a-lyssnin’ weekly. august 14
Run, do not walk, to stream The Great on Hulu…seriously. The show is thoughtfully written by Tony McNamara and Deborah Davis they also wrote The Favourite, which I highly recommend] and it stars Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult who both turn in crazy-cool performances. It VERY LOOSELY follows the assumption of Empress Catherine the Great to power in Russia in 1762. The creators succeed beautifully in creating a quirky, anachronistic, period piece by marrying the gorgeous visual elements of royal court life in the late 18th century with familiar modern day vernacular and interactions between the characters. Every detail of the series seems considered and curated, right down to the credit music which is carefully selected from current pop music to reflect the plot and theme of each episode. You can find some of The Great’s soundtrack on the playlist for this week.
Catherine the Great, Certified Bad@$$
IRL, Catherine the Great was a Certified Bad@$$ that managed to lead a successful coup to overthrow her Certified Dumb@$$ husband and swiftly secure Russia for herself. A pretty ballsy move for girl from the outskirts of the German nobility who was *basically* penniless upon her arrival in Russia.
Catherine is remembered for having a deep love for Russia and its people. She learned and adopted the language quickly even though her husband, Peter III, hated Russian and rarely spoke it. Her quickness to adapt to Russian customs and ways of life gave her the support of the people, the military, and the church when she deposed her husband and installed herself as sole Empress over Russia in 1762.
Under her leadership, Russia saw the Enlightenment finally arrive on its doorstep. Catherine insisted on the implementation of science, reason, education, art, and culture in her court and sought fervently to elevate Russia into the same cultural spheres as their western European neighbors in Paris and Vienna. One of the ways she did this was by hiring western European composers to produce opera and musical entertainment for her court thereby securing Russia’s place as a cultural player on the world’s literal stage.
Cecilia Bartoli’s 2014 album St. Petersburg presents some these forgotten “Russian" operatic gems written for the court of Catherine [and her predecessors, Tsarinas Anna and Elizabeth]. Much of this music is quite obscure and some scholars point out the possible role of Soviet politics in effectively consigning these works to a dusty back closet in Russian musical history labeled “FOREIGN: DO NOT TOUCH | DANGER: WESTERN INFLUENCES | CAUTION: MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF FEMALE LEADERSHIP.” The New York Times delves deeper:
“But why was Ms. Bartoli the first to record this repertory? The neglect by performers is due to the scarcity of published sources and performing editions, itself the result of the ambivalence shown to this period by Russian and Soviet historians.
According to Inna Naroditskaya, a professor of music at Northwestern University, dual anxieties regarding the influence of foreigners and the power of women informed their judgments. These are operas that were commissioned from foreigners by female rulers who all had one foot in the West: Anna had spent formative years at the court of Courland (in modern-day Latvia); Elizabeth was part German; Catherine was born German, and a Lutheran. Together, they fostered an artistic and cultural ferment that was also in every respect an extension of their statecraft.
“It was a show for the world that it was a very powerful and westernized country,” Ms. Naroditskaya said in a phone interview. But as a music student in the Soviet Union, she said, she learned nothing of the blossoming of Italian music in 18th-century Russia: “At best it was considered as a mimicry of Western fashion that was not worthy of attention.””
Read the rest of Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim’s article here if you’re interested in nerding out just a little further. Three of the arias from St Petersburg that got me really juiced up are included on this week’s playlist and I hope you’ll give them a listen.
Soviet Russia may have stolen some sweet opera jams from us but what it gave us in return was one of the greatest YouTube videos that has ever existed. That’s right friends…the last stop on Alyssa's Russian Rabbit Hole is the Trololo Man.
This masterpiece of mid-century Soviet finery is possibly the catchiest tune on Earth and I think it gets mad points for gaining widespread fame in time for its star [Eduard Khil] to revel in his popularity and even PERFORM AN ENCORE before his death in 2012.
He didn’t have to do this for us but he did it anyway and that’s why he’s a damn YouTube hero. RIP Ed. Honestly, I’ve never heard this song and not been immediately cheered up so now I give it to you on the playlist. Enjoy it in good health. Something else you can enjoy in good health is this bonus video of the Google Doodle version of the original Trololo Man. You. are. welcome.
