Patrick Bade
Borodin: Prince Igor, A Tale of Two Russias

Patrick Bade | Borodin Prince Igor, A Tale of Two Russias | 05.04.22

Visuals displayed and music played throughout the presentation.

- Welcome, and as you all know, of course, the lockdown team have launched their Russian themed season this week. And I’m sure that Trudy has already explained to you that this was decided upon well before the current terrible events. But I’m sure the others feel the same. It’s extraordinary how I’ve been working on these lectures, how suddenly, uncomfortably, relevant a lot of them have become. Well, I decided to begin with Borodin’s Prince Igor because it’s set in the 12th century in the earliest days of the Russian Nation. And also it deals with, really one of the central themes of Russian history and culture. And that is its divided identity because Russia is a nation that straddles both Europe and Asia. The story that’s told in Prince Igor that dates back to Mediaeval Kievan Chronicles.

And, of course, we’ve been reminded again and again recently that one of the motivations for Mr. Putin to enact Ukraine is that Russian, much of Russian culture, the Russian nation really has its origin in the Ukraine. Now on the left, you can see Alexander Borodin. He was a very remarkable man. He was the illegitimate son of a Georgian nobleman. He became a doctor, a practising doctor and a very brilliant research scientist, chemical research scientist. And he also devoted an awful lot of time to the cause of women’s education and women’s rights that left him with not very much time for composing. Composing, definitely took a backseat with him. And Prince Igor was composed sporadically over 18 years from 1869 to 1887, left unfinished when he died. So the final thing, and it’s a wonderful work, I think it’s a totally thrilling work but it’s very much a collaborative work. These three men all played a very important role in the opera as it’s come down to this.

In the middle is a man called Vladimir Stasov and his name will crop up again in connection both with music and with the visual arts. He was a very influential critic. He was intensely nationalist and he wanted to promote a National Russian Music, School of Music and a National Russian School of Painting. And he was the one who gave the theme of Prince Igor to Borodin and encouraged him. He created the libretto and he gave constant support and encouragement to Borodin over the years. Borodin was a member of a group of composers supported by Stasov, he referred to them in a review as the “Mighty Handful” and that’s, to this day, they are known as the “Mighty Handful”. They are César Cui, Balakirev, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, as well as Borodin himself. And it to me, it seems quite a Russian thing that they worked together in a really quite collective way. As bits were composed and various bits were performed long before its completion, Rimsky-Korsakov on the left and Alexander Glazunov on the right, they were helping Borodin do this. They were helping him with writing out parts, they were helping with orchestration and so on.

But it was still left in quite a fragmentary state when Borodin died they say from overwork in 1887. And the wonderful overture had never been written down. The other composers, particularly Glazunov had often heard Borodin improvising the overture on a piano. And the story is that Glazunov was able to write it down from memory, of course, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. There were fragmentary bits of the overture that had been written down and Glazunov admitted that there was a section of it towards the end that he actually composed himself. But the result is a tremendously exciting opening to the opera. Now throughout all these talks when I’m talking about music, I’m as far as possible I’m going to use Russian recordings and often Russian recordings of going back to say the 1940’s and 50’s because there is such a distinctive Russian sound. I don’t how good your musical, your sound reception is. I know it’s a lot better for some people than others but I do hope you’ll be able to immediately hear the distinctive timbre of a mid-20th century Russian orchestra, here particularly, I would say in the brass. The brass has a really raunchy quality to it that is quite different from orchestras of any other nationality.

So here is the last part of the overture to Prince Igor.

♪ Music plays ♪

The curtain opens to the square in front of the Cathedral in Kiev and Prince Igor is about to set off to combat invading Asian tribes, the Cuman tribes that were referred to by the Russians as “Polovtsian”. And this is not where it begins and ends with rousing choruses praising the great leader, Prince Igor as we shall see, he actually doesn’t turn out to be such a great leader in this opera but I’m sure these choruses must have been more than music to the ears of Stalin and Putin today, we’re going to hear a lot of this in the coming weeks, this glorification of the all powerful leader which I think is a big tradition in Russia going right back to Ivan the terrible in the 16th century. So we’re going to hear a chorus here. And once again, I want you to note how distinctive the sound of a Russian chorus is, quite different. It’s very, very not King’s College Cambridge, I can tell you, it’s a raunchy sound. It’s a kind of really earthy sound and to me, tremendously exciting.

♪ Music plays ♪

So Igor goes off with his army to do battle with the Polovtsy despite the fact there is a bad omen of an eclipse of the sun. He leaves behind is no good brother, Prince Galitsky as to look after his wife and to look after his kingdom. This is perhaps the first time where I begin to doubt whether actually he’s such a wonderful wise ruler after all, because Galitsky seems an absolutely appalling choice to look after anything. He’s a kind of stock Russian character. He’s a roller king, pleasure loving, lustrous drunkard and he expresses his philosophy in life in his big Act 1 aria. Now, as I said, he’s a kind of stock character, these drunken lectures seem to crop up in quite a number of Russian operas. We’re going to come across another one on Sunday in Boris Godunov. I tend to find them a bit tedious, although they did provide wonderful cameo roles for the greatest Russian singer of all, Theodore Chaliapine. I’m going to be devoting a whole talk to him later in the series. So, here is Theodore Chaliapine singing the Aria of Prince Galitsky.

♪ Music plays ♪

Next we meet Igor’s wife Yaroslavna and for the first of her two great arias, each of which is a lament. In this one, she talks about her fears, and her anxieties, and her longing for her husband. And I’m going to play here another very great Russian singer who again I’m going to be referring to in later lectures. This is Nina Koshetz who came from a very poor Jewish background, became a star before the revolution, apparently had an affair with Rachmaninov. At least she claimed to have had one. And he certainly wrote love songs that were dedicated to her. And then she was forced to leave the revolution and had a rather very pathetic, in some ways, rather unsatisfactory career like a lot of the emigre Russian singers. But her records are greatly sought after and admired by record collectors. So most exotic and exciting and glamorous voice.

♪ Music plays ♪

Act two takes pass in the camp of the Polovtsy. Between Acts 1 and 2, Igor’s army has been defeated and he and his son and much of his army have been captured by the Polovtsy. So as soon as the curtain goes up in this act we’re into another world. We’re into the Asian part of Russia. And I suspect that Borodin had a very special sympathy with this aspect of Russian culture. He’s certainly, the Polovtsy, boy, do they ever get the best tunes in this opera? This is a mask from the Cuman period from the 12th century. And this is a costume from an early 20th century production of Prince Igor for one of the Polovtsian Maidens. Feel free to sing along with your own words to this tune.

♪ Music plays ♪

The next character to come along is Konchakovna. She is the daughter of the leader of the Polovtsy tribe and she has fallen in love with Vladimir, the son of Prince Igor, who is her father’s prisoner. And she expresses her love and her longing in this very beautiful, very languorous aria. This idea of course, that these exotic Asian tribes are somehow more sensuous than the Christians and this is going to be sung by another very great historic Russian singer. This is Nadezhda Obukhova. She is the mezzo voice, very beautiful, exquisitely contained voice, very focused voice with an instrumental beauty. She was adored in Russia, she didn’t sing outside of Russia, so she wasn’t really known outside of Russia. But for the Russians, she was like the mother of the people all the way through the Stalin period through the Second World War. This was a voice that was heard constantly on the radio and a singer who sang to the Russian troops. And she was idolised throughout this period.

♪ Music plays ♪

Notice that the vocal line in that is very different from the music that Borodin writes for the Christian Yaroslavna. It’s got this very orientalist, undulating quality. So next we hear Vladimir, the son of Igor. And he too is very in love with Konchak’s daughter. And Konchak is quite happy for the two to marry, it’s Igor who wants to forbid it. And here we have Vladimir now singing of his great love for Konchakovna. I’m going to play you the whole of this aria, because it’s so magically sung by the greatest of all Russian tenors in the 20th century, Ivan Kozlovsky. It’s a very special sound. Again, a very, very, all the singers I’m playing you in this lecture you know instantly that they’re Russian singers. They have a different timbre, a different sound from western singers. His voice may or may not please you. It has a sort of really pungent quality but he’s such an artist, such an extraordinary artist. I’m playing it to the end, because I really want you to be able to savour his last note. An exquisite long held pianissimo note.

Now must be about 25 years ago, I met a Russian monk who’d sung in a church choir in Russia when he was a child. And Kozlovsky had been the soloist and Kozlovsky embraced him at the end of the performance and kissed him on both cheeks and he told me this and I said, ah, you must kiss me on my cheeks immediately. I want to be two kisses from the great Kozlovsky, so he did. But afterwards I thought maybe it wasn’t such a good idea because Kozlovsky was the favourite singer of Stalin. And certainly Stalin must have kissed him on both cheeks. So I’m sorry to tell you I’m now three kisses from Stalin, thanks to Kozlovsky.

♪ Music plays ♪

I do hope your sand equipment enabled you to hear that exquisite last note of Kozlovsky. Igor himself just has one big aria following his son’s aria. And he expresses in this aria his shame and his anguish at having been captured by the Polovtsy. This is a baritone role, again we have in this very fine singer, Andrey Ivanov, I would say a very characteristically Russian voice. A very dark baritone voice.

♪ Music plays ♪

We’ve not got him, we’ve got, let me see, we’ve got, that was Konchak This is Igor.

♪ Music plays ♪

So, this is, he then meets his captor Konchak, who is a very jovial, actually much more likeable character really than Igor. And he welcomes Igor as an honoured guest. He’s prepared to let his daughter marry Igor’s son. He really just wants to live in peace with Igor.

And he says he’ll even let him go if he promises not to make war on the Polovtsy. And, but Igor actually, well he doesn’t promise not to make war. And he actually escapes and he goes back, of course, to his people to continue the war. But here is, again, ignore the words ‘cause this is Konchak warmly welcoming Igor, offering him his hospitality. He’s a very genial character. And this will be sung by Mark Reizen who was the greatest bass left in Russia after the departure of Chaliapin. He was of Ukrainian-Jewish origin.

In fact, Kozlovsky was also of, he was of Ukrainian origin. It’s amazing how many of the great artists, great singers, Russian of the Soviet period were actually Ukrainian. But here is the voice of the great Mark which tremendously sonners, actually I think for sheer voice, I find his voice even more beautiful than that of Chaliapin.

♪ Music plays ♪

And at the end of that aria, he summons the tribesman to perform dances for the entertainment of Igor and his son. And here we get the famous Polovtsian dances.

♪ Music plays ♪

In the last act, we’re back in Christian Kiev. And Yaroslavna sings her secondary, a very, very difficult piece to sing. I mean the great soprano Frances Alda sang it when it was first performed at the Met in the early 20th century. In her autobiography, she said this aria was a bit of a dread for her. And the reason was that she has to begin the aria after, there’s a little orchestral introduction. And then after that there’s a gap and then she has to begin the aria unaccompanied with a beautiful floating melisma. In America, I dunno if it’s still the case but I know it very well from old MET broadcast, that this very odd habit that when a popular singer comes onto the stage the first time to performance, the audience would applaud before the singer sung a single note.

Frances Alda said this was an absolute nightmare for her because she didn’t have perfect pitch and because of the applause, she couldn’t hear the little orchestral interlude and she had to guess what pitch she would come in. Now I’m going to play you a very special recording that was never published commercially and it’s of the singer, Kyra Vayne, her real name was Knopmuss. And she was born in the old Imperial Russia. And her parents fled as a result of the revolution. They came to England. So she was six years old when she arrived in England. But she never, certainly never lost her Russian as she was Russian to the fingertips till she died and even had a slight accent on certain words. I came to know her very well. She was very complicated woman with a very tragic life, really. And I’m going to talk more about her when I do a talk later in the series about all the great Russian singers, musicians who fled to the West as a result of the revolution.

But this is a private record that she made. She was auditioning for roles, Russian roles in a Russian season to be given in Barcelona. And so this is how they did things in those days. She went to a studio to make this record to send the in Barcelona. And they heard the record and not surprisingly they gave her the roles because, oh, what a voice, it is one of the most beautiful voices that I’ve ever heard, I think even on record.

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Now, that is a voice that is luscious and velvety and pure and gorgeous from top to bottom. And of course it’s a great mystery why she really didn’t make a career. But I will address that when I talk about her later in the series. So the opera, it’s a very odd opera really. It’s oddly structured and nothing much really happens. And there’s a big battle, but of course, that happens between acts and Igor comes back and he’s greeted ecstatically by the people and the opera ends with another great chorus of praise for the beloved father, the dear Prince and all this kind of thing. And so the devotion of the Russian people to these rather useless or even destructive princes is of course a great mystery to us to this day. But this is how the opera ends. This is the chorus of praise for Igor.

♪ Music plays ♪

Now let’s see what questions we have.

Q&A and Comments

The wooden object behind me on the wall. Yes, I found it in the street, Valarie, about three weeks ago. It’s actually, it was just thrown out by somebody with the rubbish. But it’s actually the top of an art decor mirror frame and actually very beautiful. I don’t know if you can see it properly, if you can see it close to, it’s a beautiful walnut veneer and it’s a rather lovely object. The Polovtsian dances come in the second act. You must have asked that during the overtures. So the answer to that is no. The bar relief, it’s actually reduced version of the relief on the front of the . It dates in the mid 1920s and it’s by an artist called Picoub.

Q: If the opera wasn’t written down, how did they remember? A: This is a mystery. I mean, bits of it, yes, large parts of it were written down, but large parts of it were missing. Of course, Mozart was very famous for doing that. There have been composers, musicians who could just hear a piece of music once and remember the whole thing and then write it out. There are many examples of that and to some extent that does seem to be, in the case with Glazunov. But as I said, bits of it were, even of the overture, there were fragments that were written down that helped him reconstruct the whole thing.

This is Nanette, I’m no expert, but for me those voices are absolutely beautiful. I so agree with you. I think, that was one of the pleasures for me for putting together this particular lecture, the chorus, I mean in its very Russian way, with this sort of edgy quality is absolutely gorgeous. And of course, I do believe, as I said that all the singers I’ve played you tonight have been really exceptional and wonderful. Much of the score was written. I mean, there are quite large chunks of it that were written down in Borodin’s lifetime. But as I said, there were missing bits and there were bits that had to be added by both Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov. The costumes, well some of the costumes I showed you were from a very famous production designed by the illustrator Bilibin, more famous as a children’s book illustrator.

Thank you, Wilma. Cavatina is usually the central lyrical part of an aria. I’m glad you, Joan, that you think this, I think the music I played you tonight is just glorious. As I said, it’s an odd opera as in structural terms, it must be really quite difficult to stage. But certainly the musical score is absolutely sublime. Three kisses from Stalin. Yes, well, I’m not sure if it’s something to boast about over the internet or not, perhaps not. Arioso, I think I’ve mentioned cavatina. Arioso also is aria like I think, rather than a full aria. Glad you liked the voices, the bass, that wonderful bass. I will be playing more of him in other lectures. That’s Mark Reizen. He’s really terrific. I think that’s one, you know, if I had to choose the most beautiful bass voices on record of course, for the Italians, but for the Russians it would be Mark Reizen.

Q: How does this opera fit into the Russian mythology? A: I’m not quite sure what you mean by that but it’s, I think it’s, the important thing about this opera is that it’s about the dual nature of the Russians that both European and Asian at the same time, with these two, it’s almost like a split personality.

What we learn about the , we don’t actually, he’s a bit of a cardboard character. He’s not really a very interesting character apart from his one big anguished aria in act two. Certainly Stravinsky listened to the Polovetsian dances, the Polovetsian dances were turned into a separate ballet by Diaghilev just at the time, of course, that Stravinsky was working for Diaghilev. So you are absolutely spot on there. Thank you, Olga.

Q: You have Chaliapin records? A: Yes, my grandfather saw Chaliapin. My grandfather actually lived in St. Petersburg before the first World War and was a great admirer of Chaliapin, because then Chaliapin had a huge international career. With video? I wish I could, I’m afraid I’m just not up to doing video stuff. Somebody’s got to gimme some lessons in how to do that.

That’s Kyra Vayne. All these names are on the list that you’ve been sent. But Kyra Vayne, v-a-y-n-e, as I said, she was a very close friend, a difficult friend. She was a very, very difficult woman. But I will tell you more about her later in the series.

Q: Was the lament of Yaroslavna sung in Kiev? A: Oh, description says Kremlin War. Yes, I’m not sure, you could be right about that. Maybe it’s my mistake when I said Kiev or is, I don’t know, the answer to that.

Glad you love the voices. Does Prince Igor ever redeem his shame or, I don’t think, to me he’s a rather useless character. 'Cause his son Vladimir stays behind and marries Konchak’s daughter. Thank you, Diane. Well, this is the, thank you, Margaret. I’m going to try and, I’m doing a huge mixture of different things in the coming, there’ll be some about painting, there’ll be some about ballet, some operas. I’m sort of, giving sort of oblique glances in a way at Russian culture.

He was working, my grandfather, it’s so funny 'cause so many people, I suppose because of what I do in the life I’ve let a great many people assume I’m Jewish, but I’m not as far as I know. But my grandfather worked for a machine tool company. He was actually Scottish and weirdly, of course, my parents actually met in Palestine, but they weren’t there as refugees.

Q: What part of this is Asian and Western? A: Acts one and the last act are Western and Act two which is the Polovtsian act is Asian. And you can hear that in the music. It is very, very clearly differentiated in the harmonies and the melodic line, which is Christian and which is, which is pagan.

That’s it, I think. Thank you all very much and I’ll move on to the greatest Russian opera gotten off on Sunday.