PSO Gets Grant to Perform Censored Russian Drama

The Princeton Symphony Orchestra will receive a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the first-ever dramatization of Pushkin’s novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin.

The grant is one of 863 grants recently announced by the NEA.

The PSO’s ArtWorks grant will support The Onegin Project, the world premiere of a musical drama by Sergei Prokofiev and Alexander Pushkin, which will be presented in partnership with Princeton University’s music, ]dance and Slavic studies departments on Feb. 9, 2012.

The 1936 dramatization of Eugene Onegin, with music by Prokofiev, was censored and barred from performance by Soviet officials under Joseph Stalin’s regime.

The play script disappeared into Russian archives. Over the past few years, Princeton University professor of music Simon Morrison and professor of Slavic languages and literature Caryl Emerson worked to find a copy of the play version with Prokofiev’s markings and translate it. 

This never-before-performed text will be reunited with its music and staged as originally conceived for orchestra, chorus, and dance at Richardson Auditorium with the PSO performing Prokofiev’s score. The performance is included as part of a symposium on the subject of censorship in music, to be presented at Princeton University’s conference “After the End of Music History.”

“Achieving this national recognition, where we join the ranks of America’s most prominent orchestras, reinforces our belief that investment in the arts produces marvelous results for local citizenry,” PSO Executive Director Melanie Clarke said.