“Crime and Punishment” in the musical interpretation by Heinrich and Peter Sutermeister: problems of interpretation of the prose text
One of the least systematically explored areas in modern Dostoevsky studies is the relationship between Dostoevsky and music, especially the interpretation of Dostoevsky's work in the art of music. The focus of the author's attention is the musical interpretation of the novel “Crime and Punishment”, and, particularly, the opera by Heinrich Sutermeister, a Swiss composer of the middle of the twentieth century. The article explores the composer and librettist approach to the work with Dostoevsky's word, analyzes the musical language using the example of the duality image development. Special attention is paid to the impact of the literature on Dostoevsky available to librettists, namely, the speeches by Vladimir Solovyov. The course of detailed analysis of the images of Raskolnikov and his alter ego reveals the basic principles of composer's and librettist's interpretation of the ideas of the novel “Crime and Punishment”. The analysis also explores an interrelation between musical and literary languages as an expressiveness device. The author of the article considers the Sutermeister's opera as one of the first experiments in creating an opera of a specific genre - the “Dostoevsky” opera.