309
See also: The Nutcracker 190 –191 ■ Romeo and Juliet 272 ■ Shostakovich’s
Fifth Symphony 274–279T
he ballet Spartacus, known
best in its revised 1968
version, is a spectacle on a
grand scale. Unlike most ballets, its
theme is not romantic but heroic—
a slave rebellion led by Spartacus
against his Roman masters.
The ballet won Khachaturian
a Lenin Prize in the year of its
composition. The Soviet regime
felt it symbolized the Russian
people’s victory against tsarist
oppressors. Others, however,
now see it as referencing Soviet
repression. In 1948, together
with Prokofiev and Shostakovich,
Khachaturian had been denounced
for bourgeois “antidemocratic”
music, but he had regained official
favor, especially after Stalin’s
death in 1953.Childhood influences
Khachaturian had grown up in
Georgia, steeped in the folk music
of Armenia and the Caucasian
region. The melodies and harmonic
inflections of the composer’s
childhood, along with his
commitment to “close communion”with ordinary people and their
music, were key inspirations in
his music. The hauntingly exultant
“Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia,”
from Spartacus, and the “Sabre
Dance” from the ballet Gayane,
have been widely used in television
and film. The full 1968 version of
Spartacus remains a staple of
Russian ballet repertoire. ■CONTEMPORARY
CLOSE COMMUNION
WITH THE PEOPLE IS THE
NATURAL SOIL NOURISHING
ALL MY WORK
SPARTACUS (1956, rev. 1968),
ARAM KHACHATURIANIN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Ballet in Soviet RussiaBEFORE
1921 Mikhail Gnessin, who
later taught Khachaturian,
writes the opera Abraham’s
Yout h, one of several works
on Jewish themes.1927 Backed by the Kremlin,
The Red Poppy, a ballet with
music by Reinhold Glière,
premieres at the Bolshoi
Theatre in Moscow.1940 P rokofiev’s Romeo and
Juliet is widely regarded as the
greatest ballet written during
the Soviet period.AFTER
1976 Armenian composer
Edgar Hovhannisyan bases
his opera-ballet Sasuntsi Davit
on a ninth-century Armenian
epic poem.Aram Khachaturian, photographed
in later years at the height of his
fame, won worldwide acclaim for
his highly popular ballets, Spartacus
and Gayane.US_308-309_Xenakis_Khatchaturian.indd 309 26/03/18 1:02 PM