Worst-case scenario: you wake up one day and realize, HOLY SHIT, I've only watched ONE Russian opera about Little Red Riding Hood! Well, I'm here to tell you, that is no longer a risk for me. It was really just happenstance that this came up on OperaonVideo recently, and I thought, heh, it would be funny to see another Russian LRRH opera. Let's do it! It's probably basically the same plot!
Well...not really. What the bulk of this consists of is various animals--the most prominent being a rabbit, a bear, a boar, a fox, what I think are a pair of squirrels, and a chorus of birds. What are they going on about? No clue. The sort of through-line of the plot does come through, but it feels very secondary--as, honestly, does the protagonist herself. She's not there for a long time. But anyway, in the end the wolf gets arrested and taken away. So there you go.
The problem is that you can really find basically no information about this online. After searching around and not even being able to find out when the dang thing was composed, I hied myself to Russian wikipedia. I WAS able to get the year, but not much more, and just looking around the Russian internet in general, I swear, there's NOTHING. Definitely one of the biggest obscurities I've seen.
Still, it's not bad! Some infectious music. I think I prefer the Cui, but honestly, it's not fair to compare them sans subtitles. The action here could be super-sparkling, or it could be unbelievably dull and tedious. We shall never know! But the music's good enough that the piece justifies itself in any case.
Anyway, that's enough of Little Red Riding Hood. How about a B.B. Hood opera?!?
Come on, people!
Actually, can I air my grievance with B.B. Hood? This seems like the right place to do it. So: "B.B." is short for "Baby Bonnie," which isn't right: it should be short for "Bonnie Blue," and then she would contrast with Little Red Riding Hood by dressing in blue instead of red. But no! They give her red too! Very lame, and it makes her a less distinctive character.
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