Well Russian in every respect, but I'm not sure it would add anything to
the repertoire.

Paisii         Robin Leggate
Balakin        Peter Bronder
Foka           Alan Ewing
Potap          Paul Whelan
Kuma           Galina Gorchakova
Polia          Leah-Marian Jones
Kichiga        Jeremy White
Prince         Nikolai Putilin
Princess       Larissa Diadkova
Mamyrov/Kudma  Vladimir Matorin
Nenila         Maria Riadtchikova
Yuri           Gegam Grigorian
Ivan Zhuran    Roderick Earle

Conductor      Valery Gergiev

Royal Opera Chorus
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Live broadcast of a second performance on BBC Radio 3 at 7.00pm on Monday
2Feb98.

When I got my ticket in the early afternoon for this concert performance of
Tchaikovsky's The enchantress, there were seats at all prices, but the
Festival Hall was pretty  much full, at least until the interval. I think
the exodus was probably due to the fact that the second half looked like
going on all night. Gergiev, the orchestra and the singers delivered a
cracking performance of a work that you probably have to be Russian (in
spirit at least) to love.

The plot takes place at a specific date in the middle ages that makes no
difference. The governing prince falls for a jolly widowed innkeeper (Kuma,
the enchantress of the title), who is in love with his son Yuri. The
prince's wife finds out, Yuri swears to kill Kuma for his mother, but falls
for her himself. They agree to elope, but the princess catches up with them
and poisons Kuma. The prince kills Yuri, then goes mad. There's also Kuma's
pal Polia, various regulars at her inn, the princess's nurse Nenila,
Mamyrov, a scheming clerk who moves the plot along a bit, and Kudma, a
misogynistic sorcerer who provides the poison.

There are some good dramatic set-pieces. The princess, in particular, gets
to let rip in style, and Larissa Diadkova certainly did. But it seems
rather formulaic -- threats, rows, treachery, lovers' moment of happiness.
And the music is, well, toe-tapping at times, even the storm at the end
when the Prince goes mad and dies. (Though the Gergiev and the orchestra
gave it plenty of welly.)

It all feels to me like a Russian-flavoured mush of Don Carlos, Tristan
and, perhaps, Traviata -- Gorchakova's Erdgeist earth-mother Kuma reminded
me of a larger version of Arletty in Les Enfants du Paradis. She's
certainly an attractive performer, maybe having a slightly rough night --
what I remember as an electrifying edge to her voice in the broadcast of
the Kirov Fiery angel sounded more like sandpaper in the early part of
tonight's performance.

The other singers were all fine, both Russians and solid local support.

The programme was better value than usual (RO programmes are exorbitantly
prices at GPB3, even though they have lots of advertisements for luxury
goods) as it contained a libretto, with the Russian text transliterated and
an English translation by Andrea Davies. I wondered about the
transliterated version. It was almost impossible to follow unless you knew
enough about Russian to sort out the complex consonants and palatialized
vowels. But if you could do that, you could have followed the cyrillic.
Maybe it was just cheaper to set the Latin characters.

Through getting a ticket for The enchantress at the last minute, I missed
the BBC Wales programme about Paul Daniel, Gergiev's opposite number at the
ENO. Did anyone see it?