About the work
Semyon Kotko is an opera in five acts by Sergei Prokofiev after Valentin Katayev's 1937 novella I, Son of the Working People, with a libretto written in collaboration with the author. Prokofiev composed the work in 1939 for a production by Vsevolod Meyerhold, who was arrested shortly before its completion; the premiere on 23 June 1940 at the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre in Moscow was instead staged by the actress Serafima Birman.
Plot
In a Ukrainian village in 1918, the returning soldier Semyon Kotko wants to marry Sofya, but her wealthy father Tkachenko opposes the match. As German occupying forces and Ukrainian nationalists terrorise the village, Semyon joins the partisans; after Tkachenko's arrest, he frees Sofya from a forced marriage to another man, and the revolution prevails.
Cultural significance
As one of only two Prokofiev operas with an explicitly Soviet subject, Semyon Kotko exemplifies his turn toward socialist realism after returning to the USSR. Sharply attacked at first by proletarian critics for allegedly lacking folk character, the opera disappeared from Soviet stages as early as 1941 and was not rediscovered until a 1958 production in Brno.