With the assistance of Russian Musical Union, the scores of the “Crime and Punishment” opera by Eduard Artemyev are published

The scores of Eduard Artemyev’s opera “Crime and Punishment” are published. Two of its volumes with an enclosure on CD are published by the “Kompozitor • St. Petersburg” publishing house with the participation of Russian Musical Union and the National Fund for Copyright Holders’ Support.

“Crime and Punishment” is an opera in two acts by composer Eduard Artemiev based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The authors of the libretto were directors Andrei Konchalovsky, Mark Rozovsky and poet Yuri Ryashentsev.

A large-scale work has a dramatic fate: Eduard Artemiev began writing it in 1979 and managed to complete it and present it to the audience only on his 70th birthday. In 2007, the publication of a double album with the opera became one of the brightest and most notable events in Russian musical arts. In 2016, the rock opera premiered at the Moscow Musical Theater.

The published composition is difficult to fit into the framework of one genre: it combines the traditions of academic opera and the sound of rock music, the capabilities of a symphony orchestra and new timbres discovered only in the 21st century. Folk voices, opera singing, an old Russian waltz (romance), Orthodox chants, jazz intonations, Russian chanson are organically intertwined in the work… The instrumental composition is also diverse: in addition to a large symphony and folk orchestras, a bass guitar, an acoustic piano, harp, synthesizers are engaged in the rock opera. At the same time, “Crime and Punishment” is a single symphonic organism with a dynamic dramaturgy.

The scores of the piece will be donated to leading Russian and foreign music universities and libraries free of charge. Thus, the publication will become available to many musicians, who again and again will delight listeners with the performance of the opera and its fragments.