Iolanta, Tchaikovsky’s Last Opera.

IOLANTA

Tchaikovsky’s Last Opera.

In 1892 Tchaikovsky was approached to write a double-bill spectacle for a Russian audience, a one act-opera and a two-act ballet. He immediately imagined a drama that had caught his attention years back from the Danish writer René Hertz. It was the story of the French Princess Yolande de Lorraine, (‘Iolante’ in Tchaikovsky’s opera). The story tells the misfortune fate of a blind woman. Her father would always make sure she did not know about her own illness, or the fact that she was a princess, until one day a man came the castle to meet her. This man, Vaudémont, let her know the truth, which evoked new situations in everyone’s lives around them. 

Tchaikovsky divided this opera in only 4 scenes. I the first one, we meet Iolanta in her beautiful garden, which is always guarded by Bertrand and Martha, who have taken care of her, and to whom Iolanta confesses her habitual sadness. She feels there is something missing in her life. The second scene revolves around a Doctor that presumably could heal her illness, but the King is afraid it might not work. The third scene is where ‘love’ comes along and Iolanta meets Vaudémont. They fall in love at first encounter. We hear a great love duet between them and Vaudémont finds out she is blind. He explains her situation and she face, for the first time, her life’s reality. In the last scene the King finds the couple confessing their love to one another and that Iolanta is aware of her illness. This is the precise moment to give her the treatment she refused. The King uses this in his favor and threatens to kill Vaudémont. Iolanta is left with no choice but to take the treatment. The story ends up ‘Happily ever after’.

Tchaikovsky based the whole opera in one specific moment from the third scene, which is the duet between Iolanta and Vaudémont, and from there he decided to write music before and after. It is fair to say that this is the real climax of the opera in both music and text. This is the moment when reality hits both characters and they decide that Love will overcome the obstacles. The libretto was written by his brother Modest, who had been also in charge of ‘The Queen of Spades’ libretto and had done a remarkable job with it, Tchaikovsky himself wrote “your libretto is quite perfect” in a letter on April 15, 1981.

Tchaikovsky was not thrilled he started working on “The Nutcracker” in 1890 before his departure to America and left “Iolanta” for last. He wanted to get the ballet out of the way and eventually focus on the opera, but at the same time he felt he was repeating himself and would consistently compare “Iolanta” to his previous opera “The Enchantress”. He also expressed he was afraid that after his last one, “Queen of Spades”, he would not be able to exceed both his own and people’s expectations about his work.  

I found the Introduction of the Opera to be particularly interesting, considering the fact that he only used a portion of the orchestra.The orchestration for ‘Iolanta’ is traditional and within the expectations of any opera towards the end of the nineteenth century (perhaps the only thing extra is that it requires two harps). However, in the Introduction there are only wind instruments playing (including of course horns), there is nothing written for strings and percussion. 

The Introduction’s (Overture’s?) chromatic leitmotiv makes it hard to identify which key we are in, but if we take it further we can say that the whole introduction is, in fact, a preface to Iolanta’s first appearance.The last chord sets the perfect entrance for the first scene. Spanish Scholar Ramón Tener talks about this ‘leitmotiv’ being associated with Iolanta’s sadness and that the portion of the orchestra that is not playing may represent what Iolanta has but cannot use: her eyes. This first scene holds the argument in which Iolanta is set with two ladies always looking after her and we also understand she’s blind. The music is straight-forward using the harps like a ‘romanza’-type  atmosphere. After this conversation Tchaikovsky presents Iolanta’s first Aria, in which she describes many of the things she can only hear day-to-day (when there’s light and the sun’s out) and how she feels a void in her life, all of these in the key of G minor.

Then there is a great contrast in the modulation  to G major (now talking about the night’s beautiful sounds) that embraces a much fuller sound coming from pianissimo to double forte. Dynamics play a very important role in the setting of specific aspects and in this Aria the way he uses ‘ff’ for the night and a major setting contrasting with the ‘pp’ and minor for day gives an incredible musical output.  

I know it’s very vague to say that certain type of music is ‘beautiful,’ and I fear making myself even more vague, I do honestly think that Tchaikovsky had nothing much to prove to any other composers or even to himself and that Iolanta’s music is just very beautiful. The overall musical direction goes to ‘Love’ (if I may) and the way the composer envisioned it. I understand that for many people it can be boring, Korsakov himself said that this proved to be one of Tchaikovsky’s weakest compositions of all time, but I, for one, think it is a very honest opera with a surprisingly non-tragic end.

Tchaikovsky was in love with ‘Iolanta’ and I guess he felt identified with her. Think of it this way —he had an overprotective father who tried to do his best to take care of his child’s problems. But same as Iolanda, ever since he was little Tchaikovsky felt the same habitual sadness of something that was not clear in his life. Both King René and Petróvich guarded their children from the rest of the world not to ever find out what they were: one blind and the other homosexual.

Lloyd-Jones, David. “A background to Iolanta”. The Musical Times, Vol. 109, No. 1501 (Mar., 1968), pp. 225-226. http://www.jstor.org/stable/953481. Accessed 15 Apr. 2020.

Tchaikovsky Research. “Iolanta”. Iolanta. Last modified on 20 February 2020, at 18:31. https://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Iolanta