Ru
EnA. Denisov
“French in Russian”: hidden subtexts in Couplets of Trique from the opera “Eugene Onegin” by P. Tchaikovsky
Triquet’s couplets from the ball scene from P. Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin”, were usually interpreted by researchers as a facultative number with a decorative function. At the same time, its solution has some specific features. As is known, it is a quotation from the song of the French composer A. de Beauplan, “Dormez, dormez chères amours” (“Sleep, sleep, my dear beloved”), popular in the first half of the 19th century. It was known in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the early 1830s (as evidenced by publications), and was familiar to Tchaikovsky from one of the book from the series “Chants et chansons populaires de la France”, which was kept in his library. It is shown that its choice had very specific artistic motives (let us recall that in a similar scene of Pushkin’s novel, a different work is mentioned – “Reveillez-vous, belle endormie” by Ch. Dufresny). The poetic text of the original source is a diametrical opposite to the content of the previous scene of Onegin’s explanation with Tatyana. The transformation of the musical material towards simplification also looks unusual, actually representing a unique example of parody for Tchaikovsky’s heritage (though without caricature distortion). Its effect is also enhanced by the very form of presentation of the text of Triquet’s congratulations in distorted Russian (contrary to the traditions of Russian noble culture of the 19th century). It is concluded that the method of semantic inversion used by Tchaikovsky in the couplets is connected both with the content of the opera as a whole and with its leading plot plans – domestic and introspective-psychological.
Key words
quotation, semantic inversion, parody, Triquet couplets, ball, poly-lingualism.
For citation
Denisov A. “French in Russian”: hidden subtexts in Couplets of Trique from the opera “Eugene Onegin” by P. Tchaikovsky. In: South-Russian Musical Anthology. 2024. No. 3. Pp. 29–36.
