Theatre
Сватання на Гончарівці
Not translated into English
Hryhoriy Kvitka-Osnovianenko · 1836
Synopsis
In Honcharivka, a suburb of Kharkiv, Prokip Shkurat, who drinks, and his wife Odarka want to marry their daughter Uliana to the wealthy Stetsko, son of Kandzioba, a boy everyone knows is not quite right in the head. Uliana loves Oleksii, a blacksmith and the serf of a landowner, and says so in songs. Oleksii goes after the suitor, who nevertheless dares not give up for fear of his father, and it is a retired soldier, Oleksii's uncle, who gets it into his head to settle the matter his own way.
Context
Written in 1835, the play, which its first editions call an opera, was first performed in Kharkiv in the summer of 1836 by Ludwig Mlotkovsky's company, with Lyubov Mlotkovska in the role of Uliana and Karpo Solenyk in that of Stetsko. The first edition, published in Kharkiv the same year, ran to only sixteen pages; the author then expanded it, and the posthumous version published in Moscow by Kulish in 1862 runs to nearly a hundred. The songs hold a large place in it: the composer Kyrylo Stetsenko made an operetta from it, and the cinema made it into a musical film in 1958.
Who it is for
A comedy in three acts, made up of dialogues and songs. The suitor is a well-off townsman, the lover a serf: the plot rests on this gap.
Prizes and reception
With the two comedies of Chelmenko, the play on which its author's lasting popularity in the theatre rests; it is still performed today.
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