Ivan IV (opera)

Ivan IV is an opera in five acts by Georges Bizet, with a libretto by Francois-Hippolyte Leroy and Henri Trianon.

A libretto on the subject of Tsar Ivan IV "The Terrible" of Russia was offered to Charles Gounod in January 1856 by the general administrator of the Paris Opera, François Louis Crosnier. Gounod worked with enthusiasm and press announcements anticipated that rehearsals would begin that November. Although Gounod completed the work in 1857 or 1858, failure to have it performed at the Paris Opera led Gounod to use parts of the score in later works; the Soldiers’ Chorus in Faust came from Ivan the Terrible. Gounod's score was auctioned in 1963 and destroyed shortly after.

Around 1862, with Gounod's encouragement, Bizet began work on the same libretto. In June 1865 the journal La France Musicale announced that the piece would appear at the Théâtre Lyrique that winter. Delays in getting the piece accepted prompted Bizet to offer the score to the Paris Opera, but he had no reply. The following summer, at the bidding of Léon Carvalho, director of the Théâtre Lyrique, Bizet started work on La jolie fille de Perth, and Ivan IV was forgotten.

Winton Dean floated a possible alternative chronology by suggesting that the surviving manuscript is an earlier abandoned version of Ivan, forgotten by the composer, not that which was being copied for performance in the autumn of 1865. This theory would mean that Bizet composed Ivan the Terrible in late 1862 and early 1863 for performance in 1863 at the Baden festival (which he had visited with Hector Berlioz, Gounod and Ernest Reyer). Dean also argues for Ivan pre-dating Les pêcheurs de perles on the basis of the more conspicuous weak passages in the score bearing witness to a less experienced stage composer; also several passages in Ivan are developed further in the 1863 work.

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