The Decembrists

The Decembrists (, Dekabristi) is an historical opera by Yuri Shaporin with libretto by Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, Aleksey Tolstoy and others. It was premiered in 1953 after a long and difficult period of composition lasting some 30 years. In a style highly reminiscent of the great 19th-century Russian composers, especially Borodin, Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky, it gives a rather fictionalized account of the 1825 Decembrist revolt of Russian army officers against the Tsarist government. Frequently performed in the Soviet Union, where it was seen as the culmination of Shaporin's career, it has never been well known in the West except through its most popular number, the Soldiers' Chorus. Composition The Decembrists had a long gestation, lasting indeed for most of Shaporin's professional life. In its first version, titled Polina Gyobel’, it focused on the love between , one of the conspirators in the Decembrist revolt of 1825, and , the title-character. Polina Gyobel’ had a libretto by the historian and Shaporin's close friend Aleksey Tolstoy, one of whose poems he had previously set. Two scenes from it were performed in 1925 to mark the uprising's centenary. In the succeeding years Shaporin worked on rewriting the opera, taking advice from his friend Boris Asafyev and other writers. In 1935 the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow commissioned a work from him, inducing him on to renew his efforts, and some scenes from a new version were staged at the Bolshoi shortly thereafter. For several years from 1947 Shaporin worked his way towards a third version of the opera, going through a series of new draft librettos by several well-known writers; over the years enough of these were produced to fill seven filing boxes. This version, completed in 1951, still did not meet with official approval. The last libretto, largely by Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, brought to the forefront the Decembrist revolutionaries themselves rather than the two lovers, and assigned a greater role to the Russian masses than in fact they actually played in the Decembrist story, Shaporin having been persuaded to abandon his previous intention to keep his opera historically accurate. This version culminated in a battle-scene conceived on a huge scale which could only be produced by an opera house boasting a very large stage and an almost unlimited budget for sets and extras.