Victory over the Sun is a Russian Futurist

Russian Futurism

Russian Futurism is the term used to denote a group of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism"...

 opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 premiered in 1913 at the Luna Park in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

.

The libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 written in zaum

Zaum

Zaum is a word used to describe the linguistic experiments in sound symbolism and language creation of Russian Futurist poets such as Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh....

language was contributed by Aleksei Kruchonykh, the music was written by Mikhail Matyushin

Mikhail Matyushin

Michael Vasilyevich Matyuschin was a Russian painter and composer, leading member of the Russian avant-garde. In 1910–1913 Matyushin and his wife Elena Guro were key members of the Union of the Youth, an association of Russian Futurists...

, the prologue

Prologue

A prologue is an opening to a story that establishes the setting and gives background details, often some earlier story that ties into the main one, and other miscellaneous information. The Greek prologos included the modern meaning of prologue, but was of wider significance...

 was added by Velimir Khlebnikov

Velimir Khlebnikov

Velimir Khlebnikov , pseudonym of Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov , was a central part of the Russian Futurist movement, but his work and influence stretch far beyond it.Khlebnikov belonged to Hylaea,...

, and the stage designer was Kasimir Malevich. The performance was organized by the artistic group Soyuz Molodyozhi

Soyuz Molodyozhi

Soyuz Molodyozhi was an artistic group and an art magazine of Russian avant-garde organized in 1910.There were more than 30 members of the group and most of other Russian avant-garde participated in their exhibitions....

. The opera has become famous as the event where Malevich made his first "Black Square" painting.

The opera was intended to underline parallels between literary text, musical score, and the art of painting, and featured a cast of such extravagant characters as Nero

Nero

Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....

 and Caligula

Caligula

Caligula , also known as Gaius, was Roman Emperor from 37 AD to 41 AD. Caligula was a member of the house of rulers conventionally known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Caligula's father Germanicus, the nephew and adopted son of Emperor Tiberius, was a very successful general and one of Rome's most...

 in the Same Person, Traveller through All the Ages, Telephone Talker, The New Ones, etc.

The audience reacted negatively and even violently to the performance, as have some subsequent critics and historians.

A documentary film about the opera was made in 1980.

Translation

Victory Over the Sun // Ed. Patricia Railing, translator Evgeny Steiner. London: Artists.Bookworks, 2009. 2 vols.
ISBN 978-0-946311-19-4

External links

• Costume Design by Malevich
• A modern reconstruction of the opera
• Zaum and Sun: The 'first Futurist opera' revisited Article by Isobel Hunter
• 'VICTORY OVER THE SUN' The New York Times
  The New York Times
  The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
  
   article
• Vienna 1993 staging including pictures of performance
• Rober Benedetti - Reconstructing 'Victory over the Sun' at JSTOR
  JSTOR
  JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...
  
   (requires subscription)
• Victory over the sun The Guardian
  The Guardian
  The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
  
  article on the 1999 London recreation
• Valeri Shishanov. VITEBSK’ BUDETLANE
• The libretto http://file045r.mylivepage.ru/chunk45/2332315/2670/Победа%20над%20Солнцем%201913.pdf