Lyrical love and poisonous potions

On Thursday, Bangkok audiences will be treated to a brand new production of “The Tsar’s Bride” by Ekaterinburg State Opera Theatre, with stage direction, set and lighting design by the Bolshoi Opera.
The professional team consists of the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the conductor Mikhail Granovsky, and the stage director Mikhail Pandzhavidze.
Many critics and fans have referred to this work as Rimsky-Korsakov’s most Western opera, with the Covent Garden website calling it “Verdi on vodka”. The plot has enough romance, double crosses, poisonings and madness to rival Shakespeare at his most sensationalistic.
In this case, history is stranger than fiction, for the Lev Mey-penned drama that inspired it was based on fact: in 1571, Ivan the Terrible married a commoner. Marfa, his new bride, passed away only a few weeks later.
In the Russian composer’s masterful hands, the bare bones of the plot have been fleshed out with some of his warmest and most full-blooded arias. These songs of love and longing, hope and betrayal are the art and the soul of The Tsar’s Bride.
The plot is serpentine. Every twist has substantial ramifications.
A tale about passion, a poisoning and vengeance, this Russian opera pivots around an oprichnik (bodyguard) named Griaznoi and his passion for Marfa. He obtains a love elixir for her, but his spurned mistress Lubacha takes vengeance by substituting it for a poison.
Tsar Ivan the Terrible unpredictably selects Marfa to become his bride, not knowing she has been poisoned. Griaznoi blames and kills Lykov, Marfa’s fiance, and then Lubacha, while Marfa tragically goes mad.
All the while, waiting in the wings to wreak more havoc are the oprichniks, Ivan’s brutal security force.
Who better to stage such a tour de force of drama and history than the Ekaterinburg State Opera Theatre? One of the oldest such companies in Russia, and a standard-bearer of both Russian and international music traditions, they will celebrate their centenary next year.
In September 2009, the Festival staged three rousing operas – “La Traviata”, “Tosca” and “Madama Butterfly”, which went down a treat with the sizeable crowds.
“The Tsar’s Bride” is sung in Russian, but with surtitles in Thai and English, so it will be easy for the audience to follow the convolutions of the plot.
If the success of the Russian opera “Prince Igor” at last year’s festival is anything to go by, “The Tsar’s Bride” should be just as popular.
The conductor is Mikhail Granovsky from the Bolshoi Theatre.
Only nine when he began singing with a boy’s choir in Moscow, the maestro is a musician’s musician with a background as a pianist and concertmaster. A well-travelled conductor, his repertoire at the Bolshoi Opera includes many classics from the canons of Mozart and Tchaikovsky in addition to that other Rimsky-Korsakov chestnut “The Snow Maiden”.

The performance starts on Thursday at 7.30pm.
Tickets cost from Bt1,000 to Bt4,000 and are available at ThaiTicketMajor counters, online at www.ThaiTicket-Major.com and at the door.
Call (02) 262 3191.