Aria of Anna (Stolen Happiness)

Yuliy Meitus based Stolen Happiness on Ivan Franko's play of 1893, with a libretto by the poet Maksym Rylsky, and the opera was first staged at the Lviv Opera in September 1960, conducted by Yaroslav Voshchak and directed by Serhiy Smiyan. Franko's drama sets a triangle in a Galician village: a woman married off while the man she loves is presumed dead, and his return as a gendarme. Meitus, who wrote some twenty operas across a long career, kept the play's spoken rhythms in the vocal lines and drew on Ukrainian song for the choral scenes. A new production followed in 1989.