# Borodin's Prince Igor Overture: beautiful but fraught

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/borodins-prince-igor-overture-beautiful-but-fraught/959566>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Tags:** music\
**Created:** [February 15, 2022, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/borodins-prince-igor-overture-beautiful-but-fraught/959566 "2022-02-15T23:01:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2022, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/borodins-prince-igor-overture-beautiful-but-fraught/959566/2 "2022-02-16T00:51:19Z")

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I like 19th C. Orientalism in European music.

If a consortium of industrialists and financiers and militarists took over a nation, and other peoples as well as their own nation’s underclasses were made to suffer, is that reason to condemn their culture?

Russian Orientalism contains more “we’re on a civilizing mission” than, say, the French product of Delacroix or Saint-Saëns which was more about Frenchy voluptuousness (and more guilty of [misogyny](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Sardanapalus#/media/File%3ADelacroix_-_La_Mort_de_Sardanapale_(1827).jpg) than colonial conquest-ennobling). Borodin more so than Rimsky-Korsakoff, with _on the Steppes of Central Asia_ for example.

Still, context is everything. I like Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony. But in Augustus 2008, as Putin was about to invade Georgia, NPR played a performance of it live from Russia, oblivious to its propaganda purpose. Sheesh-takovich!

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