Semyon Kotko

"Semyon Kotko" ("Семён Котко" in Russian) is an opera in five acts by Sergei Prokofiev (Op. 81) to a libretto by Sergei Prokofiev and Valentin Katayev based on Valentin Katayev's 1937 novel "I Am The Son Of Working People".

Background

Prokofiev's only opera on a Soviet subject, "Semyon Kotko" was composed between the summers of 1938 and 1939 and received its premiere on 23 June 1940 at the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre in Moscow. The reception was moderately enthusiastic, but at that time ideology took precedence over all other considerations, and discussions in the press focused exclusively around "Semyon Kotko"'s importance as a “Soviet Opera”. The ingenious value of music was simply ignored.

"Semyon Kotko" was immediately withdrawn early in 1941, and the opera was not staged again until 1958 at Brno in Czechoslovakia. It finally entered the repertory of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1970, and it is now one of the main repertory of Kirov Opera at the Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg led by renowned Prokofiev interpreter Valery Gergiev.

From the beginning, it was intended that the opera would be produced by the brilliant director and a great friend of Prokofiev, Vsevolod Meyerhold, who was at that time the director of the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre. Both Prokofiev and Meyerhold had tried to plan productions of several of Prokofiev's operas in the past, but all of them had failed. However, on 20 June 1939, just a week before Prokofiev completed the piano score of "Semyon Kotko", Meyerhold was arrested and nothing would be heard about his fate from then on; many years later it came out that he was shot in February 1940. The whole production fell into jeopardy. An actress, Serafima Birman, took Meyerhold's place, but the result was dissatisfying.

Prokofiev later extracted an orchestral suite (Op. 81a) from the opera.

Although many critics have argued that "Semyon Kotko" is too complicated, unmelodic, and hard to understand, the opera has been rediscovered and appreciated by the audience nowadays. The famous pianist Sviatoslav Richter said, "The evening that I heard "Semyon Kotko" for the first time, I understood that Prokofiev was a great composer."Fact|date=April 2008

Roles