This may yet change

Although Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov composed more than a dozen operas during his career, his best known contribution to the world of musical drama – at least for western audiences – may well be his orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. While many of his own operatic works apparently enjoy much greater popularity in Russia, in the west they have, to this point, remained under-performed and under-recorded. However this may yet change. One of Rimsky-Korsakov’s more intriguing works, Die Zarenbraut (The Tsar’s Bride), has recently [3 October 2013] been issued a new letter of introduction by the Staatsoper Berlin, whose enormously successful new production is not only a persuasive argument for the opera’s inclusion in the western canon, but also the first genuinely unmissable event of the city’s new season. The story of Die Zarenbraut is…