KOVELEV Tchaikovsky: Voivoda (The Voyevoda) (1952) - PACO112

Tchaikovsky’s first opera The Voyevoda (or Voevoda), not to be confused with his much later “Symphonic Ballad” of the same name or with Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Pan Voyevoda, is based on the play The Voyevoda, or A Dream on the Volga (Son na Volge) by the well known and prolific Russian playwright Aleksandr Ostrovsky (1823–1886). Ostrovsky, who participated in crafting the libretto for this Tchaikovsky opera, was also responsible for the play on which Rimsky’s The Snow Maiden is based. Sources differ on whether The Voyevoda was well received or a complete failure when premiered by the Bolshoi Theater in 1869. It did receive some favorable notices, but the composer himself was dissatisfied with it and withdrew it after five performances. He subsequently recycled some of the music in such works as The Oprichnik, Swan Lake, the 1812 Overture, and others, and burned the score of The Voyevoda. His younger colleague Anton Arensky achieved some success in setting the same libretto (using the play’s alternate title) in the 1880s. Notwithstanding his effort to suppress it, Tchaikovsky’s early opera was not allowed to die and during the Soviet era was reconstructed from sketches and vocal and orchestral parts. According to Richard Taruskin, there were two such reconstructions, the first by Sergei Popov in 1927 and a later one by a team consisting of the musicologist Pavel Lamm and the composers Vissarion Shebalin and Yury Kochurov. The excerpts reissued by Pristine were recorded in 1952. Melodiya recorded the complete opera in 1982, as part of a project to issue all of the composer’s works on disc. Neither of these releases makes clear which of the reconstructions is used, but I would presume it to be the later one.

The opera is set in the 17th century in an unnamed province on the Volga River, and deals with the efforts of the tyrannical and lascivious voyevoda (military governor) Nechai Shalygin to force Marya Vlasyevna, the beautiful daughter of the wealthy merchant Vlas Diuzhoi, into marriage with him. He has already abducted Olena, the wife of Roman Dubrovin, another townsman. Dubrovin conspires with Marya’s fiancé, the young boyar Stepan Bastriukov, to rescue their women from Shalygin’s clutches during his absence. Their plan is disrupted by his unexpected return, but popular unrest over his misrule impedes his effort to regain control of the situation. Word then arrives from Moscow that the Tsar has ordered Shalygin removed from power and has sent a new voyevoda to replace him. The opera concludes amid general rejoicing.

I must confess that I have had the 1982 recording on Melodiya LPs in my possession for decades but never got around to playing it. My listening for this review is thus my first encounter with the opera, and given the composer’s inexperience at this point in his career, I am pleasantly surprised by the quality of much of the music. The mature Tchaikovsky’s distinctive operatic voice is already emerging, and his characteristic style is instantly recognizable. The melodic writing is often influenced by the Russian folk idiom, and several actual folk melodies are incorporated. Even before completing the opera, Tchaikovsky became disillusioned with its subject matter, finding that it was “shorn of dramatic interest and movement,” but the libretto does provide many opportunities for passionate outpourings and colorful, evocative genre scenes, of which he took full advantage. It is true that there are some stretches of routine or repetitious writing, and some of Tchaikovsky’s reservations about the libretto seem well founded. It is surprising, for example, that in the final act, when the lovers are reunited, most of the attention is devoted to Dubrovin and his wife, with the ostensible hero Bastriukov and his beloved moved to the background.

The excerpts on the Pristine disc comprise less than half the opera, and those who opt for that release alone will miss out on a good deal of interesting, colorful music. In addition to the Overture, Pristine provides a bit less than half of act I, nothing from scene 1 of act II, three-quarters of scene 2, and less than half of act III. There are also several internal cuts in the segments included on the Pristine reissue. Both recordings offer effective, energetic, dramatically charged leadership, good orchestral and choral work, and fine casts. Under conductor Aleksei Kovalev, the orchestra in the earlier performance plays with more spontaneity and abandon, while Vladimir Kozhukhar, in the 1982 recording, secures greater precision and imposes tighter control. Both Daniil Demianov (Pristine) and Vladimir Matorin (Melodiya) possess strong, powerful bass voices and are excellent in the title role; Demianov’s slightly abrasive timbre suits the role well, and he is the more menacing of the two. In the tenor role of Bastriukov, Anatoly Mishchevsky has the more heroic voice, albeit with some fast vibrato that can roughen his tone a bit and with some effortful high notes. He projects the character’s anger and desperation powerfully in his second-act aria (not included on the Pristine disc). Anatoly Orfenov’s instrument is “whiter” and predominantly lyric in character, reminiscent of such contemporaries as Sergei Lemeshev and Ivan Kozlovsky in its timbre. As Marya, both Natalya Rozhdestvenskaya (Pristine) and Galina Kuznetsova (Melodiya) exhibit the traditional bright upper range and full chest voice of Russian sopranos, with a minimum of the proverbial Slavic wobble. Except for a bit of strain in a couple of high notes, Kuznetsova is eloquent in the aria “The nightingale sings so loudly in the grove,” which Marya sings while a captive of the voyevoda. We don’t get to hear Rozhdestvenskaya in that number; she appears only in duets and ensembles on the Pristine disc. Liudmila Legostaeva (Pristine) and Iuliia Abakumovskaya (Melodiya) display fine mezzo voices in the role of Olena; that of Abakumovskaya is warmer and richer in tone. The role of Dubrovin is given to bass Aleksei Korolev in the earlier recording and to baritone Oleg Klenov in the later one. The part lies a bit high for Korolev, but he handles the high notes well and delivers his third-act aria with passion and fervor. Klenov, too, is excellent, almost matching Korolev in tonal weight. Other sonorous bass voices are heard in the role of the merchant Diuzhoi, in which Leonid Zimnenko (Melodiya) and Konstantin Poliaev (Pristine) are equally convincing. On Melodiya, Nina Isakova is excellent in the mezzo role of Nedviga, Marya’s nurse (not included in the Pristine excerpts).

I do not have the original LP from which Pristine’s reissue is derived, but the sound of the Pristine disc is certainly better than one would expect from a Melodiya recording of this vintage. The traditional Melodiya glare is substantially reduced although not eliminated, and the reissue offers a more spacious ambience and detailed texture than is typical of early 1950s Melodiya LPs. The voices are solid and well defined and free from distortion. Still, even after the ministrations of Pristine’s Andrew Rose, the 1952 recording is hardly competitive with the later stereo version in terms of sound quality. The 1982 recording, although still overly bright and sometimes glaring, predictably offers still more spaciousness, depth, and detail as well as superior dynamic range. Its greater clarity is very beneficial in the dense texture of the ensembles, although reverberation sometimes blurs the voices a bit in peaks. The balance in the later recording places the orchestra more strongly in the picture when accompanying the vocalists, which is also desirable.

Pristine renders the title of the opera as Voivoda, which Rose states is the way it is given on the cover of the Melodiya LP used in his transfer, but this transliteration makes little sense either phonetically or orthographically. The word should be transliterated as either voyevoda or voevoda; I prefer the latter version, as it conforms to Library of Congress transliteration rules, but I defer here to past Fanfare usage. Rose also perpetuates the asinine practice, in the title Pristine Soviet Series, of writing the letter “R” backwards in a misguided effort to simulate Russian lettering. The letter of the Russian alphabet that resembles a backwards “R” is not an “R” at all and has no relation to that letter. It is a letter called “ya” that is pronounced that way and is also the Russian equivalent of the pronoun “I.” Writing the “R” backwards does not make something Russian. It shows that the perpetrator hasn’t a clue about Russian. Lovers of Russian opera have reason to be grateful to Rose for his refurbishment of older Melodiya recordings, but this foolishness detracts from the seriousness of his enterprise.

The Melodiya CD set also has some presentation issues. There is, of course, no libretto (Melodiya never provides one). The synopsis offered is sketchy, and the notes are perfunctory. The synopsis attributes the announcement that Shalygin has been deposed to “old boyar Bastriukov” (i.e., Stepan’s father), but no such character is mentioned in the cast list of either recording. According to the vocal score I consulted, it is the new voyevoda himself who makes the announcement. The original Melodiya LP release included relevant excerpts, albeit untranslated, from the 1961 book Chaikovskii i muzikal’nyi teatr (Tchaikovsky and Musical Theater) by N. Tumannaya, the most detailed discussion of this opera I have come across. Given the rarity and obscurity of this opera, it would have been helpful to include this information with the CD reissue as well. There is also much inept English translation in the Melodiya CD booklet. The most obvious example is that the word kartina is translated as “picture,” with act II thus divided into “picture 1” and “picture 2.” That is indeed one of the meanings of this word, but in the context it obviously means “scene.” Both Pristine and Melodiya need better language consultants.

Notwithstanding these complaints, devotees of the operatic Tchaikovsky will find both these releases essential. If limited to one, I would opt for the 1982 recording, since it is a performance of comparable quality overall, in superior sound, and, of course, complete.

Daniel Morrison
This article originally appeared in Issue 38:5 (May/June 2015) of Fanfare Magazine.