{"id":128,"date":"2015-01-18T00:06:14","date_gmt":"2015-01-18T00:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/program_note\/overture-colas-breugnon\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T17:10:59","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T17:10:59","slug":"overture-colas-breugnon","status":"publish","type":"program_note","link":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/program_note\/overture-colas-breugnon\/","title":{"rendered":"Overture to Colas Breugnon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> Kabalevsky is perhaps best known to American audiences for his irrepressible orchestral classic, the <em>Comedians&#8217; Galop. <\/em>&nbsp;&nbsp;While the Russian \u201cheavyweights\u201d of the twentieth century were Shostakovich and Prokofiev, Kabalevsky is known for his accessible, cheerful, and popular musical style.&nbsp;&nbsp; His natural affinity for composing music well founded in traditional means was a distinct advantage for him, living as he did under severe Stalinist artistic restrictions.&nbsp;&nbsp; Art in the Soviet Union was required to reflect the common people and their virtues, and Kabalevsky responded with apparent alacrity.<\/p>\n<p> <em>Colas Breugnon<\/em>, finished in 1938, was his first opera, and remains one of his best-known works.&nbsp; The story derives from a novel by the eminent French writer, Romain Rolland (1866-1944), winner of the 1915 Nobel Prize in Literature.&nbsp; Rolland was a gifted writer in many fields, and is known especially for his works on music, as well as his efforts in general humanitarian and pacifist endeavors.&nbsp; Invited by Maxim Gorky to Moscow in 1935 to meet his hero, Joseph Stalin, Rolland was a natural choice for Kabalevsky to provide \u201cpolitically correct\u201d material.&nbsp; Rolland was fascinated with his own roots in ancient French history and culture, and conceived this cheeky, irreverent plot of a sixteenth-century sculptor\u2019s escapades with a villainous Duke.&nbsp; Owing to an outbreak of the bubonic plague, the Duke orders everything in the village burned, including Colas\u2019 statues.&nbsp; Colas exacts his revenge, executing a commission for a heroic statue of the Duke by depicting him sitting backward astride an ass.&nbsp;&nbsp; The gaiety and vivacity of Kabalevsky\u2019s comic opera is totally reflected in the charming overture.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Wm. E. Runyan<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 2015 William E. Runyan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"program_note_tax":[34],"class_list":["post-128","program_note","type-program_note","status-publish","hentry","program_note_tax-dmitrikabalevsky"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/program_note"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"program_note_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runyanprogramnotes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_note_tax?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}