Fikrət Əmirov’s Opera 'Sevil' (1953): An Imperial Melodrama at the Dusk of the Stalin Era

• In Event: Gender and Post-Imperial Legacy in Early 20th Century East and Southeast Europe

Abstract

The Stalinist era was characterized by a heightened interest in opera, transforming opera houses — traditionally seen as symbols of the nation, cultural cohesion and bourgeois leisure — into factories of ideology and indoctrination. The opera Sevil (1953) by the Azerbaijani composer Fikrət Əmirov (1922–1984) is a remarkable anomaly in the predominantly masculine and heroic Stalinist operatic narratives. At a time when musicologists were calling for psychological and lyrical genres to represent the Soviet people, Əmirov’s work challenged the prevailing trends while seemingly responding to the demands of critics. Although Sevil was heavily promoted as a psychological opera at its premiere, this presentation will argue that it is structurally and ideologically closer to melodrama — more specifically, imperial melodrama — which was used as a medium to domesticate the Soviet empire in Azerbaijan. Rather than exploring the complexities of the fate of a single Soviet woman, the opera functions as a condensed chronicle of Soviet imperial and colonial success, depicting the cultural revolution in Azerbaijan. Drawing on gender studies, decolonial scholarship, and the existing literature on melodrama in the Stalinist period, this paper will approach Əmirov’s operatic world as a turbulent, metamorphic environment shaping the protagonist’s national, political, and gender identities.

Author

• Magdalena Marija Meašić, U of Rijeka (Croatia)