Last week English Touring Opera opened their Autumn touring season with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Snowmaiden.

The Snowmaiden premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, in 1882 and the Hackney Empire’s plush red stage curtain certainly brought a flavour of Imperial Russia to this evening’s performance..

The stage was lit with a circle of light – glass panels encased wintry trees in mist. On walked Grandfather Frost and Spring Beauty, estranged parents of the beautiful Snowmaiden. In the opera, they cannot agree on how to bring up their daughter. Spring Beauty supports her daughter’s wishes to move out of her woods and live life amongst real people.  Grandfather Frost fears for his daughter – if she falls in love – she will be destroyed. Spring Beauty wins the argument – the Snow Maiden moves to the village

Rimsky-Korsakov, like many composers, was inspired by nature and the personification of the seasons opens up a gorgeous supernaturalistic, pantheistic world for the audience – a world that is so poetical and so very Russian. The imbalance of the seasons provides an important backdrop to this tale The icy long winters that Grandfather Frost has deliberately prolonged has put this world out of balance. The springs arises suddenly – the summers have grown shorter. The Tsar ruling over his people is determined to bring more light to his land.

Joseph Doody was a magnificent Tsar in a stunning emerald dress! The Tsar is a force for good in this opera. Worried that his country has become loveless, he encourages people to celebrate, enjoy themselves. rediscover love. He organises a festival of light.

The set was breathtakingly beautiful throughout and the music ravishing with original orchestration. The standard of singing, exceptionally good.

In one key moment, Spring Beauty, touchingly played and sung by Hannah Sandison, goes to comfort her daughter, who has had her heart broken. Spring Beauty is fading,. She looks frail, not her usual ravishing self, but uses the last of her Spring energy, tending to her Snowmaiden, who, herself, is vulnerable with the coming of the summer and the heating up of the land.

I was awestruck by this production of Snowmaiden. With Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress last season, English Touring Opera is on a roll.

KH