The Tsar's Bride

Synopsis

This new production evokes a dark and threatening world with hard hitting contemporary resonance. When Tsar Ivan the Terrible selects Marfa Sobakina as his bride, romantic and political jealousy and scheming brings about death and disaster for her and many others. The music is intensely dramatic to match the story of Ivan the Terrible and the madness and sinister death of his third wife, Marfa.

Our Review:

15 April 2011

There’s nothing wrong with the Royal Opera’s new production of The Tsar’s Bride, and quite a lot that's right, but there’s just not enough in the work itself to make it more than a moderate success.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s score is constantly melodic and always attractive.  The folk tune “ Like to the suns in the heavens“, familiar to anyone who knows Boris Godunov or Beethoven’s Rasumovsky quartets, blazes in the Act 1 chorus and then lurks throughout much of the rest of the opera.  Ever-present too is a sense of dramatic inertia, which Paul Curran’s efficient, modernized production only starts to overcome.

The simple plot revolves around sexual jealousy and the power of magic potions.  The Tsar in question is Ivan the Terrible and the libretto, based on a drama by Lev Alexandrovich Mey, takes real historical events surrounding the mysterious death of Ivan Vasilyevich IV’s ...

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Latest User Review

David Allen - 28 April 2011:

The music was wonderful and so were the performances - but I suspect the producer and designer were in a panic - too much blood to cover too little action! First scene with tables being laid with cutlery, the cutlery taken away, food brought in (no cutlery by this time), taken away again not eaten, makes one wonder what the production team was thinking of. I was pleased to find out about the corpse, as in my cheap seat I had no idea that it existed... ...

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