University of Hartford "H" Magazine - Winter 2019

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Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Rimsky-Korsakov: May Night

05/01/2022 1:00 pm
05/01/2022 4:30 pm

 

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) was primarily an opera composer, although his music is popularly known through his symphonic poem, Scheherazade. May Night (1880) was the second of his fifteen operas. The libretto is based on a story by Nikolai Gogol (1809-52), a native of the Ukraine, who wrote with enthusiasm about the rustic life and folklore of the region.

May Night is another name for the ancient Celtic fire festival of Beltane, also known in German as Walpurgisnnacht, the night of the witches' sabbath. The arrival of Summer on May Day is celebrated all over Northern Europe. May Night the opera draws upon age-old customs connected with the festivities. The opera is part romance, part peasant comedy and part ghost story. The village wise woman is mistaken for the Devil himself. She conjures up the dancing spirits of the Rusalki, the lovely water nymphs of Slavic legend. These are the ghosts of girls who drowned and who, on occasion, make appearances among the living.

Rimsky-Korsakov's score is strongly influenced by Ukrainian folk music. Every note of it is brilliantly orchestrated by one of the all-time great orchestrators. Recorded in 1971 in the USSR, it was picked up for distribution in the West in 1976 by Deutsche Grammophon. Vladimir Fedoseyev conducts the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow Radio and the Grand Choir of the USSR Radio and TV, with a singing cast that includes the internationally famed basso Gennady Troitsky.

I first broadcast this recording on DGG vinyl LPs on Sunday, May 5, 1985. I broadcast it again on two CDs in a Musical Heritage Society reissue on May Day Sunday, May 1, 2005. I employ the MHS reissue this May Day Sunday. The annual WWUH Marathon fundraising effort is now under way. Please show your appreciation for lyric theater programming with your pledged financial support. You faithful listeners have never failed to help us meet or even exceed our fundraising goals in Marathons past, so I thank you in advance for your generosity.