Nicolas Nabokov, a first cousin of Vladimir Nabokov, was born to a family of landed Russian gentry in the town of Lubcza near Minsk, and was educated by private tutors. In 1918, after his family fled the Bolshevik Revolution to the Crimea, he began his musical education with Vladimir Rebikov. After living briefly in Germany he settled in Paris in 1923, where he studied at the Sorbonne. He was married five times and had three sons. His close friends included the philosopher and fellow emigré Isaiah Berlin....
Works, editions and recordings
- Nabokov's first major musical work was the ballet-oratorio Ode, for Serge Diaghilev's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, in 1928, followed by his Lyrical Symphony in 1931. The ode was on verses of Mikhail Lomonosov "Вечернее размышление о Божием величеÑтве", ballet-oratorio Paris 1928.[2]
- ballet Union Pacific, composed in 1934 - his best known work.
- opera Rasputin's End (libretto by Stephen Spender) in 1958
- and a ballet on Don Quixote in 1966.
- opera Love's Labour's Lost (libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman) was composed in 1971 and performed in 1973.
The musicians Ernest Ansermet, Henri Sauguet and especially Nicholas Nabokov are completely convincing about his [Diaghilev's] musicality. And we believe Sauguet when he says: ''Diaghilev was the absolute master, the man who did everything and saw everything. Nothing escaped him. I have never since seen a man with such an understanding or such a sense of the science of it all, such capacity for work and at the same time a sort of grandeur and magnetism. He was a man of extraordinary allure, absolutely unique in his way.''
In Diaghilev’s circle: An Impresario in dialogue with composers
International musicological conference
Second International Festival “Diaghilev. P. S.” St Petersburg, 23-29 October 2011
The two-day international conference “In Diaghilev’s circle: An Impresario in dialogue with composers” will take place in St Petersburg at the N. Rimsky-Korsakov Memorial Museum-Apartment 24-25 October 2011.
15.30-16.30 – Diaghilev and Stravinsky: Margarita Mazo (Ohio, USA) “Stravinsky’s Les Noces, Raptures and Continuities with Diaghilev, and the Parisian Artistic Landscape”
Michael Meylac (Strasbourg, France) “Diaghilev’s ghost between Stravinsky and Nicolas Nabokov”
16.45-18.00 – Keynote lecture Richard Taruskin (Berkeley, USA) «Diaghilev without Stravinsky? Stravinsky without Diaghilev?»
I am listening to Mahler's awe-ful symphony with the three hammer blows of fate, and before the third one falls may I wish you all a good night!
Carolyn Kunin
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A short trip to the archives demonstrates that some Nabokov/Diaghilev information has been hiding there in plain sight for some time. On Monday, 5 November 2007 Sandy Klein sent in a post with the subject line "among his young pupils was Vladimir Nabokov" [n.b. Dobuzhinsky's style is reminiscent, at least as described here, of Kalmakov's:
Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky or Dobujinsky Lithuanian: Mstislavas Dobužinskis (2 August 1875, Novgorod — 20 November 1957, New York City) was a Russian-Lithuanian artist noted for cityscapes conveying the explosive growth and decay of the early twentieth-century city.
I shall try to find those memoirs, in the meantime, spokoinoy nochi eschyo raz vsemu and to all a good night!Of noble Lithuanian extraction, Dobuzhinsky finished Second Men's Gymnasium in Vilnius, later was educated in St Petersburg, Nagybanya and Munich, where he came to be influenced by the Jugendstil. Having returned to Russia, he joined the Mir iskusstva, an artistic circle which idealized the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a golden age of Russian cultural achievement.
Dobuzhinsky was distinguished from other miriskusniki by his expressionist manner and keen interest in modern industrial cityscape. He often painted seedy or tragic scenes from urban life which expressed the nightmarish bleakness and loneliness of modern times. Among his works were also humorous vignettes and sketches with demon-like creatures which seemed to embody the monstrosities of urbanization.
Like other members of the Mir iskusstva, Dobuzhinsky experimented with scenic design. At first he worked for Constantin Stanislavski at the Moscow Arts Theatre, but later contributed sets to several Diaghilev productions as well. He also gained renown as an excellent art teacher; among his young pupils was Vladimir Nabokov, with whom he maintained correspondence for decades.
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Among his later works are series of masterful and dramatic illustrations, notably for Dostoyevsky's White Nights (1923) and Yuri Olesha's Three Fat Men (1925). During the World War II, Dobuzhinsky painted imaginary landscapes of besieged Leningrad. His memoirs were published posthumously.