Abram Akimovich Gozenpud

Abram Akimovich Gozenpud (Kiev, 1908) was a Russian musicologist and literary critic whose work focused on the history of musical theatre, especially Russian and Western European opera, as well as on the relationship between literature and music. His academic career developed in the Soviet Union, where he became one of the leading reference figures in the study of Russian lyric theatre.

He graduated in literature from the Kiev People's Education Institute in 1930, having trained under A. I. Beletski and N. K. Zerov. His musical education was closely linked to his brother Matvey Akimovich Gozenpud (1903-1961), a composer and pianist who had studied at the Kiev Conservatory. While teaching music history at higher education institutions in Kiev and Sverdlovsk, he obtained the degree of Kandidat at the Kiev Conservatory in 1939 with a thesis on Shakespeare and music, and in 1941 the degree of Doctor of Philological Sciences at the Shevchenko Institute of Ukrainian Literature with a study of the dramaturgy of Ludvig Holberg.

Between 1946 and 1949 he headed the literary department of the Maly State Academic Theatre in Moscow, and in 1951 he moved to Leningrad. From 1953 until 1993 he held a senior academic post at the Leningrad Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography. In 1962 he obtained his doctorate at the Institute of Russian Literature with a study of musical theatre in Russia from its origins to Glinka. In 1994 he was appointed professor at the University of Humanities of St Petersburg, and in 1996 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences of that city. He is credited with 24 books and more than 350 articles.

His legacy includes studies of Rimsky-Korsakov, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Glinka and Chaliapin, as well as the libretto of Shebalin's comic opera Ukroshcheniye stroptivoy, and translations of works by Shakespeare, Hauptmann and Holberg. His contribution to the historiography of Russian musical theatre makes him a key reference for understanding the evolution of opera in Russia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.