Soloists:
Kashchey the Immortal – Leonid Bomshteyn, tenor
Tsarevna, Princess Beloved Beauty – Irina Bozhenko, soprano
Prince Ivan-Korolevich – Andrey Batourkin, baritone
Kascheyevna, Daughter of Kashchey – Tatyana Garkushova
Storm-Bogatyr – Valery Gilmanov, bass

Kashchey the Immortal is one of the most famous – or, rather, notorious – characters of Russian fairy tales.

He is as terrible as he’s enigmatic. His lifetime is millennia long, for “there’s an oak, there’s a box under the oak, there’s a hare inside the box, there’s a duck inside the hare, there’s an egg inside the duck, and only this very egg hides the death of mine!”. So, in theory, only some fearless bogatyr’ (borrowed in Russian Mongol world for “big strong hero”), whose bleeding heart is always ready for love and compassion.

Rymsky-Korsakov thought the myth was very topical. You can still find it’s characters among the ordinary people, as well as well as the emotions like malice, jealousy, anger, that “gnaws” soul. And, of course, the beauty that can’t do anybody any good, so finally turns out to be devastating.
The opera is written in 1902, and from then on it has been interpreted in many ways. You really can read here magic transformations, blizzards, tempests, unusual characters (which attracts children), but also such a symbolism and metaphors that captures adult attention.

The year 2019 marks 175 anniversary of Rimsky-Korsakov. So we have a good reason to refresh our memories of his great operas.

State Symphony Capella of Russia will present the opera in so-called “concert performance” version, and it was the Capella that under the direction of Valeri Polyansky made this fashionable. The “concert performance” means that opera is performed not in theatre, and while in this case the show lacks a complicated scenery, there are still some acting and mise en scenes. More than 30 operas, including those never performed in Russia, were shown since the early 2000’s.

Now the collective proudly presents “Kashchey the Immortal”, the brand new production. It is conducted by Dmitry Kryukov, postgraduate of Moscow conservatory, where his tutor is Valeri Polyansky. The soloists are courtesy of the Bolshoi, “Novaya Opera”, and Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre.