{{Short description|Type of sentimental sung poetry developed in Imperial Russia}} [[File:With guitar (S.A. Kropotkina) by Surikov (1882).jpg|thumb|Vasily Surikov, "With a Guitar". Portrait of Princess S. A. Kropotkina, 1882<ref>[https://museumsworld.ru/surikov/t82gitar.html В.И.Суриков С гитарой]</ref>]] {{Russian music}} '''Russian romance''' ({{langx|ru|рома́нс}} ''románs'') is a type of sentimental art songs that was developed in the Russian Empire in 19th century.<ref name=maha>Malcolm Hamrick Brown, [https://publish.iupress.indiana.edu/read/art-and-culture-in-nineteenth-century-russia/section/37efe3f4-871b-4c75-abe3-febdbf611d2a "Native Song and National Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century Russian Music"], In: ''Art and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Russia'' (ed. Theofanis George Stavrou). Indiana University Press, 1983. {{ISBN|9780253310514}}. Page 75.</ref>
==History== By the early 20th century, several types of the Russian romance had emerged. An elite type of the Italianate opera-influenced song known as the "salon romance" is contrasted to the lower-class genre of "cruel romance" which features "sentimental courtship, illicit love, pained rejection, and often suicide".<ref>''Entertaining Tsarist Russia: Tales, Songs, Plays, Movies, Jokes, Ads, and Images from Russian Urban Life, 1779–1917''. Indiana University Press, 1998. {{ISBN|9780253211958}}. Page xxii.</ref> The latter is supposed to have given birth to the Russian chanson.
The Russian romance had its heyday in the 1910s and 1920s when the top performers included Anastasia Vyaltseva, Varvara Panina, Nadezhda Plevitskaya, Tamara Tsereteli, Pyotr Leshchenko, and Alexander Vertinsky.<ref name=dama/> Notable composers in the style include Nikolai Titov (1800-1875), Alexander Alyabyev (1787–1851), Alexander Varlamov (1801–48), and Alexander Gurilyov (1803–58).<ref name=maha/> In the early Soviet era the genre was less favoured, as it was seen as a vestige of the pre-revolutionary "decadent and bourgeois" sensibility through much of the 20th century.<ref name=dama>David MacFadyen. ''Songs for Fat People: Affect, Emotion, and Celebrity in the Russian Popular Song, 1900–1955''. McGill-Queens University Press, 2002. {{ISBN|9780773524415}}. Page 13.</ref>
A new generation of singers, such as Valentina Ponomaryova and Nani Bregvadze, emerged in the 1970s. Several vocalists from the pre-WWII era, including Izabella Yurieva (1899–2000), Vadim Kozin (1903–1994) and Alla Bayanova (1914–2011), also returned to prominence in the late Soviet years. Alexander Malinin, Sergey Zakharov and Oleg Pogudin are among the Russian romance singers active in the 21st century. In 1994, . Alexander Malinin received the World Music Award as best selling Russian artist.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Smith|first=Michael|date=June 2003|title=Stalin's Martyrs: The Tragic Romance of the Russian Revolution|url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14690760412331326098|journal=Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions|language=en|volume=4|issue=1|pages=95–126|doi=10.1080/14690760412331326098|s2cid=145514181 |issn=1469-0764|url-access=subscription}}</ref>
César Cui's 1895 book ''Russian Art Song: A Study of Its Development'' was translated in J.R. Walker’s ''Classical Essays on the Development of Russian Art Songs'' (Northfield, MN, 1993).
== Notable songs == * ''Black Eyes'' * ''Shine, Shine, My Star'' * ''Дорогой длинною/Those Were the Days/Along the Long Road'' * ''Evening Bell'' * ''Les Chrysanthemes''
== See also == * Starogradska muzika
== References == {{reflist}}
== External links == *[http://www.russianartsong.com/ Russian composers and singer-songwriters of 19th century (English)], an educational site *[http://gendelev52.wordpress.com/ Synthesis of poetry and music (Russian)], a site dedicated to Russian romance
Category:Russian styles of music Category:Song forms Category:Art songs Category:Romance (music) Category:Russian songs