May Night, by Rimsky-Korsakov, on Video Artists International

May Night (Rimsky-Korsakov)
VAI DVD 4510 $39.95

Rimsky-Korsakov lavished a gorgeous score on this rustic tale of love and the supernatural. This acclaimed 2008 production by the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre marks the opera’s first appearance on DVD. The company’s brilliant staging is modern in its dramatic intensity yet firmly rooted in the traditional heart of the work. 120 minutes, Color, mono, subtitles in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Romanized Russian, All regions.

May Night
Opera in Three Acts
Music by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Libretto by the composer after the story by Nikolai Gogol

Mayor: Dmitry Ulyanov
Levko: Oleg Polpudin
Hannah: Natalia Vladimirskaya
Mayor’s Sister-in-Law: Irina Chistyakova
Clerk: Roman Ulybin
Distiller: Vyacheslav Voynarovsky
Kalenik: Anatoly Loshak
Pannochka: Valeria Zaytseva
First Mermaid: Maria Lobanova
Second Mermaid: Maria Suvorova
Third Mermaid: Ella Feyginova

Orchestra, Chorus, Soloists, Dancers and Actors of the
Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko
Moscow Academic Music Theatre

Felix Korobov, conductor

Stage Director: Alexander Titel

Set Design and Costumes: Vladimir Arefiev

Live performance, taped March 9, 2008

Assistant directors: Valentina Kaevchenko,
Irina Lychagina, Ilya Mozhaysky
Video Montage for Prelude by Marina Dobrovolskaya
Lighting Design: Ildar Bederdinov
Principal Chorus Master: Stanislav Lykov
Chorus Masters: Alexander Rybnov, Alexander Toplov
Concertmasters: Evgenia Arefieva, Ekaterina Dmitrieva, Tatiana Lobyreva, Galina Mikheeva, Irina Orzhekhovskaya, Eva Petrishcheva, Anna Rakhman
Stage Managers: Natalia Zhukova, Yulia Lutsenko, Tatiana Pochapskaya
Opera Company Artistic Director: Alexander Titel
General Manager: Vladimir Urin

May Night (1880), Rimsky-Korsakov’s second opera, for which he also provided the libretto, was notable for the composer’s embrace of the folk idiom and his move away from his more academic work. As one critic noted, with May Night the composer” threw off the shackles of counterpoint.” Using no less than eight tunes from a folk song collection, Rimsky-Korsakov fashioned an opera that accentuates the bucolic with a cast of carousing villagers but also visits the nether world with those drowned spectral maidens known as the rusalki.

At its heart, May Night is a comic opera, despite the presence of a troublesome witch and those sad drowned maidens. The music is energetic and colorful and the libretto sticks very close to the Gogol short story that inspired it. The opera’s fantastic elements are a foretaste of what Rimsky-Korsakov would provide in such works as Sadko, The Tale of Tsar Sultan and The Golden Cockerel. Yet, the opera’s central theme is young love, initially challenged but ultimately prevailing.

The opera’s premiere had a mixed reception though subsequent performances were more successful. For collectors of opera trivia, it might be noted that in the first performance of May Night at the Mariinsky Theatre the role of the Village Mayor was sung by Fyodor Stravinsky, father of Igor Stravinsky.

The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre (www.stanmus.com) draws its history from 1919, when the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko's Music Theatre were organized. The company is famous for its fresh and vital productions of both classic and contemporary operas. This release of the company's acclaimed 2008 production of May Night marks the opera’s first issue on DVD.