Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Mozart and Salieri (1897)

This sticks out pretty jarringly among Rimsky-Korsakov's operas: you have all these pieces based on Russian fairie and folk tales, and then, BOOM, this one that has absolutely nothing to do with any Slavic themes. Of course, the reason is that it's based on a play by Pushkin, so I suppose in that sense it's indirectly Russian, but still...

Anyway, actually, when you think about it, it is based on a fairie tale: the wholly fake idea that Salieri had this bitter rivalry with Mozart. BOOM. In fact, this--and the source material--are mostly where this stuff comes from, I think. So I don't love that, but if we can ignore the fakeness on display here, this still works pretty well as a drama and an opera.

The idea is that Salieri is really obsessed with art and being an artist and he's worked his whole life to gain respect for himself and his work and he's done it even if it's kind of clinical and not exactly transcendent. And he was cool with that until this pipsqeak Mozart came along, who has the divine spark in spite of being, in Salieri's opinion, frivolous and unappreciative of his gift. So they're friends in theory only it's eating Salieri up inside until finally he determines that the only thing he can do is poison the kid (well, only six years younger than him, but whatevs). And that is that. It's a short piece; only one act in two scenes; over in forty-ish minutes.

It's really good, though the music takes a fairly inconspicuous backseat. Salieri and Mozart are the only two characters, the former having a much bigger role than the latter. You can really feel his angst, although I do have to say, as depicted, it's a little hard to really feel that it would be quite so murderous. This production (released as a double feature with The Stone Guest) from 1981 is quite good, notwithstanding the shaky video quality, although I somehow feel like Mozart should be depicted as younger than he is. Yes, their ages were close in real life, but the drama seems predicated on there being a bigger difference, and they're both late-middle-agish here. Small complaint, though. Good singing. Predictably, Salieri's a baritone and Mozart a tenor, and Artur Eizen and Alexei Maslennikov are both effective in the roles, though the former feels more like a real character. Mozart's mostly viewed from Salieri's perspective, at a remove.

Ironically (is this ironic? Probably not? Whatever), it makes me want to listen to more Mozart and more Salieri. 'Cause the former is great and the latter is pretty darned good (to be fair, the opera does nothing to indicate that the latter isn't as true as the former--Mozart even positively references Salieri's Tarare). But then...so is Rimsky-Korsakov. There was a time when I naively thought that I could at some point see all the operas that are available to see. Now...well, it's more plausible than seeing every available movie, but it's still a hell of daunting task.