From Page to Stage: Ukrainian Opera Rediscovered with Help of UMD Professor Presented at The Clarice

The program explored “Harkusha” and the evolution of Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko’s vocal music in conversation with influential works.

By ARHU Staff

For more than a century, fragments of an unfinished opera by renowned Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko sat largely unexplored. New research by Michael Lavery, assistant professor of Russian in the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, revealed how the pieces fit together and led to a recent world premiere by the Maryland Opera Studio.

The discovery began with UCLA Professor Roman Koropeckyj, who had been researching the legend of Harkusha, a Robin Hood-like bandit who roamed Left-Bank Ukraine in the 1770s and inspired plays, novels and folklore across the region. While studying the legend’s cultural afterlife, Koropeckyj learned that Lysenko had once attempted to write an opera based on the story.

During a research trip to Kyiv in 2019, Koropeckyj obtained photographs of the surviving manuscript from the Museum of Outstanding Figures of Ukrainian Culture. Unsure how to interpret the fragmentary musical score, he asked Lavery—his former graduate student at UCLA and a trained musician—to help analyze the music.

At first, the manuscript appeared incoherent. But when Lavery revisited the score more closely a few years later, he noticed something unusual: the pages had been misnumbered and stored out of order, creating the impression—unquestioned in earlier scholarship—that the manuscript contained only disconnected fragments. Rearranged, the fragments—an opening chorus, a brief tenor cavatina and a cabaletta-style conclusion—revealed the structure of a conventional 19th-century Italian opera opening scene.

The discovery sheds new light on one of the earliest attempts to create a Ukrainian national opera. While studying in Kyiv in the 1860s, Lysenko and his second cousin Mykhailo Staryts’kyi set out to adapt the story of Harkusha for the stage. Despite early enthusiasm, the pair never finished the work.

Lysenko would later become known as the father of Ukrainian classical music, building a national musical tradition inspired by folk songs and culture. But the surviving fragments of “Harkusha”—eight manuscript pages from Act I, Scene I, and two additional pages from another scene—long appeared disconnected. As a result, the music was never publicly performed.

After reconstructing the fragments, Lavery and Koropeckyj began preparing a journal article analyzing the work and its influences, including similarities to operas by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi as well as elements drawn from Ukrainian folk music.

But the researchers also wanted to hear the music performed.

Last year, Lavery approached the Maryland Opera Studio (MOS), a graduate training program for professional singers in the School of Music (SOM).

On February 6, MOS presented the world premiere of “Harkusha” in its reconstructed form. Programmed by Lavery, Koropeckyj and SOM faculty, including MOS Director J. Bradley Baker, Director of Acting Corinne Hayes and Associate Professor of Musicology Olga Haldey, the recital placed the fragments alongside songs and operatic works from Italian, Ukrainian, Bohemian, German and Russian traditions.

For tenor Douglas Culclasure, a second-year Master of Music student in MOS who performed the title role of Harkusha, the experience offered both a musical and cultural challenge.

“The music is very inventive,” Culclasure said. “It’s melodically memorable—you can leave with the tune in your head. But it’s also harmonically complex, with all these intricate progressions that show Lysenko experimenting with Ukrainian folk influences.”

Throughout the performance and lecture, Koropeckyj, Lavery and Haldey helped audiences understand Lysenko’s artistic influences and his significance as a foundational figure in Ukrainian classical music.

For Lavery, hearing the music performed was a powerful moment.

“There’s something extraordinary about listening to music that has waited over 150 years to be heard,” he said.

The event was livestreamed internationally, including to viewers in Ukraine—some of whom tuned in during early morning hours.

Lavery and Koropeckyj’s scholarly article on Harkusha, which draws on the manuscripts and correspondence uncovered during their research, is scheduled for publication in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association in Fall 2026.