Review: Prince Igor

Classical music:

Prince Igor (Met Live)

Mahon Omniplex, Cork

What a privilege to hear and see the world’s great singers via ‘Live in High Definition’ from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. The enormity of the privilege was reinforced for me when contact with the satellite was twice lost during the transmission of Prince Igor (a marvellous opera, rarely seen in the West) on Saturday last. It is rare because it is in Russian and needs Russian-speaking soloists, and because Borodin did not finish it, nor leave a readily performable libretto. The Met got over this by employing Dmitri Tcherniakov, who had compiled his own excellent libretto, as producer, and by importing first-rate Russian, Ukrainian, and Georgian soloists.

Tcherniakov also designed extraordinarily imaginative sets that contributed enormously to the understanding of the opera, particularly to that of Act I, which takes place in Prince Igor’s imagination and memory. Between the Prologue (where Igor reviews the troops who are about to attack the marauding Polovtsians) and Act I, Tcherniakov projected images of the dying, and dead, defeated troops. While I suspect that I might not have understood the plot at all had I not done research, nothing could have detracted from my pleasure in the music.

Prince Igor is a wonderfully tuneful opera, in which Borodin skilfully moved between the semi-oriental music of the Polovtsians and the more familiar, Tchaikovsky-like idiom. Italian conductor, Gianandrea Noseda, was at home in both idioms and drew really expressive, if at times rather too gentle, playing from the Met orchestra. Donald Palumbo’s 110-member Met Opera chorus almost stole the show, such was their excellence. Baritone, Ildar Abdrazakov (Igor), his wife, Yaroslavna (soprano, Oksana Dyka), mezzo, Anita Rachvelishvili (Konchakovna) and her father, Khan Konchak, (basso profundo, Stefan Kocán) sang with tremendous depth and expressiveness. Brilliantly supportive also were the odious Mikhail Petrenko(baritone), as the would-be prince, Galitsky, and Vladimir, Yaroslavna’s son, tenor, Sergey Semishkur. All are names to remember.

Star Rating: 5/5