The Snow Maiden: birth of the fairy tale
On November 11 and 12, and on December 23 and 24, the Mikhailovsky Theatre will host a concert performance of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Snow Maiden, led by conductor Dmitri Jurowski.
The theatre has turned to this opera four times in its history. The earliest performance, which opened on 28 April 1928, was directed by People’s Artist of the USSR Nikolay Smolich, with staging by celebrated artist and set designer Mikhail Bobyshov. Bobyshov would go on to design sets for the famous ballet The Bright Stream, the opera The Golden Cockerel, and Fyodor Lopukhov’s production of Harlequinade — the theatre’s first repertory ballet.
Critics at the time had mixed views on Smolich’s vision of The Snow Maiden. Some were captivated by the production’s celebratory mood, expressed through its lighting design which included glowing tress, a light blizzard, and birds created using electric beams. Others believed the lighting effects overwhelmed the production. The production was performed 91 times, remaining in the theatre’s repertoire until 1934, when it was replaced by Vasily Shkafer’s version. His resurrection of the opera’s 1917 staging, originally co-created by Vsevolod Meyerhold, would become the director’s last work before his death. The set for the opera was designed by Konstantin Korovin, whose ideas were carried through all of the theatre’s subsequent versions of The Snow Maiden up until the mid-’80s.
1928 version, scene from act 2. Set design by Mikhail Bobyshov.
