#oprichnik
During my time away from Tumblr, I watched all of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and made the incredible discovery that one of the main villain’s musical themes, DIO’s “Dark Rebirth” from Pt. 3 (“Stardust Crusaders”) is an extremely close match to one of the intermezzos from Tchaikovsky’s Oprichnik.
No really, compare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qq1B5na–s
to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqup_vtEPz4
TheOprichnikintermezzo is situated between the final scene of Act II, in which the protagonist Andrei swears a dread oath to serve in tsar Ivan the Terrible’s personal guard, and the opening scene of Act III, in which the people of Moscow lament the hard times that have befallen them since the tsar went into (implicitly homoerotic) seclusion with his personal guard. The tsar never appears onstage in the opera, but exists as an ominous, all-powerful, sexually deviant/threatening force controlling the fates of the characters from just out of sight. Exactly like DIO in most of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Pt. 3 (“Stardust Crusaders”) .
It’s also worth noting that composers for films and especially for cartoons have been borrowing melodies from Tchaikovsky since the very beginning.
So, even though I started watching this anime as a BREAK FROM MY ACADEMIC INTERESTS, I ended RIGHT BACK UP IN MY BULLSHIT ANYWAY
Mezzo-sopranos in the role of Fedor Basmanov, favorite of Ivan the Terrible, in Tchaikovsky’s operaOprichnik(1872). From top to bottom: M. I. Dolina, E. I. Zrubeva, N. A. Fride, A. V. Kravets, L. G. Zviagina, T. S. Liubatovich. Late 19th-early 20th centuries.
The role of Basmanov is the only so-called “trouser role” (a male role written to be performed by women) in Tchaikovsky’s operas. The queer sexual subtext surrounding the character is quite overt and caused trouble for both Imperial and later Soviet censors. We stan a legend.
(photos sourced from goskatalog.ru)
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