Borodin: Prince Igor
Opéra national de Paris, Bastille, 1st December 2019
Gone are the days when Borodin’s Prince Igor was presented as dry historical pageant, dusty stagings of static tableaux. Directors now prefer to tap into the psychology of the title character, particularly how a leader responds to crushing military defeat. To Dmitri Tcherniakov’s opium-fuelled staging (that poppy field!), which saw Igor suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Barrie Kosky offers an hallucinogenic Polovtsian Dances as Igor languishes in Khan Konchak’s torture chamber. It’s a grimy, grungy staging, often a visual mismatch to Borodin’s sumptuous music, but a strong cast and superb conducting by Philippe Jordan weigh strongly in its favour.
Ildar Abdrazakov (Prince Igor)
© Agathe Poupeney | Opéra de Paris
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