Page 19 - Phil opening night program digital final

Program Notes

Gershwin’s magnum opus, his 1935 opera Porgy and Bess, is among the best-known of all American
operas. He stipulated that all the singing characters should be played by Black performers and conducted
extensive in-person research on folk melodies, local accents, and characters in Charleston, South Carolina
while developing his score. Courage’s Fantasy is far more than just a medley of Gershwin’s great tunes: it
encapsulates the entire opera in miniature form framing the beloved arias with elements of the incidental
music, the haunting prologue, and leitmotifs.

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Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor Alexander Borodin
(1833-1887)
Seventy years ago, the gorgeous melodies of Kismet (can you hum “Stranger in Paradise”?) were the toast
of Broadway. They earned a posthumous Tony award for Alexander Borodin (1833-1887), a military surgeon
and organist chemist. While completing his post-doc at Heidelberg University under Bunsen (the burner)
and Erlenmeyer (the flask), Borodin composed and played piano duets with his best friend Mendeleev (the
periodic table). The two hiked the Italian Alps during the period chronicled by the recent Netflix series The
Empress, then returned to St. Petersburg as professors of organic chemistry; Borodin was the first to offer
medical courses to women there in 1872.
Music and history were lifelong interests of Borodin, who was named after a Russian serf owned by his
biological father, a Georgian prince (Luka Gedevanishvili). His half-sister (Princess Alexandra, who just after
his birth) became a Romanov by marrying Nicolas Lukash, an illegitimate son of the future Tsar Alexander
I. Lukash fought on the winning side during the Napoleonic Wars, then served as a senator. Borodin was
educated by excellent private tutors and grew up insulated from political conflict.
As a composer he is praised for his expansive tone poem On the Steppes of Central Asia, and he spent
eighteen years developing Prince Igor, an opera completed three years after his death by Rimsky-Korsakov
and Glazunov. The story based on The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, the earliest Slavonic language writing (a
favorite of Catherine the Great), set in the vast prairies north of the Black and Caspian Seas just after Khan
Kobyak was captured in 1183 and Khan Konchak was able to unite many nomadic tribes. The titular Prince
Igor of Novhorod-Siverskyi (just north of Kiev, Ukraine; occupied by the Russian army four years ago)
led a failed (unauthorized) raid on the Cumans, called the Polovtsi (the blonde Ones) in medieval Slavic
sources. These Polovtsians devasted the Kievan Rus and Hungarian steppes in a 175-year war (taking slaves
annually) and helped to make Georgia the most powerful kingdom in the region, so the epic tale was a
foundational one for Borodin.
This may seem like a medieval version of “Remember the Alamo,” but the Romanovs were still fighting
to expand their empire during 1717-1895 (Crimea and the Cumanian prairies, both currently in disputed
Ukrainian territories). Catherine the Great’s expansionist goals included a “Greek Project” to recapture
Constantinople. In 1790, she even wrote a “musical spectacle” glorifying the (Viking) establishment of the
Kievan Rus called The Early Reign of Oleg. Greek merchants were invited to settle around Kiev, mixing with
large Jewish minorities and resulting in new dances (trepak) and musical hybrids. Central Asian Khanates

Season 2026/27 Music is the Answer! ~ 1717
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