Russian Opere
TATION 4YA devoted a Sunday evening’s programme to Rigoletto, which I imagine most listeners have heard quite .often enough; yet 4YO had to cram excerpts from two Russian operas into a mere half-hour during the same week. The music of Boris Godounov and Prince Igor is so divorced
ate style of opera that it requires a reorientation of the listening mind to appreciate it; but once in a receptive mood, the listener cannot fail to be stimulated by the unfamiliar but strangely savage glory of the Russian music. Compare, for example, the Polovtsi March with any march in opera in the Italian style (the Soldiers’ Chorus, say); compare the singing of the Polovtsian Maidens with what the Cigarette Girls are required to sing; or the Death of Boris with any other deathscene in opera; and you will readily sense that the essential difference is not only musical, but racial. There .is every reason, if records are available, for stations to cut down the time devoted to operas which we already know too well, and to give us more of Moussorgsky and Borodin, whose operas are known to us only in snippets,
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 402, 7 March 1947, Page 23
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193Russian Opere New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 402, 7 March 1947, Page 23
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