Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov is the featured composer on this week’s Sunday Opera (4/13 3:00 p.m.) and his 1881 work based on a Russian folk legend. “The Snow Maiden” is an allegorical story dealing with the conflict of “eternal forces of nature” involving the interactions of humans, mythological characters, and those who are a combination of the two. It was said to have been Rimsky-Korsakov’s favorite opera.
The piece contains leitmotifs for many of the main characters as well as stylistic changes in the music to denote the three groups of characters.
Snow Maiden (Ver Firsova) is the daughter of two mythical beings Spring (Veronika Borisenko) and Grandfather Frost (Alexei Krivchenia). Although an immortal, she longs to know human love, so her parents allow her to be adopted by the humans Babyl Bakula (Alexander Khosson) and his wife Babylikha (Valentina Petrova).
Immediately upon her crossing the river to live in her new village, Snow Maiden hears Lel (Larissa Avdeyeva) sing and immediately falls in love with him. He, however, is not impressed with her. This happens as there is a wedding in the village between Kupava (Galina Vishnevskaya) and the merchant Mizgir (Yuri Galkin). However, immediately after the marriage, Mizgir sees Snow Maiden, and falls madly in love with her. Tsar Berendey (Ivan Kozlovsky) answers a plea from Kupava to bring Mizgir back into line, but he, for some reason, says that whomever Snow Maiden can get to love her will be her mate. The problem is that Snow Maiden is not capable of human love.
What happens? Well – there are two deaths, a happy couple, and the end of a fifteen year long spell of eternal winter. How we get there is the story, and you’ll just have to tune in to see how it plays out.
Evgeny Svetlanov is the conductor leading the Chorus and Orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre.
After the opera, we’ve got more music of Rimsky-Korsakov in a suite from one of his operas heard on the Sunday Opera in March of 2023: “The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia.” This beautiful four movement suite is performed by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michail Jurowski.
