Rimsky-Korsakov: The Tale of Tsar Saltan
La Monnaie, Brussels, 16th June 2019
Look at it from the point of view of the child. The father he’s never met sentences him and his mother to be nailed into a barrel and tossed into the sea. When the barrel smashes to smithereens, both somehow survive, washing up on a strange island where the boy saves a talking swan. No wonder he’s screwed up. It’s this angle Dmitri Tcherniakov chooses to pursue in his staging of The Tale of Tsar Saltan for La Monnaie, framing Rimsky-Korsakov’s fairy tale opera with a modern parable where a mother narrates stories for her autistic son.
Svetlana Aksenova (Militrisa) and chorus
© Forster
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