A debut in Mikhail Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila

“At one of Zhukovsky’s soirées when speaking of his poem Ruslan and Lyudmila, Pushkin said that there was much he would like to change; I wanted him to tell me exactly what changes he would make, though his untimely death robbed me of the opportunity to do so,” Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka recorded in his Notes. The composer began work on the opera in 1837, the libretto not yet being complete and the poet’s tragic death forcing him to turn to amateur poets from among his friends and acquaintances. Unlike the literary source material which was written with the irony and light humour of a young rake (Pushkin began the work when still a lyceum pupil and planned to rewrite it several times as a result), the opera is epic in character, monumental images of bylina Old Russian bogatyrs blended together with the fairytale oriental flavour of Chernomor’s kingdom, the abundance of crowd scenes setting off the protagonists’ famous arias which have become jewels in the treasure casket of Russian music, as has done the brilliant overture.

In the performance on 3 January at the Mariinsky Theatre Larisa Yudina will be making her debut in the role of Princess Lyudmila, Ruslan’s fiancée who has been abducted by the evil wizard Chernomor. At her native theatre, this coloratura soprano brilliantly performs such complex and demanding roles as Rosina (Il barbiere di Siviglia), the Contessa di Folleville (Il viaggio a Reims), Gilda (Rigoletto), the Queen of the Night (Di Zauberflöte) and Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf Naxos), combining performance perfection with talented and charismatic acting. Critics have noted her “absolutely genuine bel canto – her virtuoso skills and the flawless ease of timbre” (Kommersant) as well as the “convincing lightness, beauty and pliancy of her voice” (Boston Herald).