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"And Quiet Flows the Don" on the Opera Stage

85 years ago, on October 22, 1935, the premiere of the opera “And Quiet Flows the Don” took place at the Leningrad Academic Maly Opera Theater. 

The incredible popularity among the readers of Sholokhov's novel "And Quiet Flows the Don" was the reason for the composer Ivan Dzerzhinsky to create the opera with the same name. 

Well-known theater critic Andrian Piotrovsky wrote about this in his article “For Soviet Opera”: “These first and still modest steps of Soviet operatic creativity are a manifestation of the same magnificent creative upsurge that drives our entire beautiful era”. 

Dmitry Shostakovich in his article “A few words about Dzerzhinsky's opera” said: “... today, attending the premiere, I don't want to write about shortcomings, there are many of them." But at the same time we "feel a sense of deep joy and pride for the Soviet musical theater, which has been enriched by a new piece of music”. 

According to the composer Ivan Dzerzhinsky, he “did not want to write a musical illustration for the novel “And Quiet Flows the Don”, but to create an independent full-fledged piece of music”. 

The author of the libretto was the composer's brother Leonid Dzerzhinsky. He wrote: “There were two ways for me: the first was to work without departing from Sholokhov, carefully protecting the storyline of the novel, preserving the integrity of images and language, or only to follow Sholokhov, using the motives of the novel as an exceptionally fertile material for the libretto. The other way was full of danger to break away from the popular, beloved by the reader, a work of exceptional artistic value”. And so ... I have chosen the golden mean. <…> 

What changes have I made? First and foremost: I had to refuse to introduce into the libretto the image of Stepan, Aksinya's husband, since he prevented me from stratifying the everyday environment in which the stage action develops. Instead, I more vividly gave the image of Mitka Korshunov, the son of a rich farmer, as a bright double-headed representative of the wealthy Cossacks. ... 

Second: by virtue of stage conventions, I had to force events. <...> with the return of Gregory from the front, immediately endow him, alone, with a revolutionary-rebellious spirit, enthralling the nonresident peasantry and the poor peasants of the Cossacks to fight the old rotten system”. 

The performance was a great success. It was called the spring of Soviet opera art. In early 1936, the theater went on tour to Moscow. In January 1936, the leaders of the party and government attended the performance. Josef Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov gave a positive assessment to the work of the theater in the field of creating a Soviet opera. 

After quite successful, according to the press, opera staging “And Quiet Flows the Don” I. Dzerzhinsky began work on the production of the opera “Virgin Soil Upturned”. 

Lyudmila Razogreeva