Araja, Francesco Domenico (EN)

Araja Francesco Domenico, *25 June 1709 Naples, †between 1762 and 1770 Bologna (?), Italian composer. He debuted as an opera composer in 1729 in Naples. His operas were also staged in Florence, Rome, Milan and Venice. He moved to St. Petersburg in 1735, where he became a court conductor and composer. He spent almost a quarter of a century there (with two breaks), organising musical life at the Tsar’s court and presenting his own operas, cantatas and other works. With the performance of the opera La forza dell’amore e dell’odio (1736), Araja introduced Italian opera seria to the Russian stage for the first time. In 1755, he staged the opera Cephalus and Procris in St. Petersburg with a libretto by A.P. Sumarokov, the first opera in history to an original Russian text. He left Russia and settled in Bologna in 1762.

The historical significance of Araja’s activity lies in the initiation of a permanent opera stage in Russia, the introduction of Italian opera seria in the Neapolitan style to this stage, along with its rich stage setting, and especially in the creation of Russian opera. The staging of the opera Cephalus and Procris by Russian and Ukrainian performers initiated the activity of the Russian opera troupe. Over time, Araja assimilated the typical intonations of Russian folk melodies, which gave his later operas a local colour. The adaptation of the musical language of Italian opera to local tastes was also expressed in the emancipation of choirs and the wider use of wind instruments.

Literature (selection): U. Prota-Giurleo Musicisti napoletani in Russia nel ’700, Naples 1923; G. Hardie Neapolitan Comic Opera, 1707–1750: Some Addenda and Corrigenda for The New Grove “Journal of the American Musicological Society” 36 (1983); M. Ritzarev Eighteenth-Century Russian Music, Aldershot, Burlington 2006; S. I. Kajkova Франческо Арайя: Итальянский композитор российского двора [Frančesko Arajâ: Ital’ânskij kompozitor rossijskogo dvora], “Актуальные проблемы высшего музыкального образования: Научно-аналитический и научнообразовательный журнал” [Aktual’nye problemy vysšego muzykal’nogo obrazovaniâ: Naučno-analitičeskij i naučno-obrazovatel’nyj žurnal] 2017, no. 2 (44).