Winter means something different in the north – and I don’t mean Buxton, the furthest up the country that English Touring Opera is taking its main autumn productions. The folktale on which Rimsky-Korsakov based his 1882 opera came from a place where dark, freezing seasons would end suddenly and violently – the same Russia Stravinsky was talking about when he described “the whole earth cracking” each springtime. So The Snowmaiden doesn’t play out quite like the fairytales we’re used to. Perhaps if it did, the opera would be a bit more familiar outside Russia.
Snow Princess, as she’s called in Alasdair Middleton’s flowing translation, is the daughter of bickering Spring Beauty and Grandfather Frost, and her story has the community’s salvation from eternal winter hinging upon her learning to love. Or rather, to put out a bit. There are two men in the picture: village boy Lel, sung by a mezzo-soprano, who is famous for his beguiling songs but constantly bothers girls for kisses; and macho Mizgir, who wants more than a kiss and whose forceful attempts to get it eventually find Snow Princess acquiescing, leading her icy heart physically to melt away.
It’s an uncomfortable story, more transactional than romantic. Olivia Fuchs’s production navigates it cannily, stressing the coming-of-age elements but reflecting on stage the folktale feel that permeates the music. Eleanor Bull’s set nods at pagan symbolism, with everything taking place under a huge circle that might be frost, sunrays, fire or grass. Snow Princess herself is on a pedestal, literally – all the main action takes place on a small central platform – but it traps rather than elevates her. Ffion Edwards, toting a huge book of fairytales and dressed like a schoolgirl headed to first communion, sings the role beautifully in an aptly crystalline soprano.
There is lovely singing too from Hannah Sandison as elegant Spring Beauty and Katherine McIndoe as spirited Kupava. Edmund Danon is suave and snarling as Mizgir. Joseph Doody brings clean lines and clear high notes to the Tsar. And apparently cross-dressing balls were a regular event at the 18th-century Imperial Russian court, so maybe that’s why he spends the whole opera wearing the hell out of a strapless corseted ballgown. Best of all, Kitty Whately as Lel lives up to her character’s reputation, shaping her time-stopping numbers beautifully.
ETO once again distinguishes itself by its ambition – but its resources are nothing like what Rimsky had in mind. Conducted by Hannah Quinn, the orchestra plays a new arrangement by Patrick Bailey for just 18 musicians; the chorus numbers only eight. Think of Rimsky’s big symphonic works and it sounds a little bare, yet what is lost in depth is partly made up in character, with star turns for solo clarinet and cello especially. It is better to hear the music this way than not at all.
