Rimsky-Korsakov opera’s and ballets in the interwar period in Brussels (1919-1938)

Rimsky-Korsakov opera’s and ballets in the interwar period in Brussels (1919-1938)

In Belgian intellectual and cultural circles between the wars, there was a huge interest in Russian repertoire.
From 1919 onwards, the Koninklijke Muntschouwburg van Brussel, the national Belgian opera, invested in Russian ballet and opera productions. Almost every season in the 1920s and in the 1930s a new Russian opera or ballet was produced, especially those of Rimsky-Korsakov. All the operas were sung in a French translation. (The ballet Scheherazade, The Tale of Tsar Saltan, The Tsar’s bride, The golden Cockerel,…).
This paper will analyse the Brussels Rimsky-Korsakov productions of the inter war period in the way they were visualised, staged and accepted by the audience by analysing the views of the set designers and stage directors. Are they influenced by neo-nationalist aesthetic ideas, 19th century Russian realism and naturalism or the exotic image of Russia as propagated in the West by Sergei Diaghilev? Moreover, the views of the Belgian critics will be analysed.