Ночь перед Рождеством - Римский-Корсаков - Франкфуртская опера /CHRISTMAS EVE Rimsky-Korsakov Oper Frankfurt 2022

It’s Christmas in the Ukrainian village of Dikanka and the blacksmith Wakula is unhappily in love with Oksana, daughter of a landowner. She only wants to marry him on the condition that he gets her the Tsarina’s golden shoes. In desperation, Wakula turns to the devil to fly him to the capital and help him procure the shoes. Will this be enough to win the hand of Oksana? Rimsky-Korsakov’s Christmas Eve is a satirical-realistic depiction of Ukrainian village life combined with fantastic and mythological elements. It is a feast of villagers’ Christmas songs, lyrical arias, buffo scenes and dance numbers set to orchestral interludes. The relationship between man and nature, between the individual and the cosmos is at the centre of the opera. Rimsky-Korsakov himself wrote the libretto based on Gogol’s story of the same name. As an avowed pantheist, the composer saw nature as an image of the divine - and thus as something absolutely worth preserving. He added mythological elements of pagan folk belief; he has stars dancing in the sky and the apparition of human-looking sun gods. The composer shows the meaningfulness and beauty of a cosmos in whose biological and seasonal rhythms human beings are suspended - in this production quite literally. Directed by Christof Loy and conducted by Sebastian Weigle, this rendition of Christmas Eve won OpernWelt’s Production of the Year 2021/22. Streamed on OperaVision on 3 December 2022 at 19:00 CET and available until 3 January 2023: CAST Vakula Georgy Vasiliev Oksana Julia Muzychenko Solokha / Woman with a violet nose Enkelejda Shkoza Chub Alexey Tikhomirov Devil Andrei Popov Panas Anthony Robin Schneider The Mayor Sebastian Geyer The Deacon Ossip Peter Marsh Tsarina Bianca Andrew Patsyuk Thomas Faulkner Woman with a normal nose Barbara Zechmeister Orchestra Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester Chorus Chorus of the Oper Frankfurt Text Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Music Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Conductor Sebastian Weigle Director Christof Loy Sets Johannes Leiacker Costume Ursula Renzenbrink Lighting Olaf Winter Chorus Master Tilman Michael