May Night in Mariinsky Theatre's Concert Hall in St. Petersburg, on the 25th of May, 2019

Celebrations of the 175th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov continue in the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg and this time I went to see his opera “May Night”. This opera is fairly regularly performed in Russia but hardly even in the west. After I had seen this opera I could understand why. The libretto was written by the composer himself based on a story by Nikolai Gogol. I did not fall in love with the opera itself: it was ok, but not splendid.

“May Night” tells about Levko, whose father is the mayor and who is in love with Hanna. The mayor doesn’t want to hear about his marriage to Hanna, but tries to woo her himself. There is a story going on about a nearby house, where an evil stepmother, who was a witch, gets her stepdaughter thrown to the street. This makes her drown herself and become a mermaid, who dances on the beach during nights. The stepmother once comes to the beach and is also dragged to the sea, but she disguises herself as a mermaid. Levko ends up on the beach one night, sees the mermaids and the stepdaughter promises him a prize if he finds the stepmother amongst the mermaids. Of course, Levko manages to do this and gets a letter, that makes the mayor grant him Hanna as a wife. When you mix into this story some confusions caused by the village youths and the traipsing of the village drunk, it was all a bit like a typical Finnish summer theatre farce.

The performance took place in the Mariinsky Concert Hall, where the set designer (Sergei Grachev) had created a Ukrainian village. I would say that one of the best features of the opera were the dances; especially the high jumps of the male dances were magnificent. One of the dancers once ended up in a wrong place and had to be helped to the correct spots by a colleague, but it almost suited a folk opera.

The music of the opera was ok. There were no high points and the music was not really memorable. This time my favourites were the low male voices: Pavel Shmulevich as the village drunk was excellent and Mikhail Kolelishvili in the role of the mayor was also good.