Written in the tsars

As promised, Chris’s Cache continues its Russian cycle with two epics–Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina and Borodin’s Prince Igor—both from early 1970s La Scala with starry casts that include Irina Arkhipova and Nicolai Ghiaurov performing the former work in Italian, and Bolshoi regulars Tamara Milashkina, Vladimir Atlantov, and Yevgeni Nesterenko in the latter.

Last month, I attended a thrilling performance of the Mussorgsky work at the Berlin Staatsoper. It reminded me how much I like the opera and prefer it to the composer’s more frequently performed masterpiece Boris Godunov. I admit I found Khovanshchina confusing when I first saw it at the Met’s new production in 1985, pre-MetTitles, but the fine cast, which included Helga Dernesch (in her very belated company debut), Wieslaw Ochman, Aage Haugland, and Martti Talvela still made it memorable.

It’s been over twelve years since it was done at the Met, a really excellent revival of the company’s now decades-old production with Olga Borodina (wonderful as Marfa) and Ildar Abdrazakov, superbly led by Kirill Petrenko in his last Met performances to date.

Not so many live primetime Bolshoi Opera performances were recorded, but when the company went on tour it always brought its very best singers, and often pirates were there to capture them, as is the case with today’s 1973 visit to La Scala.

Igor, too, has been missing from the Met since its was revived in 2014 in a production by Dmitri Tcherniakov also starring Abdrazakov of whom we’ve likely seen the last here in the US.

Another Khovanshchina with Christa Ludwig, Ochman, Ghiaurov, Talvela, and Bernd Weikl can be found here.

Mussorgsky: Khovanshchina (in Italian)

Marfa: Irina Arkhipova
Emma: Rita Talarico
Susanna: Clara Petrella
Andrei Khovansky: Giorgio Merighi
Ivan Khovansky: Nicolai Ghiaurov
Dosifei: Paolo Washington
Golitsin: Giampaolo Corradi
Shaklovity: Lorenzo Saccomani
Scribe: Piero de Palma

Conductor: Gianandrea Gavazzeni
Teatro alla Scala
25 January 1971
Broadcast

Borodin: Prince Igor

Yaroslavna: Tamara Milashkina
Konchakovna: Tamara Sinyavskaya
Polovtsian Girl: Makvala Kasrashvili
Yaroslavna’s Nanny: Nina Grigorieva
Vladimir Igorevich: Vladimir Atlantov
Vladimir Yaroslavich: Arthur Eisen
Konchak: Alexander Vedernikov
Prince Igor: Evgeny Nesterenko
Ovlur: Vitaly Vlasov
Skula: Valery Yaroslavtsev
Eroshka: Konstantin Baskov

Conductor: Yuri Simono
Bolshoi Opera on tour to La Scala
1 November 1973
In-house

Each great Russian work can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

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