Руслан и Людмила (RUSLAN AND LYUDMILA)
Opera in 5 acts and 8 tableaux
Composer : Mikhail Glinka (1804–1857)
Libretto: Valerian Shirkov, after Alexander Pushkin
First performance: Bolshoi Kamenniy Teatr, St Petersburg, 27 November 1842 (Old Style)
SETTING: Kievan’ Rus (9th to 13th centuries)
Two monsters abduct Lyudmila at her marriage to the Kievan knight Ruslan. Her father Svetozar promises that the man who rescues her will marry Lyudmila and receive half his kingdom. Ruslan and two other suitors, the Khazar prince Ratmir and the Varangian (Viking) knight Farlaf, set out to rescue her. Ruslan learns that the evil sorcerer Chernomor kidnapped Lyudmila; Farlaf allies himself with the witch Naina; and Ratmir falls under the sway of the maidens at Naina’s magical castle. Ruslan kills Chernomor and rescues Lyudmila, but she is taken to Kiev by Farlaf, who claims that he rescued her. Ruslan gives Farlaf the lie and marries Lyudmila.
‘Ruslan i Lyudmila’ is the source of Russian opera from which all others – Mussorgsky, Borodin, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakoff – flow. Like many Russian operas, it is based on folktales, a vein which Rimsky-Korsakoff (‘Kashchey the Deathless’, ‘Sadko’) and Tchaikovsky (‘Iolanta’) would mine. Apart from the famous overture, it is little known in the West; it was not performed outside Russia until 1867, when Balakirev conducted it in Prague, and not in the Anglophone world until 1931. However, the instrumentation is imaginative, especially in Chernomor’s March, while the opera shows the influence of both Italian bel canto and French grand opéra (Meyerbeer’s ‘Robert le Diable’, 1831: [ Ссылка ]).
No. 14 – Ratmir’s Aria: ‘I zhar, I znoy smenila nochi ten’
Prince Ratmir arrives at Naina’s castle; he is torn between exhaustion and his desire for his native land and the lovely maidens of his harem.
Ratmir, a Khazar prince (contralto): Larissa Diadkova
Conductor: Valery Gergiev
Chorus & Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre
St Petersburg, February 1995
