Ruslan and Lyudmila

I do like Ruslan and Lyudmila as an opera, especially as the Overture is one of my personal favourite overtures. I am more a fan of the likes of Eugene Onegin, Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina when it comes to Russian opera, but the music is so wonderful and the story slightly silly but very enchanting all the same. And this is a very interesting and great production. It is absolutely dazzling visually with the costumes and sets breathtaking. The staging is very effective mostly. The Act Three ballet is uninspired and the scene between Ruslan and Chernomor likewise, but much made up for it such as the excellently choreographed Act 4 ballet, March of the Wizard and the processions at Chernomor's court. Musically, the orchestra play with a rich and full sound, and Valery Gergiev's conducting is as enigmatic as it ever was. The singing is simply great. Vladmir Ognovenko is appropriately heroic and sings with a chocolaty bass(unusual in that I often associate heroes in opera as tenors), while Anna Netrebko gives some of her most crystal-clear singing of her career and she's very expressive. Mikhail Kit and Genady Bezzubenkov are owners of sonorous bass voices, and as Ratmir Larissa Diadkova comes close to stealing the show with an imposing presence and a rich contralto register that even for a contralto is remarkable in its volume. Mikhail Schtein is good as Chernomor, and I enjoyed the bright timbres of the two tenors. In conclusion, very interesting. 9/10 Bethany Cox

The second of two operas by the Russian composer Mickhail Ivanovich Glinka (the first, usually called "A Life for the Tsar", is the first actual Russian opera.), is here presented in a 1995 production by the Kirov Opera under the ubiquitous Valery Gergiev in association with the San Francisco Opera. (The executive producer, Jane Seymour, appears not to be the well-known actress according to the IMDb.)

The production is mostly sumptuously effective but often oddly misses some major climactic points. However, it generally gives a good accounting of one of the first real Russian operas without which subsequent Russian opera would have been quite different. Tchaikovsky dubbed this "the Tsar of Operas" though Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov seem closer to its style.

It has everything including a silly story involving the knight Ruslan and his bride the Princess Lyudmila (The young and beautiful Anna Netrebko!) who is kidnapped by an evil sorcerer Chernamor. The opera's remainder deals with her rescue and there are lots of good and bad wizards all over the place. (No, Frank Morgan doesn't appear!) The opera's libretto is by many different hands including Glinka's but based on the work of Pushkin who was killed at an early age in a duel, and who gets a touching tribute in the first act. The results of this hit-or-miss writing of the libretto adds to the ineffectiveness of the opera as drama.

(I don't mean to cast aspersions on Pushkin whose original I haven't read.)

The "acting" is non-existent and consists of pure posturing a la "Alexander Nevsky" (pageant-style) and the costumes are the usual Russian fairy-tale folkloric designs. The dancing is variable but, again, often oddly ineffective. The most interesting part, to me, was the processions and dancing at the court of Chernamor and that brilliant but bizarre music usually excerpted under the title "March of the Wizard".

The singing is sometimes more than serviceable but "slavic" voices often take some getting used to. The DVD has an excellent and informative booklet and a couple of extra features which I haven't seen.

To sum it up: a major but flawed production of a major but flawed opera by "the Father of Russian music", Mickhail Glinka.

7 out of 10.