Rimsky-Korsakov’s Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya, to give the opera its full title, was Dmitri Tcherniakov’s first production for Amsterdam. He came to the job with intimate experience with this work: it was a production of this opera for the Mariinsky in 2001 that had won him his first Russian Golden Mask award and his first international recognition. The successful new staging of 2012 clearly builds on this earlier one for St Petersburg.

Like many other operas by Rimsky-Korsakov, Kitezh is a real challenge in terms of staging: the libretto calls for birds, elks and bears interacting with the lead character, as well as two mythical singing birds, a dark forest that lights up with candles and mysterious flowers and, not to forget, a city that becomes shrouded in mysterious golden mist but remains visible in the reflection of the adjacent lake. The work, first conceived in 1901 and finally premiered in 1907, is often regarded as a summation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s oeuvre, yet it is no secret that the composer himself was highly uncomfortable with the subject. Its libretto was written by his younger friend Vladimir Belsky (1866–1946), who was fascinated by Symbolist literature and sought to produce what he called a ‘liturgical opera’ by combining two medieval tales, that of Saint Fevroniya and her controversial but sacred union with the Prince of Murom, and that of the city of Kitezh, which became invisible during the Tartar invasion. Rimsky-Korsakov, however, was a notorious sceptic: he was attracted to this subject as a result of his fascination for Russian folklore and folk beliefs, but he had a distaste for mysticism and church doctrine, and consistently decried fin-de-siècle tendencies like symbolism as harmful forms of decadence. The result was a complex negotiation in which the librettist sought to emphasize the spiritual states of the characters and their mystic transformation, and the composer pushed for more realist detail and stage action. The opera became a remarkable hybrid, blending Orthodox hagiography with pagan nature worship, historical events with legend, realism with symbolism; it turned out to be the composer’s most Wagnerian score, but also his final monument to the traditions of the Russian national school. Needless to say, this has opened the way to a great variety of interpretations.

For Tcherniakov, the opera is about the heightened intensity of life in the face of disaster. He situates it not in the mythical past of thirteenth-century Russia, but in an apocalyptic near future, removing all visual traces of folklore and replacing Belsky’s ecstatic visions with an essentially secular and decidedly more pessimistic reading. The production succeeds admirably in generalizing the opera’s relevance and drawing it into twenty-first-century actuality, effectively playing on post-9/11 fears that uncontrollable forces like terrorism may overturn our way of life. It shows that a contemporary setting can in fact be more accessible and more visually compelling than productions that stay closer to the original instructions (one may compare it with the only other available DVD recording, the 2008 production for the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari directed by Eimuntas Nekrošius).Footnote ¹

The curtain opens on what may be described as a realistic version of the 2001 Mariinsky set: a misty, slightly desolate place in the countryside, where the opera’s heroine, Fevroniya, lives in a little run-down cabin among the reeds. This setting is a welcome variation on the original, where Fevroniya sings in the woods with the forest animals – a setting that makes it hard not to be reminded of a Disney princess. Tcherniakov has her surrounded by other people instead, all vulnerable misfits, turning her into something of a social worker, and her prince, too, looks casual enough to avoid fairy-tale comparisons.

Act 2 shows the city of Lesser Kitezh, which provided Rimsky-Korsakov with the crowd scene of which the members of the Mighty Handful were so fond, with portrayals of various classes of the populace, a drunk, a trained bear and a wedding procession. In the hands of Tcherniakov, this becomes a not-so-stylish café, where the part of the bear is cleverly replaced by the provocative antics of Grishka Kuterma, who will prove to be Fevroniya’s greatest tormentor. This Grishka, performed with verve by tenor John Daszak, is an altogether more unpredictable, intimidating and therefore more complex character than the traditional one, the town drunk who is defined above all by his lack of spine.

The sudden attack of the Tatars, an unspecified horde of ultraviolent, undisciplined ruffians, is a particularly brutal scene that manages well to capture the claustrophobia, the panic, the shock of the defenceless victims. Greater Kitezh, visualized as an improvised shelter with rusty hospital beds and peeling wallpaper, offers little refuge in Act 3 of this production: this is where the interpretation really parts ways with the opera’s text, as the people of Kitezh do not wait for a miracle, but draw their own desperate conclusion in a chilling reinterpretation of the ‘Battle of Kerzhenets’ music.

Act 4 is probably the least compelling. Tcherniakov opted for relatively modest visuals for Fevroniya’s apotheosis, where the action is essentially over and the score is largely a monumental recapitulation of earlier music. As a vision of the afterlife, the image of a return to the peaceful life before the crisis in an idealized family gathering around the picnic table is more conventional than that offered by the original opera, where Greater Kitezh acts as a contact zone between this world and the next, and Fevroniya is hailed by the mythical birds Alkonost and Sirin. To be sure, the dreamlike reappearance and transformation of Fevroniya’s old cabin is beautifully executed, and the imagery may be more easily accessible for today’s international audiences, but it is also, arguably, more bland. Fortunately, the camerawork on the DVD helps one forget that these scenes are confined to only a tiny part of the stage.

The cast assembled for this production is impressive. It features a number of respected veterans of Russian repertoire, Vladimir Vaneev, Vladimir Ognovenko and Gennady Bezzubenkov, in smaller roles, and, as mentioned above, a highly memorable John Daszak as Grishka. With Svetlana Ignatovich, the Dutch National Opera appears to have found an ideal Fevroniya, able to convincingly suggest the humility of her character while possessing a radiant soprano voice to soar above the lush orchestral accompaniment. Marc Albrecht and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra prove to be very well in command of the complex, through-composed score of the Russian master orchestrator, and the chorus of the Dutch National Opera, last but not least, really shines in the central acts, where they carry a considerable part of the musical and dramatic interest.

All in all, this Kitezh without miracles may paint a rather bleak picture, but it makes a powerful impression, and a good case for Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera, which has never been very successful outside Russia. One might complain that its original imagery has become muddled to the point that all the dialogue about ‘lakes’ and ‘invisible cities’ makes little sense, and the fact that this touches on the very title of the work is of course problematic. But one is more than willing to forget this in what is, by any standard, a well-conceived and marvellously executed production.