Rimsky was an atheist, and it is ironic that his one opera with a
religious theme, The
Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh (1907), has become an
emblem of a return to Orthodoxy in the post-Soviet era. But Kitezh is a strange
and fascinating work in which ironies are not inappropriate.
Kitezh is something of a Russian Shangri-la--a city saved by the Tartar
hordes by a miraculous mist. It is said to exist in the depths of a
lake, by whose shores the faithful can ever so faintly hear the sound
of bells. In the apocalyptic years around the 1905 revolution, many
intellectuals, in a spirit not unlike Tolstoy's, went on pilgrimages to
the site.
Rimsky was at odds with Belsky, his librettist, for much of the
composition of this opera. He wanted more drama. Belsky wanted more
sanctity. The result is a piece that is compelling in its range.
Though it was once dubbed "the Russian Parsifal," Kitezh is in many
ways Mahlerian rather than Wagnerian. (Even the forest sounds in the
first act sound to me more like Die
Einsame im Herbst from Das Lied von der Erde
than they do the "Forest Murmurs" from Siegfried. There is
Rimsky's evident desire to depict an entire world: the forest, the
vivid sounds of Little Kitezh in Act II (so close to Petrouchka in
spots), the grandeur of Great Kitezh, and even--impossibly--paradise
itself.
Even more Mahlerian, though, are the wrenching discontinuities in the
drama. The identity of Fevronia's lover is concealed until the last
minutes of Act One, which unexpectedly bursts into pageantry. Much more
shocking is the structure of Act Two. Two-thirds of the act are given
over to a loving depiction of everyday life and the banter and awe that
greet Fevronia's impending marriage. Then, without the least
preparation, the Tartars appear and kill almost everyone in the town.
The horror of the events is all to real, as it likely was for Rimsky
after 1905. The resolution at the end, in a transfigured life
after death, is not so convincing. But that, perhaps, is the point.
Persuasive or not, Kitezh
gets under one's skin. It stands alone among Rimsky's operas in tone
and texture, and draws the listener back to its world to puzzle over
its dilemmas--which are no less or more insoluble than our own.
Gergiev has recorded Kitezh
recently, and brought it to the Met. This recording dates from the
1950s, and though I have read that Soviet censors played around with
the text, I believe that the music is intact. The key role of Fevronia
is taken by Natalya Rozhdestvenskaya, the mother of the conductor; hers
is a passionately committed performance. The other major role is
Grishka, here sung by Dmitri Tarkhov. Vladimir Ivanovsky is Prince
Vsevolod and Ivan Petrov plays his father, Yuri. Bolshoi forces are
conducted by Vasili Nebolsin.
Download The Tale of the Invisible City
of Kitezh (MP3 mono in zip archive, with
synopsis, ca. 108 Megs)