Taneyev Oresteia

 Opera no 43

Taneyev The Oresteia

After a couple of shorter Russian operas back to something on a much larger scale. This was a hugely impressive piece, perhaps the most impressive in this series of Russian operas. It is full scale work full of big set pieces, lyrical passages and real excitement. Indeed at times the number of climaxes piling up one after another became a bit overwhelming. The music style was eclectic. It was obviously Russian but there were plenty of sections which were clearly related to French and Italian models and some Wagnerian overtones. There was even a passage near the beginning that heard cold I would have identified as Elgar!

The end of the opera was particularly exciting - a big choral climax which rang in the ears long after it was over. Altogether this was a memorable experience and one which makes me eager to hear more of Taneyev’s music - unfortunately this was his only opera.

This is the last in this short series of Russian operas. It has been fascinating. We know so little of the 19th century Russian operatic repertory - basically Boris and Eugene Onegin - that almost everything else comes as a surprise. It also shows that the work of the lesser known composers is capable of vying with the major figures - in fact the only real disappointment in this group was the Tchaikovsky.

The next phase in this project will be very different - I will be exploring some of the very earliest operas - a repertoire which is almost completely unknown to me.

Cui: A Feast in Time of Plague

Opera no 42

Cui: A Feast in Time of Plague

Soloists

Russian State Symphony Orchestra

Valeri Polyansky

Cui is the least well known of ‘the five’. He is remembered, if at all as a miniaturist and as a rather fearsome critic, I sampled a suite of his last year https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/03/cui-suite-no-3-in-modo-populari.html and I found it quite pleasant without it making much of an impression.

Cui wrote 8 or 9 operas (the no depends on how you count collaborative works). This short piece is the only one I could find a recording of. It packed quite a punch in its 35 mins involving as it does 5 soloists (plus a silent character) and a chorus. It was obviously the work of a Russian composer but was clearly also within the mainstream European tradition.  I enjoyed it a lot and had more trident for the composer after I had heard it than I had before.  It is a late work -  a reminder that Cui was the last survivor or ‘the five, dying as late as 1918, by which time he must really have seemed a fish out of water. The piece could certainly be attractive on stage today, though it is difficult to see how what it could be coupled with. It is one of four pieces based on Puskin’s Four little tragedies’ - the others are by Dargomyzhsky (The Stone Guest), Rimsky-Korsakov (Mozart and Salieri) and Rachmaninov (The Miserly Knight). Putting all four on on the same evening would however be something of a marathon.

Mussorgsky: The marriage

Opera no 41

Mussorgsky: The marriage

Soloists

USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra

Gennadi Rozdestvensky

In last year’s project my Mussorgsky piece was Kovanchina an opera on the largest scale with all of the characteristics that one would expect from a big 19th century Russian opera. https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/03/mussorgsky-kovanchina.html

This opera is about as far removed from that (and indeed Boris Godunov)  as one can imagine. It is more in the style of a conversation piece with only a small number of characters in a simple domestic setting. Mussorgsky here was doing some that Dhagomiskhy was also attempting in The Stone Guest  (something I also listened to last year)., ie write an opera which had no recitative or arias but was in a continuous arioso, rather like a sung play. To mind my Mussorgsky was much more successful, perhaps because this was a much shorter piece.

But this is another example of the seeming inability of the 19th century Russian opera composers to actually finish anything properly. This was it seems going to be a much longer work but Mussorgsky only completed the first act before turning to other projects. And he never orchestrated it. Early performances were with piano accompaniment. The orchestration in this version was by Rozdesvensky, the conductor of the performance. To start with I found it quite attractive but soon I felt more and more that it was quite out of touch with the musical language. It inhabited an early 20th century sound world much more reminiscent of Stravinsky in pieces such as as Mavra. Ultimately it became really irritating.

All in all I found it a difficult piece to assess. Partly because of the orchestration issues but also because without following all of the nuances of the Russian language in translation I did feel that I didn’t get the real experience of what the opera must be like to a native speaker. But I am glad that I heard it, though I can’t imagine that I will return to it in a hurry.

Dargomyzhsky: Rusalka

Opera no 40

Dargomzhsky: Rusalka

Soloists

Moscow radio and TV orchestra and chorus

Valdimir Fedoseyev

Last year I included Dargomyzhsky's The Stone Guest as part of my 365 pieces projecthttps://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/07/dargomizhsky-stone-guest.html. That was a strange piece in which the composer set the text in something halfway between recitative and aria. It was worth listening to once just to hear what it was like but I didn't think that it really worked. This opera was much more conventional and is another example of the intermediate era between Glinka and The Five/Tchaikovsky.

I thought that it was a very uneven work. There were some quite gripping passages of ensemble, particularly in the later part of the opera, where the composer showed true dramatic flair. But parts of its were rather trivial and cliche-ridden and frankly, rather dull. There was no real sense of unity about the opera - one got the sense that all sorts of pieces from very different types of scores had been thrown together.

In the last act there is some very curious passages in which a young girl speaks lines over music - she is supposed to be the voice of the heroine  who died many years earlier in the water. It is a most disconcerting effect on record - it seems to be part of a completely different piece - though I suppose that it might have been effective in the theatre. The whole episode is just really odd.

So after two really good operas (no 38 and 39) by middle generation Russian composers it was I suppose too much to expect a third.  This was too uneven a work to have anything like the same impact as those two previous scores had. But then, the whole point of this project is to listen to as many different operas as possible and not all of them are going to be masterpieces.

Rubinstein: The Demon

Opera no 39

Rubinstein: The Demon

Rubinstein is now probably remembered only for the slightly mawkish ‘melody in F’ which was once a stable of salon concerts and the bandstand but even than is probably now fading from memory. But in his day he was a very important figure in Russian music, not only as a composer but as a pianist and educator. He knew all of the important musicians of his time and was well regarded.

I thoroughly enjoyed this opera. It is very much in the idiom of Der Vampyr and The Flying Dutchman with hints of Weber and French grand opera. It was exciting and, particularly towards the end, genuinely moving in its depiction of the struggle between good and evil. Occasionally the music was a little cliched and called to mind the oriental fantasies of Albert Ketelby or even the cartoons of Walt Disney, but that can hardly be blamed on Rubinstein - it was a common fate of the tropes of dramatic 19th century music to be repurposed in this way.

This performance from the Wexford festival omitted the ballet but I heard that on a separate recording. I don’t think that is was much missed. - it did seem to be rather conventional. But I noted that some of the music turned up, in a rather turbo charged form, in an arrangement by Resphighi as the Dance of the Tartar Warriors in the ballet La Pentola Magico. I’d know that for years without having any idea of its original source.

Serov: Judith

Opera no 38

Serov: Judith

Soloists

Bolshoi Theatre orchestra

Andreï Tchistiakov

Serov occupies a place between Glinka and the mature operas of Tchaikovsky and The Five. He is now almost a forgotten figure and he never had much traction in the West but he was admired by Tchaikovsky and others at the time. But he was also the subject of some very biting criticism from Stasov, the leading music critic in mid 19th century Russia.’the whole psychological aspect of drama was absolutely alien to him and beyond him. You will not hear a single passage in any of this three operas which expressed heartfelt emotion, genuine warmth of feeling, or passion.’ There’s plenty more where that came from.

I read this before I listened to the opera, so my expectations were not high. But it seemed that I was listening to something completely different. I thought that this was a splendid piece - full of colour and drama and with some highly attractive melodic writing. As to be expected in a Russian opera of this period there is some notable choral writing and dance music. And the final ensemble with an impassioned soprano solo was superb - really made the hairs stand up on the back of the neck.

So a really impressive piece. The contrast with the Tchaikovsky yesterday in this project was very marked. One a major composer being distinctly under par: the other a minor composer really hitting the jackpot.

Tchaikovsky: Cherevichki

Opera no 37

Tchaikovsky: Cherevichki

Soloists

Chorus and Orchestra del Teatro Lirico Di Gagliari

Gennady Rozhdestvensky

This was an opera I was looking forward to. I’ve heard from several people that it is a good piece and Tchaikovsky himself  said that it was ‘musically well-nigh my best opera’. I have to say, however, that I found it rather disappointing. It is not a bad piece  of course, but I felt that it never really made an impact - much of it rather passed me by. It was only towards the end that I really started to enjoy the piece. Mainly because of the extended dance music which was first rate Tchaikovsky and very much in the same mode as the great ballets. There was also an attractive duet for female voices.  But by this time it was too late for me. I am a great Tchaikovsky enthusiast and so it was doubly disappointing that this work failed, at least for me, to hit the spot. 

But of course the whole point of this project is to explore lots of different works and there are bound to be some which don’t make such a strong impression as others.

Glinka: Ruslan and Lyudmila

Opera no 36

Glink: Ruslan and Lyudmila

Soloists 

Kirov Opera

Valery Gergiev 

Ruslan and Lyudmila is of course famous for its overture - one of the great showpieces of the orchestral repertoire (I remember how scary it felt the first time I played it). But I had never heard any of the rest of the opera before.  I thought it was an absolutely fascinating piece.

You can feel Glinka here trying (and succeeding) to create a Russian operatic tradition out of so many different strands. The influence of French Grand Opera is very clear is some of the big set piece ensembles (such as the end of the first act)  but Weber is another influence and there is a Bellini-like Italianate lyricism to some of the lyrical numbers. Some of the ballet music seems to belong to the same world as Adam and Auber but others is distinctly Russian in style and looks forward to the ballet music of Tchaikovsky. But you also get elements of what would become the standard tropes of Russian opera. Folksong-based melodies, big choruses with a religious feel to them, major roles for low voices and oriental touches, including the use of the whole-tone scale.

The orchestration is fascinating. There is a prominent part for piano in the first act (it returns later)  and some of the magic music uses the glass harmonica (it is not exactly clear what Glinka had in mind) though in this recording some sort of glockenspiel appears to be used.  

Glinka manages to make a coherent opera out of all of these diverse elements and I really enjoyed getting to know the piece. You can see what Glinka had such an influence over the next generation of Russian opera composers.  It was also satisfying, some 50+ years since I first heard the overture, to put in into the context of the operas as a whole. The big second-subject tune is a baritone aria in Act 2 and the fast scale-based music at the start occurs at the very end of the opera. The overture is such a good piece on its own that one admires the way that Glinka wove everything together seamlessly.  

Fomin: The coachman at the horse stage post

Opera no 35

Fomin: The coachman at the horse stage-post 

Following a series of Czech operas I am now turning to Russia. Opera took a while to get going in Russian  and the early years were dominated by Italian composers. Those Russians who did write operas generally wrote them in Italian as well so Russian language operas by native composers were rare until the end of the 18th century.

This is one of the first of them, Fomin was the son of a military family and he undertook musical training in Bologna. He then returned to St Petersburg where he was associated with the imperial theatre. He wrote some 30 operas, although there are some issues over the attribution of some of them.  

I found it difficult to find out much about this opera on line so I listened to it more or less blind. It started as I expected with a rather jolly overture in a sub-Haydnesque style but then came a surprise. Instead of continuing in that vein we had about 10 mins of mainly choral music which was solemn and religious in character. It reminded me of Gluck or the Armed Men scene in The Magic Flute with some moments that seem positively Handelian. Then it reverted back to the Haydnesque idiom with some attractive songs and ensembles. The music was in truth quite crude in places, but the composer did have the knack of writing some catchy tunes. The last ensemble seemed to be based on the same folk song that Tchaikovsky used in the last movement of the 4th symphony.

In truth this seemed more like a play with songs rather than an opera as we know it - though I am still mystified by those opening choral sections. It is remarkable to think that the huge accomplishments of 19th Russian opera composers were built on such slight foundations as this.

Rimsky-Korsakov: The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh

Opera no 8

Rimsky-Korsakov: The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh

Soloists

Kirov Opera 

Valery Gergiev

I'm gradually getting to know the Rimsky-Korsakov operas. In my project last year I was very impressed with The Maid of Pskov https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/03/rimsky-korsakov-maid-of-pskov.html and I enjoyed this opera even more. It has all of the ingredients you expect from Russian opera of this period. Big ceremonial scenes, dramatic choruses, ritual, impressive bass roles and folk-music inspired passages. The Invisible City is sometimes considered to be Rimsky's Parsifal because of the ritual and especially the evocation of the bells - here they represent the lost city. There was some astonishing orchestration here to evoke the sound of the bells, showing Rimsky to be one of the most innovate orchestrators of the late 19th century.  There are also constant reminders that The Firebird was just round the corner. The more you hear of Rimsky's music the more Stravinsky's debt to his teacher becomes more apparent. 

Perhaps the one think lacking in this piece is a really outstanding melody. Rimsky's melodic writing is quite cautious - this is not one of those operas where you go away humming a big tune which stays as an ear worm. But there is so much else in this score that this doesn't really matter. It is compelling music from start to finish.