The Snow Maiden
11 and 12 November, 23 and 24 December
A series of concert performances showcasing the best of world opera will continue on our stage with Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden, one of the masterpieces of Russian lyric opera.
«This is not an opera which reveals itself to the listener immediately,» explains musical director and conductor Dmitri Jurowski. «However, while listening to it, you start to become aware of the depth and scale of the piece, and slowly but surely an incredible musical expanse opens up before you. I would like to bring this opera to the public in a new way, to fall in love with it, to convey the beauty of this extraordinary work, and share the joy of my encounter with Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical gift.»
The Snow Maiden, based on Alexander Ostrovsky’s «spring fairy tale» of the same name, was considered by the composer to be his greatest achievement. He first read Ostrovsky’s play at the time of its publication, but it was only when he returned to it five years later that «it fully came to light in all its miraculous beauty.» After being granted permission to write an opera based on the play, Rimsky-Korsakov sat down to compose in the summer of 1880 and finished the first draft in the space of just two months. «I composed all day, every day and still managed to regularly take the air with my wife, help her to make jam, gather mushrooms, and so on,» the composer wrote in his memoirs. «But the musical ideas and their progression pursued me relentlessly. Nothing has ever come to me so quickly and with such ease as The Snow Maiden.» In turn, the dramatist made no effort to hide his admiration for the operatic adaptation of his tale: «The music to my Snow Maiden is wonderful, and I could think of nothing more suitable, so vividly does it express the full poetry of the Russian pagan tradition and the initially ice-cold, and then fiercely passionate, heroine of the fairy tale,» wrote Ostrovsky.
The main parts in the concert performance of The Snow Maiden will be sung by Natalia Mironova, Svetlana Monchak and Svetlana Moskalenko (the Snow Maiden), Ekaterina Egorova (Mother Spring), Sofia Fainberg and Marina Ogii (Lel), Stanislav Shvets and Yury Monchak (Father Frost), Alexander Kuznetsov and Dmitry Darov (Mizgir), Maria Litke and Tatiana Ryaguzova (Kupava), and Boris Stepanov (Tsar Berendey).
