A few days ago, on the occasion of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s birthday anniversary, I was going on about his operas. This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” you’ll have a chance to sample one of them, as we welcome spring with selections from “The Snow Maiden.”
Based on an allegorical Russian fairy tale of humans, quasi-mythological creatures, and the eternal forces of nature, it’s the story of a star-crossed love that brings about the end of a 15-year winter. The orchestral suite – which climaxes with the “Dance of the Tumblers” – is fairly popular, but the opera, as with all of Rimsky’s 16 efforts in the form, is virtually unknown in the West.
The recording, on the Capriccio label, which features the Bulgarian Radio Symphony conducted by Stoyan Angelov, doesn’t hold a candle to the best Rimsky opera recordings by conductors like Nikolai Golovanov, but it’s enough to give a taste of what American opera lovers are missing.
I hope you’ll join me for “Thaw of the Wild,” tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6, or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.
Today is the birthday of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (Julian date Mar. 6, 1844), who wrote so much enchanting music, and yet so much of it is comparatively unknown.
In particular, his operas have failed to really secure a toehold in the West. This, despite a pre-political hot potato Valery Gergiev’s efforts to bring a taste of their opulence and pageantry to BAM, the odd touring company (the Bolshoi) bringing concert versions to Lincoln Center, or the now defunct New York City Opera putting together an English-language version of “Le coq d’or” for Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle – now almost 50 years ago!
His works for the stage are often dismissed by Western critics, who apparently find them insubstantial, as if (non-Wagnerian) folklore is somehow less valid than an evening of Italian oom-pah-pah culminating in a jester discovering his dying daughter in a burlap sack.
Be that as it may, I find what I’ve heard of his operas (and I’ve probably heard more than most) enthralling. He composed 16 in all, if we count the original version of “Mlada,” which he wrote in collaboration with other composers of The Mighty Handful.
Sadly, Gergiev’s cycle of recordings for the Philips label was curtailed after only five operas, leaving one to feel one’s way through the thickets of mostly unreviewed (at least in the West) Russian recordings. The sound quality on these can be hit and miss, and the singing can be variable, but every once in a while, one hits pay dirt.
Why is it that the most powerful recordings are from the pre-stereo era, when larger-than-life figures like Feodor Chaliapin and Mark Reizen walked the boards? If you don’t mind listening through a soup can, anything conducted by Nikolai Golovanov will knock your socks off. If ever I acquire a time-traveling DeLorean, I would make it my mission to round up some modern recording engineers and slip into the Soviet Union under Stalin’s moustache.
