Sunday Classics: What Prince Igor doesn't know is that what's happening to him is History

Baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky sings Igor's monologue from Act II of Prince Igor, which Borodin surely meant to be the dramatic centerpiece of his never-finished opera. (The performance is billed by the poster as from a 2006 Moscow concert that also featured Renée Fleming.)

PRINCE IGOR: No sleep, no rest for my tormented soul!
The night brings me no comfort or oblivion.
I relive the past alone, in the quiet of the night,
and the threat of the divine omen
and the celebrations for our military achievements,
my victory over the enemy,
and the pitiful end to military glory,
the defeat and the sounds and my capture,
and the death of all my soldiers,
killed in honest battle for their homeland.
All has been lost: my honor and my glory.
I have disgraced my native land!
Captivity, infamous captivity . . .
such is my destiny from now on,
and the thought that I alone am to blame!
Oh, give me, give me freedom . . .
I will succeed in atoning for my disgrace,
I will save my honor and my glory,
I will save the Rus from the enemy!
You alone, my dear love, you alone will not blame me.
with your tender heart
you will understand everything!
You will forgive me everything!
From your high tower you have worn your eyes out watching,
you await your beloved day and night,
and you shed bitter tears.
How could I spend day after day in fruitless captivity,
aware that the enemy is preying on the Rus?
The enemy is like a terrible beast
The Rus moan in the grip of its mighty claws
and lay the blame for this on me!
Oh give, give me freedom,
I will succeed in atoning for my disgrace.
I will save the Rus from the enemy!
No sleep, no rest for my tormented soul!
The night brings me no hope of escape.
I relive yet again the past alone in the quiet of the night . . .
And there is no way out for me!
Oh, I am so miserable, so miserable!
It is so hard to see my impotence!

by Ken

I hope we've had some fun working back and forth between the Polovtsian Dances and songs that recycle some of their tunes in Robert Wright and George Forrest's 1953 musical Kismet -- "Stranger in Paradise" Friday night and "Not Since Nineveh" and "He's in Love" last night. Now it's time to get serious.

Prince Igor starts off in a genre I think we recognize instinctively, even if we can't put our finger on where we recognize it from. It looks -- and sounds -- for all the world like a Heroic Epic, with the people of the Kievan Rus principality of Putivl hailing their brave, heroic leader, Prince Igor, as he sets off on his heroic journey to repel an invading bunch of godless Asiatic savages, the blood-thirsty Polovtsi, who have savagely rampaged their way from the steppes of central Asia to threaten god-fearing Rus civilization with their godless Asiatic savagery.

As far back as memory goes this it how it's been among the Rus. The thing is, memory has a way of conveniently going back way far when it can cause some juicy trouble to do so, and contrarily going back hardly far at all when it's inconvenient. And the fact is that the Rus haven't really been in these parts all that long. Go back not all that far and they were Swedish tribes engaged in southward, um, "visitation." (That's a polite word for "invasion.") But by now they've assimilated with the local population and feel as if they've been here forever, defending their sacred soil -- from, when necessary, invading godless heathens.

Only something goes wrong, very wrong. We'll hear it as soon as we click through, when we're going to hear the Overture, which we've already heard, and the opening scene of the Prologue. By the way, now that we've heard Dmitri Hvorostovsky sing Igor monologue from Act II, more of the Overture should sound familiar.


TO HEAR WHAT GOES WRONG AS PRINCE IGOR
PREPARES FOR RIGHTEOUS GLORY, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: From Borodin to Broadway (2)

Valery Gergiev conducts the "Polovtsian Dances" with the original vocal parts. (It's the Mariinsky Theater Chorus and Orchestra, I assume.)

SLAVEWOMEN: Fly on the wings of the wind
to our native land, dear song of ours --
there, where we have sung you at liberty,
where we felt so free in singing you.
There under the hot sky
the air is full of bliss,
there to the sound of the sea
the mountains doze in the clouds.
There the sun shines so brightly,
bathing the native mountains in light.
Splendid roses blossom in the valleys,
and nightingales sing in the green forests,
and sweet grapes grow.
You are free there, song --
fly home!

POLOVTSI: Sing songs of praise to the Khan! Sing!
Praise the power and valor of the Khan!
Praise the glorious Khan!
He is glorious, our Khan!
In the brilliance of his glory,
the Khan is equal to the sun!
There is non equal to the Khan in glory!
None!
The Khan, female slaves praise the Khan,
their Khan!

[Translation from the Sony Prince Igor booklet]

by Ken

To recap: In last night's preview we began our approach to Borodin's mammoth compositional project, the never-finished opera Prince Igor, so that we can look tomorrow at the predicament the aforementioned Prince Igor finds himself in: a man who can't grasp that what's happening to him is . . . well, history.

By now you may well be wondering who they are, these dancing Polovtsi. Fair enough. Polovtsi (singular = Polovets, plural = Polovtsi, combining form thus = Polovts-, as in "Polovtsian") is what the locals in what we now think of as Russia and Ukraine called the first wave of Asiatic invaders, who called themselves Kipchaks, with of course many variants. From Wikipedia:

Kipchaks were a Turkic tribal confederation. Originating in the Kimek Khanate, they conquered large parts of the Eurasian steppe during the Turkic expansion of the 11th to 12th centuries together with the Cumans, and were in turn conquered by the Mongol invasions of the early 13th century.

Under Mongol rule, the Kipchak Khanate ruled much of Eastern Europe for another 150 years before disintegrating due to internal quarrels, its last remnants as the Tatar Crimean Khanate surviving into the 18th century before being absorbed into the Russian Empire.

The Kipchaks (known in Russian and Ukrainian as Polovtsy) were a tribal confederation which originally settled at the River Irtysh, possibly connected to the Kimäks. They were joined by Cumans, who had originated east of the Yellow River, and in the course of the Turkic expansion they migrated into western Siberia and further into the Trans-Volga region, enventually occupying a vast territory in the Eurasian steppe, stretching from north of the Aral Sea westward to the region north of the Black Sea, establishing a state known as Desht-i Qipchaq. The Cumans expanded further westward, by the 11th century reaching Moldavia, Wallachia, and part of Transylvania.

In the late 11th and early 12th centuries, the Cumans and Kipchaks became involved in various conflicts with the Byzantines, Kievan Rus, the Hungarians (Cuman involvement only), and the Pechenegs (Cuman involvement only), allying themselves with one or the other side at different times. In 1089, they were defeated by Ladislaus I of Hungary, again by Knyaz Vladimir Monomakh of the Rus in the 12th century. They sacked Kiev in 1203.

They were finally crushed by the Mongols in 1241. . . .

I've boldfaced the references to the Polovtsi's encounters with the Kievan Rus, because a Kievan Rus is exactly what our Prince (or Knyaz) Igor is. More about this tomorrow.

Before we proceed with tonight's preview business, last night I promised a performance of the Polovtsian Dances "by an even cannier orchestral wizard" than Sir Thomas Beecham, whose rousing performance we heard then. Here it is. Tell me that the sultriness of the opening doesn't waft right into the realm of the erotic.

BORODIN: Prince Igor: Polovtsian Dances (with chorus)
[For sung texts, see above.]
Royal Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, cond. Decca, recorded June 1969


FOR MORE OF THE SHOWTUNE-IFICATION
OF THE POLOVTSIAN DANCES, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: From Borodin to Broadway (1)

Alfie Boe, then about to appear in an English National Opera production of the Borodin-based Wright and Forrest musical Kismet, sings "Stranger in Paradise" on a June 2007 edition of ITV's Parkinson "chat show," hosted by Michael Parkinson.

by Ken

We're headed, let me say at the outset, for Borodin's one and only (and at that seriously unfinished) opera, Prince Igor, and I'm not sure that our previews have all that much to do with where we're going. But it still seems the obvious way to approach this unusual composer.

For their 1953 Broadway musical Kismet, the theatrical song-writing team of Robert Wright and George {"Chet") Forrest "liberated" all the tunes from Borodin. I assume everyone knows the source of the show's most famous tune. If not, or for that matter if so, here it is:

BORODIN: Prince Igor: Polovtsian Dances

Boston Pops Orchestra, Arthur Fiedler, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded June 20-21, 1957


TO TREAD MORE OF THE PATH FROM
BORODIN TO BROADWAY, CLICK HERE

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