HUBAD Mussorgsky: Sorochyntsi Fair (1955) - PACO053

Whereas Mussorgsky completed Boris Godunov and left a virtually complete piano score of Khovanshchina, his short comic opera Sorochyntsi Fair (or Fair at Sorochintsk, as it is sometimes translated instead) remained in fragmentary condition at his death, with a few passages orchestrated, several others completed in piano score, and the remainder existing only as sketches or text. (The most fully completed bits are portions of the first act and the first part of the second.) For whatever reasons, Rimsky-Korsakov declined to occupy himself with a realization of the score; it was then entrusted to Anatoly Liadov, who produced orchestrations of only five numbers before dropping the project. With spoken dialogue bridging between these, the work received a private performance in 1911 in St. Petersburg, followed by a public staging in 1913. César Cui then produced the first truly complete version, including interpolations composed by himself, which was produced in Petrograd (the renamed St. Petersburg) in 1917. Nikolai Tcherepnin then created the first complete edition based solely on Mussorgsky’s own sketches, which received its premiere under his baton in Monte Carlo in 1923. The conductor Nikolai Golovanov next followed with his own version, first given at the Bolshoi in Moscow in 1925. Finally, Vissarion Shebalin, following a thorough study of Mussorgsky’s manuscripts, fashioned what has become the universally accepted version of the score, which received its premiere in 1931 in Leningrad under Samuil Samosud.

As I could not locate any copy of a libretto, and none of the three complete sets I accessed provide one, here is a detailed summary of the plot, which is drawn from a short story by Nikolai Gogol. (Note that while I have preserved the variant transliteration of the opera’s title in the headnote for online search purposes, I have conformed its spelling elsewhere in this review, and that of all the characters’ names, to versions now in general use.) In act I, the Ukrainian village of Sorochintsk is holding its annual fair. Among those in attendance are the peasant Cherevik and his daughter Parasya. In order to buy some of the attractive ribbons and necklaces that Parasya desires, Cherevik must sell some wheat and a mare. A gypsy predicts that the “blood-red jacket,” a legendary article of clothing supposedly housed in a nearby barn, could disrupt the proceedings with its diabolical curse; the superstitious villagers take alarm at his words. The young peasant Grits’ko, who has been courting Parasya, asks Cherevik for her hand in marriage. When Cherevik learns that Grits’ko is the godson of his old friend Kum he gives his consent, and the three men adjourn to the local tavern to celebrate. Later that afternoon, Cherevik and Kum emerge, quite tipsy, and encounter Khivria, Cherevik’s domineering wife. When she learns of the engagement, she vetoes it: She claims that as she drove her wagon across the bridge to enter town, Grits’ko had insultingly flung a handful of cow dung at her face. Grits’ko overhears this and becomes despondent. The gypsy approaches him and promises to assist the young man with his marriage plans in exchange for purchasing the latter’s oxen at a bargain price, a proposal to which Grits’ko delightedly agrees.

In act II, Cherevik is sleeping off his drunken stupor. Khivria, who is conducting a clandestine affair with Afanasy Ivanovich, the son of the local village priest, awakens her husband, picks a quarrel with him, and chases him out of the house, ordering him to sleep under a wagon and keep watch over the wheat and mare that are to be sold. Not even Cherevik’s protests of fear about the curse of the “blood-red jacket” can sway her. Afanasy, an inept bumbler, duly stumbles in, and gorges himself on food while enjoying his amorous tryst. Suddenly Cherevik and Kum return with some friends, and Afanasy must hurriedly hide in a hammock. Cherevik is still fearful of the “blood-red jacket,” although Kum and Khivria try to put him at ease. Finally, Kum relates the story of the jacket. A demon, exiled from Hell for committing an offense against Satan, wandered the earth in boredom and took to drink. Having spent his last kopek, the demon finally pawned his red jacket to an innkeeper, promising to redeem it in a year and warning that it should be well guarded in the interim. Tired of waiting for his mysterious guest to return, the innkeeper sold the jacket. A year later, a stranger returned to demand the jacket; the innkeeper feigned ignorance of any such article, and the stranger disappeared. However, when the innkeeper went to bed that night, pig snouts suddenly appeared in all the windows of the inn, whips materialized, and the innkeeper received a sound thrashing. Since then, the demon searches for his jacket each year at the Sorochyntsi Fair. At this juncture, a window suddenly bursts open and a huge pig stares through it into the room, causing everyone inside to flee in panic.

In act III, Cherevik and Kum are stumbling down the street in confusion; some local youths take them for thieves and handcuff them. Grits’ko and the gypsy appear; the former promises to free the duo if he is granted Parasya’s hand in marriage, to which Cherevik consents. Grits’ko fulfills his pledge to sell his oxen to the gypsy. Tired, he falls asleep beneath a tree, and has a long dream of a witches’ sabbath conducted by the demon Chernobog. (In a somewhat different guise, this music is far better known as the tone poem A Night on Bare Mountain. Mussorgsky originally intended it to form part of act I, but the various editors of his manuscripts relocated it to here instead.) Meanwhile Parasya, grieving for her broken engagement, tries to cheer up by dancing the hopak, and is joined by her father. Grits’ko and Kum arrive, and Cherevik joins the hands of the young lovers to unite them in marriage. Khivria enters and makes one last attempt to thwart the union, but is dragged away by a group of youths to general laughter. The gypsy invites everyone to join in dancing the hopak in a concluding celebration.

To my surprise, there are no previous reviews of any of the four extant recordings of Sorochyntsi Fair, of which this is the earliest. The three subsequent recordings are a 1969 Melodiya recording with the USSR Radio Symphony and Chorus under the baton of Yuri Aranovich, which had its only CD release on a brief-lived Melodiya/Eurodisc issue in Germany; a 1983 version on Melodiya/Olympia with the Stanislavsky Theater ensemble led by Vladimir Esipov, also long out of print; and a 1996 set on the URAL label conducted by Evgeny Brazhnik, reviewed elsewhere in this issue as part of a collection of Mussorgsky’s works reissued on the Brilliant Classics label. With the exception of Vladimir Matorin as Cherevik in the Esipov version, none of the singers in any of these sets has any significant general name recognition. Unfortunately, I have not heard the Esipov (which, according to a description by a seller of a pricey used copy on Amazon, does come with an English-language only libretto).

Of the three versions I have heard, this one is, to my considerable surprise, easily the top choice. As all three are atmospheric and characterful, with fine conducting and choral work, the difference in ranking comes down to the singers. While this is a work in which effective characterization counts for more than beautiful singing, this recording is distinguished from its rivals by its total superiority on the latter count. As Parasya, Vilma Bukovetz has a light, sweet lyric soprano with that extra degree of body common to Slavic singers. Bogdana Stritar has a beautiful mezzo-soprano with a seamless legato and not a trace of acidulousness, that would be too beautiful for the character of Khivria if she were not so adept at varying it for her character’s moods. As it is, she is the one singer of that role who makes her act II arioso a true love song. The two tenor parts of Grits’ko and Afanasy Ivanovich are cast from strength; both Miro Branjnik and Slavko Shtrukel have suave, lyric tenor voices that would do credit to roles such as Jeník in Smetana’s The Bartered Bride or Lenski in Tchaikovsky’s Evgeny Onegin. It is remarkable that such a fine voice is lavished on the role of Afanasy, which normally would be (and on other recordings is) given to a nasal-voiced comprimario tenor; here the stronger casting makes him a more creditable lover. As Cherevik and Kum, Latko Koroshetz and Friderik Lupsha both have wonderfully firm, rich, liquid basso voices, that of Lupsha being a shade darker—what a marvelous recording of Boris Godunov this pair could have made! In the two supporting baritone roles, Andrei Andreev as the gypsy has a light-timbred baritone with just a touch of hollowness, whereas that of Samo Smerkolj as the demon Chernobog is appropriately darker, more rough-hewn, and devoid of legato. All of the singers, and also the excellent chorus, give a scrupulous attention to clarity of diction that is most welcome. If the conducting of Samo Hubad is less earthy than that of his rivals, he lavishes a beautiful lyricism on the score that makes it sing like a troubador’s recounting of a beloved local legend. The orchestra has a lovely burnished string sound that recalls the Vienna Philharmonic and Gewandhaus ensembles, and its members play their hearts out here. Indeed, that a regional opera company, in what would have been cavalierly dismissed as a cultural backwater, could produce a recording of such outstanding merit both vocally and instrumentally, is a standing rebuke to a multitude of major opera houses and recording companies that for years now have foisted on the public an interminable succession of stagings and recordings showcasing highly touted singing mediocrities with nondescript voices and faulty technique who substitute artificial histrionics for genuine vocal interpretation.

Equally worthy of note is the top-notch recorded sound of Andrew Rose’s exemplary transfer from Philips mint-condition test pressings. While I (like virtually everyone else reading these lines) have never heard the original LPs, I can say that, based on having heard comparable pressings of recordings of the same vintage, he has produced truly marvelous results. The ambiance has richness, body, and color; there is just a touch of treble bias and LP surface noise. The singers do have a clearly differentiated reverberant space around them, which I presume to be inherent in the original source. Rose ought to be awarded a gold medal, not only for his restoration work here but for restoring this undeservedly obscure recording to the active catalog.

As supplements (since the opera lasts slightly less than 100 minutes), Rose has quite appropriately added contemporary Philips early stereo recordings from 1958 of Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bare Mountain and the Polovtsian Dances from Borodin’s Prince Igor. The Dutch conductor, composer, and cellist Willem van Otterloo, who eventually made his career primarily in Australia after being passed over as Eduard van Beinum’s successor to lead the Concertgebouw, is little remembered today, though Challenge Classics did issue a 13-CD retrospective set of his recordings with the Residentie Orkest. He was a champion of late 19th- and 20th-century repertoire, and his interpretive style was Classically oriented, with generally brisk tempos, an emphasis on clarity of instrumental lines, and relatively little use of rubato. These are disciplined, well-proportioned performances, though the fact that they are performed with a then second-tier orchestra is clearly evident in the lack of full-bodied string tone. The Borodin (with the excellent Vienna Singverein singing the choral parts) is the more compelling of the two renditions, but it had the misfortune to be issued at virtually the same time as the classic Beecham account on EMI that surely thrust it into immediate obscurity. While neither recording is competitive with a myriad of modern versions, they nonetheless make fine aperitifs to the main musical course here. Rose’s remasterings have clear, forward sound and quiet backgrounds that make for pleasurable listening. In sum, this release is a triumph that belongs in the collection of every lover of Mussorgsky’s music and devotees of lesser-known operatic repertoire; urgently recommended.

James A. Altena
This article originally appeared in Issue 37:5 (May/June 2014) of Fanfare Magazine.