Rimsky-Korsakov - The Tale of Tsar Saltan

The Guardian 60

Mariinsky Opera/Gergiev
(Mariinsky, DVD, Blu-ray)

This is the second DVD of a Rimsky-Korsakov production from the Mariinsky theatre in St Petersburg, plugging one of the gaps left in the Rimsky cycle that Valery Gergiev began on CD for Philips in the 1990s, following on from May’s release of The Golden Cockerel. Unlike that production, though, this staging of The Tale of Tsar Saltan, directed by Alexander Petrov, is hardly new. Though the production (which the Mariinsky brought to London in 2008) was nominally only 10 years old when the recording was made in 2015, its vivid, cartoon-like costumes and painted sets are re-creations of those for a 1937 version in Leningrad.

With some clunky ballet and acting of the kind that gives opera a bad name, it’s a museum piece, though it’s hard to imagine what a grittier, more naturalistic staging of this fairytale work might be like. Rimsky’s score glitters in best fairytale mode, too, and Gergiev’s performance makes it shimmer where it should. There’s some good singing, especially from Irina Churikova as the Tsarina and Albina Shagimuratova as the Swan-Princess, but this isn’t going to make new converts for the Rimsky cause.