Spring is the tenuous nexus connecting this week’s Chris’s Cache which features Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden: A Spring Fairy Tale featuring the great Irina Arkhipova as Spring itself, along with pirates of Werther with Ileana Cotrubas and Luis Lima and a MeT Samson et Dalila with Elena Obraztsova seducing Guy Chauvet.

Rimsky’s operas are rarely done outside Russia though Dmitri Tcherniakov’s beloved production of Tsar Saltan just completed a run in Madrid. That director also tackled Snegurochka at the Paris Opéra in 2017 with Aida Garifullina in the title role and Elena Manistina in the Arkhipova role as Spring. I, for one, would love to see a revival of his MET Prince Igor which wasn’t consistently thrilling but very worthwhile.

Posted in honor of the recent opening of Printemps on Wall Street, the first US branch of the luxury Parisian retailer, Massenet’s opera based on Goethe features Cotrubas in a rare mezzo role. Lima, who was perhaps taken for granted during his prime, sings the work’s most famous aria, which of course begins “Pourquoi me réveiller, ô souffle du printemps?”

“Printemps qui commence,” the first of Dalila’s three ravishing arias, too, invokes spring. The Met’s revival of Saint-Saëns’s opera at the end of the 1976-77 season was broadcast with Fiorenza Cossotto as the pagan seductress. However, she arrived only for that final performance before embarking on the Met’s spring tour. The previous four performances featured Obraztsova who had made a spectacular debut the previous fall as Amneris which you can still hear/download here.

Today’s in-house recording documents both her Dalila as well as Chauvet’s company debut as the Biblical hero.

Rimsky-Korsakov: Snegurochka: Vesennyaya Skazka (The Snow Maiden: A Spring Fairy Tale)

Snow Maiden: Irina Zhurina
Spring: Irina Arkhipova
Lel: Galina Borisova
Bobylikha: Raisa Kotova
Kupava: Lyudmila Serghienko
Tsar Berendey: Denis Korolyov
Bermyata: Nikolai Nizienko
Frost: Yuri Statnik
Bakula: Alexander Arkhipov
Mizgir: Igor Morozov
Wood Spirit: Oleg Biktimirov

Conductor: Alexander Lazare
Bolshoi Theatre
December 1978
Broadcast

Massenet: Werther

Charlotte: Ileana Cotrubas
Sophie: Noriko Sasaki
Werther: Luis Lima
Albert: Gottfried Hornik
Le Bailli: Peter Wimberger

Conductor: Alain Guingal
Wiener Staatsoper
27 May 1990
In-house recording

Saint-Saëns: Samson et Dalila

Dalila: Elena Obraztsova
Samson: Guy Chauvet
High Priest: William Walker
Abimélech: Justino Díaz
Old Hebrew: Malcolm Smith

Conductor: Sixten Ehrling
Metropolitan Opera
2 April 1977
In-house recording

For those hungering for “Lenz” click here to find several first acts of Die Walküre. and find here and here many versions of Richard Strauss’s Frühling.

Each of these “springtime” works 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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