Customer Reviews

Golden Cockerel

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It is wonderful to have such a good recording of the complete opera. I first became interested in this opera while learning about Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe. And a few years back I saw a show in London at the Barbican on Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe that had original costumes, some sets, and prelimary drawings and sketches for their productions. Some of them were for their 1914 presentation of this opera with dance by Fokine.

Yes, dance! They turned the opera into a ballet-opera!

Well, this disk won't show you any dance, but you can hear the wonderful music and become familiar with what was so attractive to early twentieth century musicians, painters, and dancers of the avante-guard. This thoroughly tonal opera still had much that appealed to then very modern artists.

The only thing this recording could have used that would make me rate it higher is a full libretto. We are provided a helpful synopsis of the story, but I still like to follow along.

We have no choice. This is the only available complete record of this splendid opera. Is by far better than the old Russian one directed by two conductors (???). I can't understand how one opera of such importance can be so neglected by the great labels . Neither Tchakarov or Gergiev , two specialists in this repertoire , recorded Korsakow's last opera. We know that briefly we will have a new DVD in French conducted by Kent Nagano. May be it will be a good solution to a better knowledge of this masterpiece.
This Bulgarian recording isn't perfect but not bad at all. The tempi are always on the slow side. The singers are good but the conducting has no special enthusiasm and conviction, specially in the second act. The sound is very strange with a exaggerate reverberation .The orchestra and the chorus are excellent, always with a flawless musicality.
We have no choice. This CD is the only possibility we have to enjoy this fantastic music . And it isn't bad .Could it be better? A more enthusiast conductor could make the difference. But what really counts is that The Golden Cockerel is a masterpiece, and this recording is capable to show you all the qualities of Korsakow's last opera.

No pun intended... it was indeed the last opera Rimsky-Korsakov wrote. He never saw it performed due to the Tsar who clearly saw it as a parody on his weak rule. Where Kashchei the immortal was an opera that looked forward in ways of harmony and drama, this Golden Cockerel summarises Rimsky's whole comositional life, from his Kutchka-days, via his reconversion through self-learning, to his undisputed position at the St Petersburg conservatoire. If proof was needed, here it's found: Stravinsky got his mustard from Korsakov. The unorthodox harmonies, the lyric vocal writing, the exotic scales, the rhythmic development, all of this is so fresh and relevant to today's standards it's not difficult to understand why. For Russian-music buffs, this is a must have; for opera lovers seeking something other that the iron repertoire, it will be a delight to discover; to musiclovers united, it's a testament of a pantheist composer responsable for getting XXth Century Music on their final rails.

As is so often the case with his operas, Rimsky is far more absorbed by the exotic musical-narrative potential of the fairy tale than he is in psychology or character development, so much of the time this odd opera is somewhat reminiscent of a pantomime or G & S without the jokes

The only other option available on CD is a live performance in English on the Gala label, a rough stereo recording taken from LPs in turn taken from a home-grown tape. This recording from the Sofia National Opera on Capriccio is the only one in Russian on CD and offers far better sound. The singing is either equal or superior to the New York production. Certainly buffo bass Nikolai Stoilov has a richer instrument than Treigle and surprisingly, to my ears, makes rather more of the comedy in his parody of the dim-witted Tsar Nicholas II, even though he is singing in Russian. Lyubomir Dyakovski's Slavic tenor copes even more successfully than the valiant Enrico di Giuseppe with the ridiculous demands of the role of the Astrologer, with its sustained high tessitura, top D's and even an E natural.

I keep returning to Rimsky's more obscure operas in the attempt to deepen my appreciation for them. I find much of the music's combination of naive, folksy charm and complex, colourful orchestration entertaining, yet I am ultimately usually left feeling vaguely disappointed. It's almost as if Rimsky steadfastly refused to conform to the sensible rules for constructing a successful opera; I am told it helps to be Russian. There is the customary generous helping of ballet, dances, choruses and pageantry which might be pretty music but contribute to the static nature of what's on offer. The main soprano role is odd in that the Queen of Shemakha does not appear in the First Act and is present for a few brief minutes in Act 3, so must deliver all the coloratura thrills in Act 2. Sills on Gala is rather hard of tone but her virtuosity is compelling. However, it must be admitted that Elena Stoyanova in this rival Capriccio set is no slouch either; her singing is mightily steady, pure and impressive.

The conducting and playing here are more than adequate although not very exciting; Manolov's baton is rather leisurely compared with Rudel in New York. It's certainly the most authentic and currently, apart from Nagano's version on DVD, the only show in town if you want good modern sound.

The suite from the opera The Golden Cockerel is relatively well known, but who has heard the entire opera? It is Rimsky-Korsakov's last operas, written 1906-1907 and is, in terms of style, related to his previous work, The Legend of Kitezh but is not as striking or stirring as that masterpiece. The work is a political satire, of sorts, but as always Rimsky-Korsakov provided colorful, atmospheric music imbued with the spirit of fairy-tale and Russian folk music, as always superbly scored with several memorable moments, among which are the numbers extracted for the suite (recorded by e.g. Maazel and Beecham). It is interesting to compare the suite with the same pieces played in the context of the whole opera, by the way - the suite is usually performed as a thrilling, glittering score, but in the opera the same music is generally much slower and more mysterious. I guess it works both ways, but it sounds more profound, of course, in the opera where various motivic and harmonic relations to stuff going on elsewhere in the opera are underlined.

As for the performances, the choral singing is really impressive, and the big choral scenes come across as the most memorable parts of the opera in general. The solo singing is more variable, however. Nicolai Stoilov's Tsar Dodon is definitely not the most beautiful of voices, but is strong on character and generally decent enough. Elena Stoyanova as the Queen of Shemakha is the most impressive of the cast; the voice is a little hard-edged but it is often really beautiful and technically very impressive (there are quite a selection of vocal challenges here). Lyubomir Dyakovski's astrologer is a lyrical voice which starts out fine but deteriorates as things go along, and The Golden Cockerel is given to Yavora Stoilova's somewhat shrill soprano, but it works pretty well in the role. There are some alternative recordings of the work out there, but I've heard none of those, so I cannot compare (the other recordings didn't generally seem to have more starry casts).

To sum up, this is certainly a worthwhile performance - the Sofia National Opera Orchestra plays well enough (if not in the class of some of the performances of the suite out there), more than decently led by Dimiter Manolov. Sound quality is more than satisfactory as well, although the soloists are too forwardly placed. But this is a work that really ought to be heard, even if it is not really a masterpiece, and since the overall impression is that the performances are quite good - even if better ones could be imagined - this recording has to receive a pretty firm recommendation.