So you are Christof Loy, it’s early 2021 and your production of Fedora in Frankfurt can’t go ahead due to… you know.  So what are you going to do with a set that basically consists of a lavishly decorated, multi-purposable drawing room?  Loy’s answer is to create a narrative around twenty four Tchaikovsky songs and some of his piano/chamber music and stage and film it in an empty theatre.

The story concerns a man and his somewhat distant relationship with his wife plus his memories of a relationship long gone.  He has two close friends who are really more like alter egos that double up on some of his emotional space.  It’s not at all obvious what’s going on and it goes on for almost two hours.  Now, normally I’m intrigued by staged song cycles  but this isn’t a cycle with a narrative and it goes on way too long.

It’s a shame really as the cast is pretty good.  Vladislav Sulimsky and Olesya Golovneva as the husband and wife have nice voices and work well together.  The latter can even dance in pointe shoes.  Andrea Caré and Mikołaj Trabka as the alter egos and Kelsey Lauritano as the “other woman” are also good and there;’s some nice piano playing from Mariusz Kłubczuk and from the handful of members pulled in from the house orchestra for the chamber music.  There’s a particularly good account of the “Adagio cantabile” from the Sextet Op. 70.

Michael Beyer’s filming is unobtrusive and the sound (the usual PCM stereo and DTS-HD-MA) and video quality is rather good; especially the former, which sounds especially good in the sextet.  The documentation includes a brief synopsis and an interview with Loy.  It really needs a much ore detailed synopsis linked to a track listing (there isn’t one) because it’s pretty much impossible to relate the music to the stage action as things stand.  The subtitle options are English, French, German, Spanish, Korean and Japanese.

Bottom line I had lost interest in this piece long before the end.  I understand why it was made, when it was made but the point of a video release at this point escapes me.

Catalogue information: Naxos Blu-ray NBD0181V