St Petersburg, Concert Hall

The Enchanted Wanderer


opera by Rodion Shchedrin

Performed in Russian (the performance will have synchronised Russian and English supertitles)
 

Performers

Conductor: Andrei Petrenko
Ivan Severyanovich Flyagin, Storyteller: Sergei Aleksashkin
Flogged Monk, Prince, Magnetiser, Old Man in the Woods, Storyteller: Artyom Melikhov
Grusha the Gypsy, Storyteller: Yekaterina Sergeyeva

World premiere: 19 December 2002, Avery Fisher Hall, New York (concert performance)
Russian premiere: 10 July 2007, Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre (concert performance)
Premiere of this production: 26 July 2008, Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre

Running time 1 hours 35 minutes
The performance without interval

Age category 16+

Credits

Music by Rodion Shchedrin
Libretto by the composer after the novel by Nikolai Leskov The Enchanted Wanderer

Musical Director: Valery Gergiev
Stage Director: Alexei Stepanyuk
Set Designer: Alexander Orlov
Costume Designer: Irina Cherednikova
Lighting Designer: Yevgeny Ganzburg
Lighting Adaptation for the Mariinsky II by Kamil Kutyev
Musical Preparation: Leonid Zolotarev
Principal Chorus Master: Konstantin Rylov
Choreographer: Dmitry Korneyev

SYNOPSIS

ACT I

Ivan Severyanovich Flyagin, a novice at the monastery in Valaam, is reminiscing about former days. Before renouncing the material world, he once accidentally whipped a monk to death. The monk appeared in a vision, reproaching Ivan for taking his life before he could make his final confession. He told Ivan Severyanovich that he was God´s "promised" son and that he would die but never pass on until real "death" comes, so Ivan enters the monastery on the island of Valaam. And although Ivan Severyanovich did not believe in it, the monk´s prophesy came true. While on his travels, Ivan was captured by the Tatars and lived with them for ten years in Ryn-peski. He managed to flee from them, met with some shepherds on his way back to his native land and entered the service of a Prince, who admired him for his skill with horses. But after three years of devoted service Ivan Severyanovich took to drinking binges. At an inn, Flyagin met a landowner with the gift of hypnosis. The same night in another inn Ivan Severyanovich spent all the money entrusted to him by the Prince on Grusha, a beautiful gypsy songstress.

ACT II
When the Prince demands his five thousand roubles, Flyagin shows remorse and relates his tale of the beautiful gypsy. Having fallen in love with Grusha, the Prince paid her immense dowry of fifty thousand gold roubles and took her home with him. But the Prince is a fickle man and he soon tired of Grusha. During his trip to town, Ivan found out that his master planned to marry a rich noblewoman and, returning home, could not find the gypsy girl: the Prince secretly removed her to the swampy woodlands. But Grusha escaped her incarceration, met Flyagin and forced him to take a dreadful oath – to kill her, otherwise she would kill the unfaithful Prince and his young bride. In order to carry out Grusha´s request, Ivan Severyanovich throws her into a river from a cliff top. The chorus mourns her death. In his visions Ivan Severyanovich Flyagin hears the voices of the monk and the gypsy girl Grusha whom he murdered.


Musical materials provided by SCHOTT MUSIC GmbH & Co, Mainz (Germany)

 


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