Theatre
Maksim Crnojević
Максим Црнојевић
Laza Kostić · 1866
Synopsis
A young Montenegrin has fallen in love in Venice with a girl whose house he does not know. His father, returning from the same city, had sworn there to the doge that there was no handsomer youth than his son, and had promised this son to the doge's daughter. In the meantime illness has disfigured the youth, while his blood brother, who resembled him feature for feature, has remained untouched. As the procession prepares to set out to fetch the bride-to-be, the son begins to understand that the bride-to-be and the girl of Venice are one and the same.
Context
The author was twenty-two when he wrote the play, in 1863; the first act appeared that same year in the Letopis of the Matica srpska, which then published the volume in Novi Sad. The subject comes from the epic song of the wedding of Maksim Crnojević, but the plot diverges from it: the Venetian woman becomes a character, she has a name and the hero had met her before the story begins. The play was first staged at the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad on 11 February 1869, adapted for the stage by Antonije Hadžić, with music by Aksentije Maksimović.
Who it is for
Five acts in decasyllabic verse, in a language kept elevated from one end to the other. It is better to know the epic song from which the subject is taken.
Prizes and reception
The first Serbian attempt to draw a tragedy from an epic song; the play provided the subject of an opera by Petar Konjović, first performed in Belgrade in 1929.