Written in 1899, in part as a contribution to the Pushkin centennial, The Tale of Tsar Saltan
was based, with great fidelity, on the poet's stylized
folk tale that
had become a favorite children's story. The heart of the tale--the
innocent wife set adrift in a barrel with her newborn son--was old when
the fourteenth-century poet John Gower used it in Confessio
Amantis, but
Pushkin and Rimsky after him made something deeply Russian out of it.
Rimsky and his collaborating librettist Belsky changed little in
Pushkin's plot. They reduced the merchants' visits in Act III from
three to one, for obvious reasons, and they substituted for Pushkin's
mosquito in the same act a bumblebee--and we all know what Rimsky did
with that.
The acts in Tsar Saltan
are like the pages of a picture book; each one begins with the same
fanfare. There are other parallels and recapitulations throughout,
making this one of Rimsky's most formally integrated scores. It's also
a lot of fun, with satirical characterizations galore.
In the end, though, this is an opera about reconciliation and
forgiveness, and the Swan-Princess's beautiful theme crowns the
splendid orchestral interlude that precedes the celebratory final
scene. Tsar Saltan comes to see the three great wonders that he's heard
about. What he does not expect is the greatest wonder of all--the
return of his beloved wife and his only son.
Astonishingly, there is no modern recording of this wonderful score.
This 1953 recording of the Bolshoi under Vassily Nebolsin, with Ivan
Petrov as the Tsar, Vladimir Ivanovsky as Guidon, Yevgenia Smolenskaya
as the Tsarina and Galina Olenitchenko as a suitably bird-like
Swan-Princess, could be in better sound, but the performance is
everything one could hope for.
Download The Tale of Tsar Saltan
(MP3 mono in zip archive, with synopsis, ca. 88 Megs)