La molinara in the Theatre of Stepan S. Apraksin (Based on the Note Manuscripts of the Apraksin & Golitsyn’s Collection in the Russian State Library)

The article considers the features of the Russian version of Giovanni Paisiello’s opera La molinara. The Moscow premiere by the Russian Imperial Troupe took place in 1816 in the house of Stepan S. Apraksin on Bolshaya Znamenka. The Apraksin & Golitsyn’s Collection in the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library (F. 11/III) has preserved manuscript materials of the combined part of the performers with the Russian text underlay for two acts of the opera (Unit of st. 7. 147 l.). Some conclusions can be drawn from a comparative analysis of these materials with the autograph from the collections of the library of the Naples Conservatory of Music, the incipits given in Répertoire International des Sources Musicales from a manuscript copy belonging to the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, and other versions available for research. The opera was presented in Russia not with recitatives but with spoken dialogues; the names were Russified. Of the 12 numbers from the first act recorded in the autograph, only 10 were performed; the Russian version contains musical material not found in the Neapolitan original, though close to other versions. In the episodes that coincide with the autograph, the musical text is similar, albeit the rhythmic pattern is often modified while retaining the pitch of the sounds. In many cases, the vocal parts were revised to facilitate performance tasks, variants of embellishments were recorded, the tessitura ofindividual numbers was changed, and cuts were applied. Keywords: Giovanni Paisiello, L’amor contrastato, ossia La molinara, Stepan Stepanovich Apraksin, Imperial Troupe, Antonina Ivanovna Barancheeva, Russian version, Italian opera in Russia, musical theatre of the 18th–19th centuries For citation: Safonova, A. A. (2025). La molinara in the Theatre of Stepan S. Apraksin (Based on the Note Manuscripts of the Apraksin & Golitsyn’s Collection in the Russian State Library), Contemporary Musicology, 9(1), 79―104. https://doi.org/10.56620/2587-9731-2025-1-079-104

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