Zakaria paliashvili wikipedia

1919 opera by Zacharia Paliashvili

Abesalom da Eteri (Georgian: აბესალომ და ეთერი; Abesalom and Eteri) is an opera by the Georgian composer Zacharia Paliashvili and librettist Petre Mirianashvili (b. 1860) based on a medieval Georgian folk poem Eteriani. Composed between 1909 and 1918, the work was partly staged in 1913 and first premiered in its present-day form on 21 February 1919 at the Georgian National Opera Theater in Tbilisi. The opera is an eclectic fusion of folk songs and traditional 19th-century Romantic classical themes. In 2004, several excerpts from this opera were adapted as the National Anthem of Georgia.^[1]

Background and historical context

When opera was first introduced in present-day Georgia during the 1840s, the performances were held in Italian and other Western European languages traditionally dominating the operatic art. At the time, as part of his conciliatory reforms, Russian Viceroy Mikhail Vorontsov went on