No 41 -- Spring 1994 Edited by Michael Walters
To see this less well-known of Glinka's two operas on the stage was an opportunity not to be missed, but what a disappointment it was. The music, though tuneful, sits at odds with the bizarre fairy-tale (other Russians like Rimsky-Korsakov caught the Eastern idiom better) and needs all the help it can get in the way of exotic settings and costumes, with brilliant colours, onion domes and lots of sparkle. Instead, this dreary production was placed on a nearly bare stage in half-light, so that the singers' faces could hardly even be seen properly. I shall make a note to avoid productions by Bernard Culshaw in the future. The orchestra, and most of what I heard of the singing, were excellent, but I am afraid I nodded off a few times in the later acts.
MICHAEL WALTERS
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