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Abstract
Throughout the 1930s, there was a concerted effort to create original operatic works that reflected the revolutionary and postrevolutionary sentiments of the young Soviet Union. This focus began alongside sweeping changes instituted by the State under Stalin’s leadership, which included the First Five-Year Plan (1928–1932) and the passage of the 1932 Resolution “On the Restructuring of Literary and Artistic Organizations.” In addition to these early organizational changes, the early, developing stages of the uniform aesthetic of socialist realism were underway throughout the artistic organizations created by the resolution. Each of these elements played a significant role in the development of Soviet opera by turning attention to opera explicitly and creating artistic organizations, such as the composers’ union, that analyzed, theorized, and evaluated these original works. Soviet opera was caught in between a number of mitigating factors, but scholarship that has focused on the operas created in the 1930s has largely focused on the State’s interventions into artistic matters and the development and application of socialist realism. The primary intent of this dissertation is to deliver a broader view of these shaping forces on Soviet composers and their operas between 1929–1939. I challenge the claims that socialist realist aesthetics and the State’s interference in artistic affairs constituted the only extenuating circumstances that affected the new original Soviet operas of the decade. To accomplish this, I examine the debates on socialist realism and Soviet opera in the press, in published speeches, and in rehearsal and performance commentaries. My study looks at six operas from the decade by Vladimir Deshevov, Lev Knipper, Dmitry Shostakovich, Ivan Dzerzhinsky, Dmitry Kabalevsky, and Tikhon Khrennikov. I also weigh these discussions against score evidence, revealing composers’ decisions on plots, characters, themes, styles, and genres to observe any correlations that may or may not emerge between them. Ultimately, I argue that while the State moved to increase the centralization of the arts and to manage artistic production, the six operas in this study reflect the composers’ abilities to develop unique and diverse creative responses in spite of these external pressures.