The Tsar's Bride by Rimsky-Korsakov, Aπό (2022/2023), Σκηνοθετημένο από Mikhail Pandzhavidze,, αγωγός Pavel Klinichev, Andrei Anikhanov, Konstantin Chudovsky, Alexey Bogorad, Ekaterinburg Opera, Ekaterinburg, Russia

The oprichnik Gryaznoy fell in love with the boyar Marfa Sobakina, but she was betrothed to another, and Gryaznoy's mistress Lyubash wants to kill her rival, whom Ivan the Terrible himself soon chooses as his bride. Jealousy, conspiracy, poison and love potion - love and death, without which a real opera can do, reign supreme in The Tsar's Bride, one of the best classical Russian operas. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov completed it in 1898. The 19th century is coming to an end, the opera house is breaking with old forms in search of new expressiveness, the artistic revolutions of the next century are looming on the horizon - and suddenly, in The Tsar's Bride, for the last time, everything that Rimsky-Korsakov's colleagues resolutely refused to bloom flourishes. Poetic libretto, number structure with arias, duets and ensembles, melodramatic pathos and, most importantly, the correlation of real-historical and fictional, folk and private: although the action takes place during the time of the oprichnina, the failed marriage of Marfa Vasilievna Sobakina and Ivan the Terrible really took place in 1572 , in The Tsar's Bride, historical realities remain only a backdrop for human tragedy. On the stage of the Ural Opera there is a replica of the performance of the Bolshoi Theater in 1966 with scenery and costumes by Fyodor Fedorovsky, the famous theater artist of the Soviet era. This is an exemplary production not only in the museum sense - an opportunity to see in the 21st century what the opera looked like half a century ago - but also in the aesthetic sense. The scenery turns the opera performance into an even greater convention - so much so, "that you listen as if enchanted, without analyzing or remembering anything."