ABSTRACT

In 1786, at the age of 57, Catherine wrote her first three folk-inspired comic operas. Catherine's chosen name for the second grandson, Konstantin, referred to his planned destiny in Constantinople, one of Catherine's own imperial fantasies. In creating the operatic version of Fevei, Catherine combined personal and political fantasies by emphasizing spousal devotion and the exotic far reaches of her empire through a quest adventure tale. Her second comic opera, Boeslaevich, Novgorod Knight, draws not on fairy tales but on a different folk form, the epic bylina. Since no opera called Koslav has ever emerged, scholars assume that its name was changed, and that Catherine may have begun writing the opera Woeful Knight Kosometovich just after her declaration of war. Fedul and his Children, a short one-act opera with music by Martin and Pashkevich, later opened at the Stone Theatre on 19 February, and in Moscow on 27 December 1795.