Le coq d’or: “Hymn to the Sun”

Composer: RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, Nikolai
  • Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Zolotoy petushok (The Golden Cockerel) was composed in 1906-7. The plot is adapted from a fairy tale by Pushkin.1
  • The Golden Cockerel was R.-K.’s last opera. It didn’t premiere until 1909, after his death; its production had been delayed by the Russian political censors.2
    • The censors didn’t like this opera because it portrays a controlling ruler who gets his country into long, pointless wars. (Apparently the recent Russo-Japanese War hadn’t been popular).3
    • In fact, near the end of the opera there’s a line that refers to “a new dawn…without the Tsar,” but the censors didn’t succeed in axing that, because the line was taken directly from Pushkin’s original.4
  • The reason English speakers often know this work by a French title, Le coq d’or, is because Diaghilev produced it as an opera-ballet with the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1914. This version became more famous because Russian opera was not frequently performed outside Russia.5
  • This movement, the “Hymn to the Sun,” is sung in the opera by the Queen of Shemakha. This aria actually premiered before the entire opera, in a concert performance by Lithuanian soprano Nadeshda Zabela in 1908.6
  • In the opera, the beautiful Queen of Shemakha sings this coloratura aria in the presence of the foolish warmongering King Dodon. She then pursues her plot to take over Dodon’s kingdom by alluring and marrying the king.7
  • This aria is reminiscent of the coloratura writing in Delibes’ Lakme. Both are using a late Romantic idiom that associated this type of coloratura with “exotic” sensualism.8

Sources

  1.  Marina Frolova-Walker, Mark Humphreys, Lyle Neff, Rita McAllister, Iosif Genrikhovich Rayskin, and Detlef Gojowy, “Rimsky-Korsakov family,” Grove Music Online (2001), January 8, 2020, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000052074. 
  2. Ibid.
  3. Richard Taruskin, “Golden Cockerel, The,” Grove Music Online (2002), accessed January 8, 2020,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000007911. 
  4. Ibid.
  5. Frolova-Walker, et al, “Rimsky-Korsakov family,” Grove Music Online.
  6. Elizabeth Forbes, “Zabela(-Vrubel), Nadeshda,” Grove Music Online (2002), accessed January 8, 2020,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000002696. 
  7. Taruskin, “Golden Cockerel, The,” Grove Music Online. 
  8. Ibid.

Cut IDs

19395