It had been a long time since I'd seen a Rimsky-Korsakov opera, and this seems to be considered one of his best. So there you go. It's based on two separate legends: one about a city that God makes disappear when it's being threatened by the Golden Horde, and one about a saint, Fevroniya, who almost certainly wasn't a real person. She lived a long and happy life, supposedly--that's no way for a saint to behave! The character in the opera has very little to do with the original story, however.
Fevroniya is a poor peasant, living a quiet life in the woods and communing with the wild animals. She meets a hunter, Vsevolod, son of the prince of Kitezh, and they fall in love and get engaged. Back in town (not Kitezh), wedding preparations are underway. People are singing songs. An obnoxious drunkard, Grishka, is making trouble for everyone. Then, disaster: the Tatars are invading! They slaughter most of the people, taking Fevroniya captive and forcing Grishka to show them the way to Kitezh. In Kitezh, everyone's alarmed, as you'd expect. Vsevolod leads some troops against the Tatars and they're all killed. The Tatars reach the city, but are unable to see it, and conclude they'll decide what to do in the morning. Grishka, wracked with fear and remorse, begs Fevroniya to free him, and eventually she does and they flee. In the morning, the city is still not there, but its reflection can be seen in the lake, which causes the Tatars to freak out and flee. In the woods, Fevroniya and Grishka are still running. He starts having hallucinations, freaks out, and runs off. Fevorniya sees visions of the Invisible City (is this the same as Kitezh? Not clear. It's a metaphysical city) and meets all the people who've died, including her fiancé. She's happy for this salvation, but sad that Grishka remains unredeemed, so she sends him a letter, telling him that he too will be saved some day, and everyone goes to their eternal reward.
It'll definitely remind you of Parsifal in some ways: lots of sin and redemption, abstuse theology, stuff about the redeeming power of nature, probably goes on a little longer than it needs to--the works. As usual for Rimsky-Korsakov, not many show-stopping arias per se, but tons and tons of great music, and a surprisingly moving story. He was apparently planning for this to be his last opera before he got the idea for The Golden Cockerel, and it certainly would have made a fitting climax. Love it, and love the radiant Svetlana Ignatovich as Fevroniya--she also played the female lead in Tsar Saltan, although, confusingly, she was credited there as Svetlana Aksenova. Definitely the same person, though. Did she get married and change her name? It is an ineffable mystery.
There are, somewhat surprisingly, two different productions available on disc, but I chose this one. It's by the polarizing Dmitri Tcherniakov, who did that Tale of Tsar Saltan where it's all stories told to and by an autistic teenager. That production, in spite of sounding kind of dubious, was in many ways brilliant and worked incredibly well in places. And...in places it did not, and it well and truly botched the ending. So I wasn't sure about this one. I was kind of prepared to have to look past the production to see through to the opera itself. I needn't have worried, though. Yes, it takes place in a vaguely-defined post-apocalyptic world, and that in itself is sure to turn a lot of people off, but the actual story is totally faithful to the libretto; there's no attempt to subvert it or make it about anything else. Call it Eurotrash if you must, but it's definitely not Regietheatre.
Actually, it's mainly the second and third acts that people have issues with. The first and fourth, taking place in the wilderness, seem a lot less controversial. And well, yes, it's true, these acts take place in an aggressively modern-day setting. Yes, there is a guy wearing a bootleg Bob Marley/Homer Simpson t-shirt. But once I got used to it, I had no problem with it. It was a very effective way to tell the story. Some, for sure, object to the portrayal of Grishka, especially when he first appears. Played by John Daszak (currently tweeting up a storm about our failed Coronavirus response), he's depicted as a kind of football hooligan type, aggressively vulgar and not-giving-a-fuck. But really, if you're bothered by the fact that--for instance--at one point he mimes jerking off with a crucifix, have you maybe perhaps forgotten that the whole point is that, especially in the beginning, he's supposed to be an unredeemed sinner? How PG-rated do you need your sinners to be? There ARE some extreme things here, but then again, the libretto itself is kind of extreme in places, especially with the violence. In all, I think it makes perfect sense--and actually, from reviews I've seen, it looks like the OTHER production of this that's available is significantly weirder and possibly less on-point. So I think I made the right choice here.
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