Prokofiev’s first version of War and Peace

: lyrico-dramatic scenes on the novel by L. N. Tolstoy, Op. 91 (1942)

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to provide a critical edition of the first version of Prokofiev’s opera War and Peace, op. 91. Prokofiev completed the vocal score of the first version in April 1942 but was forced to revise the opera multiple times over a decade due to Soviet ideological and aesthetic pressure. Overall there remain five identifiable versions of the opera, with the last revisions in 1952, the year preceding Prokofiev’s death.

The only version of the opera available in orchestral score is the fifth version, printed in Moscow in 1958. It remains the version that opera companies perform to date. However, as the most heavily revised version, it differs quite substantially from Prokofiev’s initial version. What was originally an intimate, anti‐epic opera focused on the love story between Natasha and Andrei gradually became a political opera about the heroism of Fieldmarshall Kutuzov and the Russian folk in Russia’s victory over the French. Pressured by various entities, Prokofiev added large sections of music that stylistically differed from the initial version, resulting in a final version that is more a repository of all the revised and extended passages than a stylistically consistent whole. With the added scenes and music, the final version is not only substantially lengthier than the first, it is also considerably costlier to perform.

The critical edition included in the portfolio of this thesis serves two purposes: it restores the composer’s initial vision of the opera and provides a more practical alternative for performance. The edition was reconstructed from Prokofiev’s 1942 vocal score and his orchestral annotations; in places where, because of the revision process, Prokofiev did not orchestrate the vocal score, orchestration is provided by Professor Rita McAllister. Accompanying the portfolio is a commentary, based on extensive primary source research, that includes a detailed chronology of the history of all the versions of War and Peace, a survey of extant scholarship on the opera, a discussion of the key manuscript sources and a summary of the editorial methodology used in preparing the edition.

Date of Award	28 Jun 2018
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Rita McAllister (Supervisor)