Opera "Fire and Night", 1913–1919, by Composer Jānis Mediņš (1890–1966)

After seeing Rainis’ drama “Fire and Night. The New Sounds of an Old Song” (Uguns un nakts. Sena dziesma jaunās skaņās) several times (the premiere was on 26 January 1911 at the Rīga New Theatre), Mediņš decided to ask the poet’s permission to compose an opera based on his text. Permission was granted.

In March 1914, the Latvian National Opera orchestra with soloist Jānis Niedra performed the Prologue of Mediņš’ “Fire and Night”. Opera director Jēkabs Duburs made it possible for Mediņš to receive a monthly stipend of 100 roubles for the period during which he worked on the opera. The composer continued to work even in the complicated circumstances of the First World War in the small Torzhok town of Tver gubernia, where Mediņš worked as a chapel master for the Fifth Siberian Railroaders Battalion. Some of the most beautiful music was composed in a small cottage where various “iron tools, cables, crane parts and other junk” were kept.

The young composer first composed the opera as a dilogy. The premieres of both parts took place on 26 May and 8 December 1921, with Mediņš conducting. The musicologist Ingrīda Zemzare summed up Mediņš’ aesthetics in a couple of words: “beauty and measure”. The beauty was present in the five acts of the 1921 edition of the opera, yet the measure had yet to be found. The instrumentation, which showed influences of Wagner and Richard Strauss, seemed too heavy-handed to Mediņš and the format was unwieldy. The second, shorter edition of the opera was presented on 2 February 1924 and the third was completed in 1927 but was first staged in Rīga on 3 September 1966, six months after Mediņš’ death in Stockholm, where he lived after the Second World War.

Of the five stagings of “Fire and Night”, the one which premiered on 14 December 1995 by director Alvis Hermanis merits special mention. It clearly presented Hermanis’ conviction that “Fire and Night” “can and should be staged in a modern way, updating both the content of the original and the questions regarding national identity”. Mediņš’ opera is without a doubt an artistic success and an outstanding interpretation of Rainis’ drama in late Romanticism sound patterns.

Marc Gaber