Humperdinck’s second “fairy tale” opera; Königskinder, is unusual in that, although it includes traditional fairy tale elements, it isn’t based on a traditional fairy tale but rather on a play by Else Bernstein-Porges. It’s, of course, also performed much less frequently than Hänsel und Gretel. It was given at Dutch National Opera, in a production by Christof Loy, in 2022 and recorded for video release.
Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina is a bit of a weird opera. It’s ostensibly based on a series of not entirely related events that unfolded during the succession crisis following the death of Tsar Fyodor III (which took about 12 years to play out) into a story that takes place in a day. It’s complicated by the fact that key players in the story; the Tsars Peter and Ivan and the Tsarevna Sofia don’t actually appear because the Russian censorship would not allow members of the dynasty to be portrayed on stage. Perhaps unsurprisingly Tcherniakov isn’t much interested in the details of the history and uses it to make some, not always entirely obvious, points about modernity vs tradition, personal power and the nature of religious cults.
operaramblings 