The mysterious school of seeing

This is what Piotr Tchaikovsky wrote to Nikolai Konradi, his brother Modest's foster son, on 26 June 1891. At the time, he still referred to the subject that attracted him so much as King René's Daughter: this was the title of the play from which he and Modest were to shape his Iolanta in the role of librettist. Tchaikovsky had found the work by the Danish writer Henrik Hertz in the magazine Russkij Westnik(The Russian Messenger), as he explained in an interview in 1892, the year of the premiere. The piece had been printed there in the February issue of 1883. "Poetry, originality and the abundance of lyrical moments" had enchanted him at the time, according to the composer, so that he "vowed" to set it to music. The opportunity presented itself when St. Petersburg's Marinsky Theatre "ordered" a ballet and a one-act opera from Tchaikovsky for the 1891/92 season, as he wrote to the composer and pedagogue Mikhail Ippolit-Ivanov on December 24, 1890.

Modest Tchaikovsky also confirmed that Piotr himself had taken the opportunity to bring King René's daughter into the picture. However, Tchaikovsky was not yet familiar with the model for the desired ballet, which Marinsky director Ivan Vsevolozhsky had suggested, but was impressed after reading E. T. A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker and the Mouse King and accepted the suggestion.

The material that was to become Iolanta is a parable of knowledge, but also a touching fairy tale.

Iolanta, the daughter of Provençal King René, lives surrounded by rose bushes and companions and hidden from the world. Her father has commanded that she must know neither of his royal status nor of her blindness. What's more, anything to do with light or sight must not be mentioned in Iolanta's rose garden. Only when she has been given sight is she to meet Robert of Burgundy, to whom she was betrothed in her childhood. The king expects the famous physician Ibn-Hakia, whom he has brought from afar to remedy the situation, to cure her. But René is disappointed. According to Ibn-Hakia, the prerequisite for the cure is Iolanta's own desire to regain her sight.

Therefore, the first thing to do was to inform her of her condition. It is a romantic accident that the Burgundian knight Vaudémont, actually only Duke Robert's companion on his mission to break off the betrothal, takes on this task. The two fall in love, and their love for the knight becomes Iolanta's motivation to wish for sight.

Henrik Hertz based his drama on a constellation of historical figures: the three main characters are based on René d'Anjou (1409-1480), his daughter Jolande d'Anjou (Jolande of Lorraine, 1428-1483) and Frederick II Count Vaudémont (1420-1470, in the drama "Tristan"). In his after-note to the printed play, which was also added to German translations, Hertz emphasized his free treatment of history: "The historical ground on which this lyrical drama is rooted is not significant [...] the information which [history] gives us about Jolanthen is sparse. The poet therefore considered himself all the more entitled to follow his imagination, since he did no violence to history."

In fact, the historical basis helps the coherence of the basic conflict in the drama. The historical adversaries René d'Anjou and Antoine de Vaudémont agreed on a marriage contract between their children in 1483 with the mediation of Philip the Good of Burgundy. This was intended to settle the long-disputed succession in Lorraine. The conflict was extremely explosive and had led to the Battle of Bulgneville two years before the treaty was concluded, in the course of which Antoine's troops had even captured René. This background explains in Henrik Hertz's play why René is hiding his blind daughter: He fears that Antoine would feel betrayed by his daughter-in-law's blindness and that the conflict would flare up again. Modest Tchaikovsky deleted this background story, among others, for the opera libretto.

The fable about Iolanta's blindness and healing, on the other hand, is entirely the product of Henrik Hertz's imagination; and it is inspired by philosophical questions that apparently also inspired Piotr Tchaikovsky.

In the opera, it is the turning point that is executed in the great duet between Iolanta and Vaudémont: the knight has asked the princess for a red rose. When she repeatedly breaks a white one off the bush for him instead, he begins to see through her condition. Vaudémont is stunned - has she, the stranger, never asked to see the light? Not a particularly clever question, as the longing for something unknown is hard to imagine, as the patient Iolanta will later explain to her father. She is content to simply ask Vaudémont: "Knight, what is light?" The man addressed does not take long to answer and opens the duet: "Light is God's first 'becoming', the Creator's first gift to the world, the manifestation of God's glory, the most beautiful pearl in his crown!"

The fact that Iolanta also demands justice for her own - as she now also knows: limited - perception is a remarkable detail that makes the character more vivid and interesting. The project of the knight, the father, the drama and, subsequently, the opera is, of course, to allow the princess to participate in the "visualization of God's glory". It is about the realization of the (world) whole, as Piotr Tchaikovsky leaves no doubt in his composition of the finale, when he has the orchestra, soloists and choir sing the praises of God in a triple forte. In this context, musicologist Susanne Damann refers to Henrik Hertz's reception of the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, or more specifically his reflections on the nature of art. In his Studium generale, Schelling describes art as "a proclaimer of divine secrets, the revealer of ideas" - in an idealistic understanding of the essence of things. This vision of essence is not accomplished by seeing; rather, sensory perception is the prerequisite for perceiving what, according to Schelling, "flows directly from the Absolute" in the case of real art. If we follow Henrik Hertz to Schelling, then Iolanta must learn sensual perception in order to be able to approach the sensually imperceptible.

The doctor Ibn-Hakia's mantra is that Iolanta must learn of her blindness in order to desire and subsequently learn to see: "Before the mortal eyes open to the light, the immortal soul must comprehend this sensation." Susanne Damann also refers in this context to F. W. J. Schelling, whom she quotes: soul does not mean individuality, but on the contrary is the place where man "rises above all selfhood, whereby he (...) becomes capable of contemplating the essence of things, namely art." Schelling, in turn, in his lecture on the philosophy of art (1802-1803), was extremely complimentary about
Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), to whom he attributes "realism in its most sublime and perfect form". Ibn-Hakia's monologue, which goes back to Henrik Hertz, comes very close to Spinoza's concept of parallelism, according to which every idea must correspond to an object in the physical world.

Librettist Modest Tchaikovsky largely retained the philosophical remarks from Hertz's drama. What is striking is the expansion of the religious moment for the opera, which is expressed in the duet and the final chorus of thanksgiving. Here, librettist Modest Tchaikovsky gave his brother many opportunities to musically express his variously expressed special form of belief in God. "God does not need prayer. But we need it," wrote Piotr Tchaikovsky in his diary in September 1887.

Modest Tchaikovsky not only achieved the desired one-act length by shortening the historical background story and other elements of the original, but also created the necessary space and time for the characteristic solo and ensemble numbers: Iolanta's arioso at the beginning, the ensemble and choral piece around Iolanta's friends that establishes the garden scene, the King's sombre arioso and Ibn-Hakia's monologue. The two consecutive romantic arias by Robert and Vaudémont reveal Tchaikovsky's desire to give the soloists the opportunity to present themselves. However, the two arias are also important for the characterization of the figures: while Robert is portrayed as a passionate lover of sensuality in his song of longing for his beloved Matilde, Vaudémont conjures up a "pure" love in his "Romance" - which will reveal itself to him shortly afterwards in the form of Iolanta. Incidentally, this juxtaposition was not originally intended. Tchaikovsky only re-composed the "Romance" in October 1892 at the request of Nikolai Figner, Vaudémont's first performance, and included it as No. 6a in the finished score.

Piotr Tchaikovsky set the antagonism of darkness and light to music in the juxtaposition of "dark" B flat keys with the triumphant C major finale. On the "dark" side, in addition to Ibn-Hakia's monologue, the unusual orchestral introduction with only woodwinds and horns, in which Tchaikovsky plays with harmonic references to Richard Wagner's Tristan prelude, is particularly striking. Iolanta's melancholy arioso can also be found here, the passage in which Tchaikovsky musically narrates his suspicion that "something is not right". In contrast, there are the invocations of "God's first 'Become'" in the duet between Iolanta and Vaudémont and the finale mentioned above. The C major explosion seems to tolerate no contradiction to the unison praise of God and is set by Tchaikovsky as an overwhelming finale. Or, in the words of Eduard Hanslick: "...whereupon a short chorus of praise and thanksgiving concludes the opera."

At the Austrian premiere in 1900, the legendary critic saw the audience "attentive, with more devotion than enthusiasm". The reason for the critic's polite reserve can also be seen in the juxtaposition with Eugene Onegin , whose ardent supporter Hanslick repeatedly professed to be and in contrast to whom he saw Iolanta merely as the "careful work of a distinguished artist". What is interesting about Hanslick's essay, which also deserves to be called meticulous, is that in reflecting on the further prospects of success for Tchaikovsky's stage works
in Central Europe, he primarily recommends the ballets that were little known at the time - including The Nutcracker.

As the composition process progressed, Piotr Tchaikovsky himself expressed to Modest his changed perception of the two works created for the joint performance:

"As long as I was composing the ballet[The Nutcracker, note], I considered it insignificant and put off writing it until the opera, in which I wanted to show what I was still capable of. And now it seems to me that the ballet is good and the opera - nothing special."

It is well known that posterity found the ballet "good". That Tchaikovsky had achieved "something special" with Iolanta , on the other hand, was for a long time the opinion of an exclusive circle, including Gustav Mahler. Mahler had already initiated and conducted the German premiere in Hamburg in 1893, just over two weeks after the premiere. The artist was not deterred by the reserved reception of the double bill (together with Leoncavallo's Pagliacci) there, according to contemporary reviews, and in 1900, in his capacity as Vienna Court Opera Director, he also gave the work its Austrian premiere, about which Eduard Hanslick wrote. The fact that the following series of performances actually remained the last to date at the Vienna Court and State Opera reflects a general trend: while The Nutcracker began its triumphal march around the world, Iolanta was rarely performed outside Russia. It is only in recent years that the work has been rediscovered, particularly in German-speaking countries. It has become customary to perform it in combination with a second one-act opera, and the Vienna Volksoper recently presented an unconventional
Unconventional variant of the original combination with The Nutcracker.

With his production at the Vienna State Opera, director Evgeny Titov is now daring to take an unusual step: Iolanta will be performed here on its own. In an evening lasting around 90 minutes, the director wants to take the question of the nature of seeing literally: "What does it mean," says Evgeny Titov, "when we say: we take off all our blinkers and look at the world?" Anyone familiar with Titov's work knows that this unprotected view of the world could reveal a previously unseen, perhaps even unthought-of variant of the fairy tale about the blind princess.