introduced Russian ballet to the Met.
Another Russian grand historical fresco, Borodin’s Prince Igor, premiered at the Met in 1915. Giorgio Polacco, Toscanini’s successor as chief conductor of the Italian repertory, conducted. Both Boris Godunov and Prince Igor were sung in Italian at their company premieres. Boris Godunov would not be heard at the Met in its original Russian until 1974. After two seasons, Prince Igor was not staged again at the Met until 2014, when it was finally given in Russian.
Bartik’s The Bartered Bride
Left: Gina Torriani and Ottokar Bartik led the folk dances in the Met premiere of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride. Bartik made his Met debut with The Bartered Bride in 1909, then remained as a dancer and choreographer with the company until 1928. He choreographed eight operas, including the Met premieres of Prince Igor and of Janácek’s Jenůfa.
Right: In the Met premiere of The Bartered Bride, Czech soprano Emmy Destinn “sang gloriously” wrote Globe critic Pitts Sanborn. In addition to being a major star, Destinn was a committed patriot who promoted Czech culture. Unfortunately, her connections with the Czech resistance caused her to be sequestered by the Austrians in her chateau during World War I, suspending her singing career at a fateful time.
The cast for the Met premiere of The Bartered Bride, left to right: unidentified woman, tenor Albert Reiss, mezzo-soprano Marie Mattfeld, tenor Andreas Dippel, soprano Emmy Destinn, tenor Carl Jörn, bass Adam Didur, mezzo-soprano Henriette Wakefield, bass Robert Blass, unidentified man.
Photo: Lande NY
Left: The great composer and conductor Gustav Mahler led performances at the Met for three seasons from 1907 to 1910. Naturally, he conducted works by Germanic composers Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner, but he also introduced Slavic works to the Met. A native Bohemian, Mahler led the first performances of The Bartered Bride in 1909. The following season, he brought The Queen of Spades to the Met. Both operas were given in German.
Right: Bedřich Smetana composed The Bartered Bride in the 1860s, and the final version premiered in Prague in 1870. It took a few decades for the opera to be accepted abroad, and it was usually in German translation as Die Verkaufte Braut. Mahler brought the opera to Hamburg and then to the Vienna Court Opera, before leading the Met premiere.
Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades
Polish bass Adamo Didur sang the role of Count Tomsky in the Met premiere of The Queen of Spades in 1910. Didur’s Met career paralleled exactly the years of Giulio Gatti-Casazza’s management, from 1908 to 1935, during which time he sang more than 900 performances of an astounding 55 roles.
Left: Contemporary reviews generally praised soprano Emmy Destinn for her acting ability as well as her singing. Of her Lisa in The Queen of Spades, the New York Times critic credited her with “searching, tragic power” in her great scene by the Neva and noted that “her singing throughout … was superb.”
Right: Polish heldentenor Leo Slezak had a brief but impressive Met career, making a particular impact in the difficult title roles of Verdi’s Otello and Wagner’s Tannhäuser. The New York Times wrote of his Hermann in The Queen of Spades, “a large part of the success … was due to the superb performance by Mr. Slezak.”
The Met premiere of The Queen of Spades in 1910 was the first opera by Tchaikovsky to be staged in America. Even with an acclaimed performance led by Mahler, it was not an immediate success and was given only four times. The Met did not revive The Queen of Spades until 1965, when it was given in English. In 1972, it was the first opera to be performed completely in Russian at the Met.
Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov
The first Met production of Boris Godunov was bought outright from the sumptuous Paris stagings arranged by impresario Serge Diaghilev, which were the first performances of the opera outside Russia. Arturo Toscanini conducted the Met performances, which were sung in Italian. In the scene above, the title character, sung by bass Adamo Didur, confronts the Shuisky tenor Angelo Badà.
Photo: White Studio
Left: This costume design for Boris Godunov by Léon Bakst was not for the Met production. Bakst, however, worked on many other productions for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe. The company even performed at the Met in 1916.
Right: A chorus costume from the Met’s original production of Boris Godunov is part of the archival collection. The costume designer was Ivan Bilibine.
Photo: jonathan tichler
Left: Bass Adamo Didur “gave a remarkably vivid and dramatically thrilling impersonation of the remorseful Czar,” wrote Richard Aldrich in The New York Times. Over the next 12 years, Didur would sing the part 49 times, a Met record.
Photo: herman Mishkin
Right: Two Americans, tenor Paul Althouse and mezzo-soprano Louise Homer, starred as the Pretender Dmitri and Marina in the Met premiere of Boris Godunov. Mussorgsky’s opera was performed in its revised version, which included the Polish scene and orchestrations by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Photo: white studio
Mussorgsky died in 1881 leaving Boris Godunov unfinished. The 1913 Met performances were the first in the United States and were a resounding success. Boris Godunov was revived every season from 1913 to 1930 and has been given often since. The 1953 production was in English, and in 1974, the opera was given entirely in Russian (Two famous Boris interpreters, basses Fyodor Chaliapin and Alexander Kipnis, had sung their part in Russian while others sang in Italian).
Borodin’s Prince Igor
Left: Costume worn by dancer Rosina Galli in the Met’s first production of Prince Igor, designed by Attilio Comelli.
Right: Soprano Frances Alda and baritone Pasquale Amato sang the roles of Yaroslavna and Igor at the United States premiere of Borodin’s Prince Igor in 1915. Both were major artists who joined the Met in the first year of Giulio Gatti-Casazza’s management. Amato was one of the company’s leading Italian baritones, singing in more than 600 performances. Alda had a varied repertory and sang leading roles in eight Met premieres. In 1910, she married Gatti-Casazza.
Photo: White Studio
Top: The set for the opening scene of Prince Igor. The sets and costumes for the Met production were replicas of those created for the original production at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre.
Photo: White Studio
Left: Ottokar Bartik choreographed the famous Polovtsian Dances for the Met premiere of Prince Igor. The lead dancers were Rosina Galli and Giuseppe Bonfiglio, who in their “elaborate pantomime dance … achieve[d] highly picturesque and even thrilling results” (The New York Times). Galli and Bonfiglio had long careers as lead dancers in the Met’s ballet troupe.
Photo: Herman Mishkin
Right: Cover for the first published edition of Prince Igor (1899). Borodin’s score was unfinished at his death and various performing editions with differing orders of scenes have been used over the years.
Photo: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York. Fuld Collection.
Above: The final scene of Prince Igor at the Met premiere, with soprano Frances Alda and bass Adamo Didur standing at left, and baritone Pasquale Amato and tenor Luca Botta on horseback. Despite praise for the spectacle, exotic dances, and powerful choruses, Prince Igor only survived for three seasons and a total of ten performances before disappearing from the Met repertory for nearly a century.
Photo: White Studio
Right: A professional doctor and chemist, Borodin composed music as an avocation. Along with Mussorgsky and Rimsky- Korsakov, he belonged to “The Five,” a group of composers who aimed to create a uniquely Russian musical style. Prince Igor was Borodin’s most important contribution to that effort, and although the opera did not succeed in permanently entering the Met’s repertory in 1915, a lavish new production in 2014 by Dmitri Tcherniakov, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, focused new interest on the piece.
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