Skylark (Glinka)

Tchaikovsky Research

During her benefit performance of Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville in Moscow on 30 April/12 May 1868, Désirée Artôt sang two Russian songs which Tchaikovsky had apparently orchestrated specially for her, apparently at the request of the Italian Opera impresario Eugenio Merelli [1]. One of these songs was Skylark (Жаворонок) by Mikhail Glinka (ČW 438) [2], while the other was I Still Love Him (Я всё ещё его, безумная, люблю) by Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky [3]. Both were performed in Rosina's teaching scene in Act II of the opera.

No references survive to Tchaikovsky's work on these arrangements, which have been lost.

Glinka's romance Skylark (also known as The Lark) was composed in 1840 to a poem by Nestor Kukolnik (1809-1868), and was published as No. 10 of his song cycle A Farewell to Saint Petersburg (Прощание к Петербургом) (1840).

Notes and References

  1. See ČW, p. 766.
  2. See Antrakt (Анткракт), 5 May 1868 [O.S.].
  3. The title of Dargomyzhsky's romance was established by Aleksandr Komarov in 2014. See Даргомыжский и Чайковский. Биографические и творческие пересечения (2014) and Neue Publikationen. Systematisches Verzeichnis der Werke Pёtr Il'ič Čajkovskijs (2018), p. 5.