Book Reviews: Alexander Serov and the Birth of the Russian Modern

Divided into five chapters, with an introduction and bibliography, the volume traces Serov's life in the context of the mid-nineteenth century Russian music scene between Mikhail Glinka and Aleksandr Dragomyzhskii on the one hand, and the Mighty Five on the other, and between Slavophilism and Westernization. Quenoy draws on a wide range of sources and discourses, such as Russian love-disdain towards Italian opera, the surge of Wagnerism that swept over Russia in later decades, the involvement of major literary figures in fostering Russian opera, and in the imperial politics dominating every facet of culture including musical theater. Serov's three operas follow the same five-act format and treat female heroines much in the nineteenth-century fashion--Judith survives and achieves her goal through intrepid cunning, tsarina Rogneda, spared at the end of the opera, is locked in a monastery, and the female lead in Fiend is knifed.