Ruslan and Lyudmila (review)

The latest addition to Philips's valuable series of live video performances from the Mariinsky Theater is Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila, in the first complete televised production of the work ever to be seen outside Russia. The Mariinsky was the site of the work's first performance in 1842, six years after the world premiere of Glinka's first opera, A Life for the Tsar.

For Ruslan, which has its source in Pushkin's narrative poem of 1820, Glinka had contributions from no fewer than five librettists, including himself (Pushkin would have contributed, too, had a duel not taken his life in early 1837). The conductor, Kirov artistic director Valery Gergiev, reminds us in a bonus-track interview that Glinka knew his Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti, hence the grateful vocal lines that pervade each of the leading roles. The Italian influence is memorably integrated with the Russian idiom that Glinka was the first to bring successfully into his nation's operatic life. Gergiev also cites Stravinsky, who believed that in Russian music one always returns to Glinka as a master of orchestration, color, and timbre.

Ruslan is hardly a familiar work (the celebrated overture excepted), although this is due not so much to the difficulty of casting the title roles so much as to the visual requirements and the static qualities of the drama itself. Gergiev laments that the title roles are hard to cast, but that seems to me a bit of an exaggeration; rather, the demands of the opera on a company's technical resources (there are eight scenes, several of them large-scale, demanding special effects) and its specialized appeal are what keep it out of reach of most companies beyond Russia.

Lyudmila, daughter of Svetosar, grand prince of Kiev, is loved by three men: the knight Ruslan and two princes, romantic Ratmir and bumbling Farlaf. The girl's father awards her to Ruslan, but at their wedding feast Lyudmila is mysteriously abducted. Upon hearing from Svetosar that only the man who finds his daughter will marry her, the three suitors begin their search. The sorcerer Finn instructs Ruslan to avoid the nasty sorceress Naina. While the latter joins forces with Farlaf, Ruslan encounters a magic sword to assist him in battling Chernomor, the evil dwarf responsible for the abduction. In Chernomor's magic garden, Ratmir, his devoted slave Gorislava, and Ruslan together are unable to rouse the sleeping Lyudmila, who has been enchanted by Chernomor. Farlaf manages to bring Lyudmila back to her father's castle, but Ruslan—helped by a magic ring from Finn—is the one who finally wakes her. Bride and groom are reunited, as is Ratmir with the steadfast Gorislava, whom he decides he loves after all.

The 1910 production by Alexander Golovin, retained in the Kirov's repertoire until 1988, was admirably recreated by the well-known designer Thierry Bosquet for this 1995 presentation. The sets are eclipsed by the grandeur of the costumes, which are utterly authentic although not always flattering to the ladies (as Gorislava, Galina Gorchakova must deal with an elaborate skintight harem outfit and unfortunate headgear). The staging is traditional to a fault; in most of the lengthy wedding-feast scene that opens the opera, the chorus remains anchored in place, seemingly immovable, the women eventually adopting extremely simple movement for their dance around the happy couple.

The female principals are especially strongly cast. In the interview Gergiev admits that he took a substantial risk in casting Anna Netrebko (Lyudmila), just twenty-three at the time. The gamble pays off, however, with a...