John Smyth writes:

>Besides the perennial favorites, "The Golden Cockerel," "Flight of the
>Bumble Bee," and "Procession of the Nobles" from "Mlada;" Jarvi and the
>Scottish National present some lesser-known but wonderfully evocative
>delights, including "May Night--Overture," "The Snow Maiden," "Tsar
>Saltan," "Christmas Eve," and "Invisible City of Kitezh."
>
>Potent and sultry melodies abound, and I would like to single out Christmas
>Eve, for its splashes of orchestral color that look forward to Debussy,
>Ravel, and Stravinsky; the "barrel adrift in the sea" section of "Tsar,"
>with its string and harp 'pings' that remind one of wind-driven raindrops
>striking the face; and the opening of "Invisible City, where a chorale is
>blurred by oscillating strings to suggest the magical, half-lit world of
>Nature.

And if you think the suites are attractive, you ought to try the operas,
themselves, which continue all that magic and a lot more.  There are many
news CDs and used LP box sets of these works available; and while the newer
performances are in far superior sound, the older ones (generally dating
from the 40's through the early 60's) present the last of what many critics
regard as a "golden age" of Soviet operatic singing, with the likes of
Kozlovsky, Lisitsian, Reizen, Kadinskaya, Dolukhanova, Lemeshev, etc.

You can sample some of it free, at a friend's website:

   http://russia.uthscsa.edu/Music/GRV/

Several videos also exist of this music.  The 60's Sadko is perhaps the
best in this medium for its musical value.  Would that it had been the 50's
version which was committed only to LP, however, since that particular
recording featured Kozlovsky, Lisitsian, and Reizen as the three foreign
guests: casting from enormous strength.

Rimsky-Korsakov wrote operas in several different styles: the
straightforward folkish May Night and Christmas Eve; Tsar Saltan, with
its framing device of deliberately archaic-sounding themes; and the later
operas, The Invisible City of Kitezh, Koshchei the Deathless, and The
Golden Cockerel, where his musical style becomes extremely personal,
harmonically and orchestrally adventurous, while the libretti tend to have
overtones of irony and social comment.  In all these cases, however, the
composer remained true to his notion of reviving a "bardic style" which was
very different from the fourth-wall-removed romantic realism of Eugen
Onegin or Prince Igor.  Fantasy abounds in Rimsky-Korsakov's opera, and
since these tales of magic look back to the folklore of an alien culture,
Euro-American culture has basically ignored them.  It's a pity, because
they rank among the finest of 19th century operas.

Barry Brenesal