Oh look, more Rimsky-Korsakov! Based on a fairy tale, so we're in extremely familiar territory. The story here is that the title character is an evil sorcerer who can never die because he's hidden his death in the tears of his daughter, Kashcheyevna, and she's very hard-hearted and never cries. He's holding a princess known only as "Tsarevna" captive in his realm, as she longs for Ivan, her prince; he's worried that Ivan might discover his secret, so he sends a captive storm spirit to see what's happening. Elsewhere, Ivan is searching for Tsarevna. Kashcheyevna (a sorceress in her own right) tries to kill him, but then she falls in love with him. The wind spirit reveals that Tsarevna is Kashchey's prisoner, so everyone traipses off there. Ultimately--this was pretty predictable--Kashcheyevna sheds tears for her unrequited love, causing her dad to croak and her to disappear (well, per the wikipedia entry, she turns into a willow tree, but here she just disappears--fairy tale logic). Tsarevna and Ivan are happy, and presumably so is the wind spirit, off doing wind-spirit-related activities.
It's an hour-long, one-act opera, but man, the music is so great. The wind spirit's perfectly evocative storm music, the "sword" song that Kashcheyevna sings as she works herself up to murder, the venemous "lullaby" that Tsarevna sings to her captor, and so much more. You can see it in a 1987 Soviet film version, which I find charming in its extreme low-budgetness. It's filmed in some random countryside, and the special effects are hilariously chintzy, but the singers are all very good--though confusingly, some but not all of the roles are lip-synced, meaning I'm not quite sure who to credit for them.
I also wanted to just note here, apropos of very little, that I also saw RK's opera The Tsar's Bride some time ago. I don't know why I never wrote about it. Atypically, it's a tragedy, but with the usual folk inflections, and extremely good music in general. Here, listen to the overture;it rules.
The grim fact is, though, that there are a full six Rimsky-Korsakov operas that have apparently never been filmed, like, anywhere. Come on, you friggin' Russians! Get on it!
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