Tale of Tsar Saltan in the Mariinsky Theatre, the 24th of February, 2019

Again a short trip to St. Petersburg and my first opera there was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” (Сказка о царе Салтане). Rimsky-Korsakov has composed several operas that are based on fairytales and traditionally many Russian parents and grandparent take the kids to see them.

This opera is based on Alexander Pushkin’s fairytale of Tsar Saltan, who marries Militrisa. When the tsar is fighting a war, at home Militrisa gives birth to a son, but her conniving sisters convince the tsar that the son is an ogre and he orders both the mother and son to be sent to sea in a barrel. The barrel floats to an island, where the – suddenly grown-up – son (Guidon) shoots the predator-bird that is attacking a swan. The swan is, of course, a princess and she marries Guidon, who becomes the ruler of the island. He misses his father and the swan changes him to a bee, who flies to the court of Tsar Saltan and stings his aunts there. Saltan has heard stories of the wonders of Guidon’s court and sails there. In the end, he meets his wife, Guidon confesses that he is the tsar’s son and Militrisa’s sisters also confess that they have lied to the tsar, but are forgiven.

Aleksander Petrov’s direction was mostly super traditional. The animated films telling the story (e.g. a barrel floating in the sea) during introductions and interludes spiked up the performance a bit, but costume design (Vladimir Eider) was extremely traditional and set design was mainly made of cardboard. The whole opera was extremely Russian. The nicest surprise was when during the last interlude, the orchestra suddenly rose to the level of the audience. Even though I have visited the old Mariinsky Theatre several times, I did not even know that that was possible. But it was really nice to see the musicians for once so well.

From the musical point of view, the best part of the opera was the orchestra. I am not saying that the singers were bad (well, except Guidon), but the young conductor Timur Zangiev did a great job with the Mariinsky orchestra. The orchestra had a chance to show off more than usual since this opera contains more than enough introductions and interludes. The best known of them is “The Flight of the Bumblebee”, which everybody has probably heard at one point or another.