Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka) directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov film screening

TheatreHD and Tsaritsyno State Museum-Reserve present the project Tsaritsyno. Opera at the Movies.

On 9 January 2022, at 13:00, Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve will present Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka) directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov.

Dmitri Tcherniakov is a contemporary Russian director. Probably no one has done more to popularise Russian opera in our time than he has. He has staged The Gambler and The Tsar’s Bride in Berlin, Khovanshchina in Munich, The Tale of Tsar Saltan in Brussels, The Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh in Amsterdam, Prince Igor in New York… The Snow Maiden, a springtime fairy tale written by Rimsky-Korsakov based on Alexander Ostrovsky’s dramatic play, was staged by Tcherniakov in 2017 at the giant Opéra Bastille in Paris, a year after the triumphant diptych Iolanta/the Nutcracker.

The play was among the most anticipated theatrical premieres of the decade. The fact that today it gets a second life in the format of a film version is the highlight of the next decade. The performances are filmed under the author’s supervision, and Tcherniakov himself admits that the video provides an opportunity to see details that cannot be seen from the back rows of the immense Opéra Bastille. Projection onto the film screen turns the performance into a full-fledged film – with its editing dramaturgy, extra accents, and poignant storyline.

About the plot – not for the sake of a witty remark: I am absolutely convinced that even a person who thinks that opera is something archaic and of little interest will not sleep a wink at The Snow Maiden or any other Tcherniakov production because this remarkable stage director always composes a new, exciting and penetrating story on top of a textbook opera scenario. And he rarely clashes with the source material: his current variations on old operas fit the music to a nicety.

The Snow Maiden, whose appearance enraged the sun god Yarilo, who therefore deprived the earthlings of light and warmth, is the daughter of Spring and Grandfather Frost. ‘Sixteen years ago, for a joke and to amuse my fickle temper, capricious and whimsical, I began to flirt with Frost, a grey beard, but a lusty heart; and since then, I have been in captivity with the old crock. I’d rather leave the grey-haired one behind, but the problem is that the old one and I have a daughter, the Snow Maiden,’ Spring sings an explanatory song. In the prologue, the parents agree to let the icy child go to the mortal world, a land of the Berendeyans from prehistoric times. There, the ‘snowgirl’ (as the heroine’s name appears in the French subtitle) will have her heart broken – first by hearing the songs of the sweet-voiced shepherd Lel (‘How it hurts here! And my heart is heavy! A flower, crushed by Lel, fell like a stone on my heart with heavy resentment. The shepherd rushes to the others: they are sweeter, their laughter is louder, their speeches are warmer. And I stand there crying with grief for Lel’s leaving me’), and then falling even more passionately in love with Mizgir, the merchant who was supposed to marry Kupavna. It is clear that with Tcherniakov no fantastic heroes will appear on stage, one can’t count on a fairy-tale hero with a beard and hooves and the red nose of Grandfather Frost – but how can one make the folklore motifs and the fairytale paganism of Ostrovsky/Rimsky-Korsakov realistic without damaging the score?

‘The Land of the Berendeyans’ opens to the viewer as soon as they enter the hall – the stage is filled with trailers inhabited by quite modern guys and girls, neo-hippies in shorts and hoodies, who keep ancient Slavic props in their hipster backpacks. Obviously, this is a commune of re-enactors who are obsessed with the lore of ages long gone by, in hoar antiquity compounded. Tcherniakov’s re-enactors wear wreaths and embroidered robes and dance in a round; it is the perfect counterpart to a sealed, closed society with its own charter that does not tolerate outsiders.

The setting for the prologue is reminiscent of the dance class in the Soviet Youth Club: here, the parents of the fragile and timid Snow Maiden come to sort things out – the stately mother in pearls and the stern, mustachioed father, who is certainly a district or even regional leader. They have been together for a long time, not so much in harmony, but in an enduring habit; Spring precedes the words ‘you had a great feast’ with a squeamish wave of the hand that chases away Frost’s alcoholic spirits. It’s one of those details that’s easier to notice in a close-up in a movie than in a ‘main take’ from the stalls. The birds, to whom Spring talks about the Snow Maiden’s origins, are kids from the theatre club; he that finds this directorial solution unconvincing let him first cast a stone at me. Snow Maiden (the tenderly charming Aida Garifullina) is a greenhouse child from a party-artist family, completely unprepared for squabbles and passions; however, it is time to grow up, time to say goodbye to her father and mother and step into adulthood – to become its victim.

I will not play music critic here and wax rhapsodic of the performers and the orchestra conducted by Mikhail Tatarnikov: they seem flawless. Nor do I have the aim of describing all of Tcherniakov’s contrivances. He tells a moving tale of a love that is, by definition, unrequited and impossible to achieve, with a complex, multi-layered, and far from an opera tale for children.