Rimsky-Korsakov: Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh
Thanks to Valery Gergiev's efforts--including his accounts ofThe Tsar's BrideandKashchey the Immortal--Rimsky-Korsakov operas are no longer a mystery, but that doesn't mean there's any clearer consensus on their quality. This opera suggests why.  Rimsky no doubt sensed that he had the orchestral tone painting ability to convincingly project the magical moment when the city of Kitezh under siege by the Tartars manages to disappear. That and certain other moments, such as the opera's harmonically rich, proto-Richard Strauss finale and a number of choral and orchestral passages are powerful payoffs for an uneven opera that asks the composer to elevate Russian folk tale in the way that Wagner did for Nordic mythology. But the subplots are as sprawling as the title, and Rimsky's characters stand only knee-high to Wagner's towering creations. Still, the tunes are pretty good, the orchestral scoring pricks up the ear in the less-inspired passages of the libretto, and the performance is a middling representation of the amazing Kirov standard. All the singers are solid--some rather more than that--though Kirov star Galina Gorchakova, who plays the Maiden Fevroniya, has so many vocally ungraceful moments she's fatiguing to the ear.--David Patrick Stearns