Product Description Melodiya presents a recording of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakovs last opera The Golden Cockerel. The composer worked on it in 1906 and 1907. The libretto based on Alexander Pushkins fairy tale of the same name was written by Rimsky-Korsakovs permanent associate Vladimir Belsky who was a keen music lover and supporter of the composers ideas (before that, they jointly created The Tale of Tsar Saltan and The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh). 'I hope to put Dodon to shame once and for all', with this declaration Rimsky-Korsakov emphasized the satirical orientation of Pushkins fairy tale amplified by the authors of the opera. Here, Dodon and his kingdom are a grotesque musical parody, deriding the inertness and helplessness of the authorities of the last years of the Russian autocracy. The other fairy-tale layer of the opera, so typical of Rimsky-Korsakov, is as interesting and represented with the characters of the Astrologer, the Cockerel and Queen of Shemakha, an embodiment of wicked beauty, whose bewitching insidiousness leads Dodon to death. The music of the Queen of Shemakha reflected the tradition of the Russian Orient as well as the latest devices in the field of musical technique, harmony and orchestration. In terms of refinement of the musical language, the second (fairy-tale) act is among the brightest phenomena of Russian art of the early 20th century. The featured recording was made by the outstanding musicians the soloists, choir and orchestra of All- Union Radio and Television. From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, the orchestra recorded operas by Russian and foreign composers such as Alexei Verstovsky, Anton Rubinstein, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Christoph Gluck, Josef Haydn and others, which were rarely performed or totally unknown to the Soviet listeners. Review The conducting, choral singing and playing here are all excellent; both conductors, like Rudel in New York, sustain momentum with more energy and attack than Manolov, who is rather leisurely in comparison. As such, its vigour and authenticity make this probably the most recommendable version of this rarely performed opera overall. --BBC Music Magazine, July'17
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Kovalyov & Akulov 1968 Le Coq d'Or, 2017 released Melodiya
This recording is available complete on youtube (search "N. Rimsky-Korsakov "The Golden Cockerel" 1962"), Published on Jul 25, 2012 by "Bronisliva", so there is no need to review it, you can reach your own conclusions. Is this newly remastered release from Melodiya worth the purchase price for the improvement in sound? No, because the new remastering cruelly exposes the basic deficiency of the master tapes: the voices are too upfront. You might say "so what?", a lot of recordings have the voices upfront, but here it is physically unpleasant and almost painful. Most Melodiya issues from 60s-70s feature artificially induced excessive frequency responses between 1kHz and 4kHz resulting from excessive close-miking. Piping the youtube recording through the same gear, including the same speakers, as I did these newly released CD's, the youtube recording reveals a little less detail, less depth and ambiance, but is at least listenable and enjoyable, maybe because it doesn't expose the extreme imbalance in the master tapes. The recording is in wide stereo (and deep soundstage), but that applies only to the orchestra and chorus. The singers all come from the same spot dead-center, whereas the chorus from the sides. This is strange mixing - the singers are basically in mono, with everything else in artificially wide stereo - the Soviet engineers probably had a mixer with only three tracks at their disposal: one for the singers, 2 for everything else. So in addition to the imbalance between voices and orchestra, there is a different imbalance in the mix. This becomes annoying and causes listening fatigue, particularly with the boost between 1kHz and 4kHz. Melodiya could have put in the time and effort to fix at least the problem with the distorted frequency response with very simple means (they could have done a lot more), but there is no money to be made in CD's, Russian opera is a niche and Melodiya never does more than the minimum.Anyway, I find this recording uncompetitive as a performance (it has long had the reputation of being the worst among recordings of this work in the original Russian). I'd place the recently discovered 1951 studio recording on the Russian Aquarius label with Alexander Gauk conducting as my first choice, with the same Alexei Korolyov as Tsar Dodon as on this release, but singing to greater comic and dramatic effect on the older recording. IIRC Opera magazine also reviewed the Aquarius recording very favorably when it was released and rated it as best. In 2nd and 3rd places I'd place the 1987 Dmitri Kitaienko studio recording on Melodiya and the live 1988 Svetlanov recording on MCA label. The Svetlanov on MCA is available used on Amazon, but the number of copies in circulation has been going down (and the price up) - it is the most atmospheric of all recordings of this work. There is a Bulgarian recording from 1985 on the Brilliant and Capriccio labels conducted by Dimiter Manolov. When it was made there were no other recordings of this work in Russian available on CD and only one on LP (the one currently under review), and that was the only justification for its existence (this is true of several Bulgarian recordings from the mid-80's). Since then 2 better Russian recordings were made and the one from 1951 on Aquarius surfaced (these are the 3 mentioned in this paragraph) - the Bulgarian one is not in the same league.This does not include videos - the best is a Svetlanov/Bolshoi from 1989 available complete on youtube in good video (!) and good sound (!!!), but no subtitles.---------------------------------(The following are tangential comments)Going back to the CD's, this opera is a waste of time without the libretto, but only the MCA recording has one. The translation is so hilariously poor, that I can't resist quoting from "A Note From The Translator" in the booklet: "Because the challenges of translation are infinite, the confessionals (sic!) of a translator could be limitless, a veritable laundry list of laments. Rather than bore the reader with a catalogue of complaints..." Indeed, she not only has a poor command of English, but does not understand even some of the Russian idioms used in the libretto. She translates, for example, "na kvasnoi galada gushche" (predicted the future from dregs of kvass) as "fortold jingoism by degree and density"! Maybe she confused the language of the libretto with the archaic idiom “ квасной патриотизм”. At any rate, a bad translation is better than no translation.
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The singing is excellent, although I think the conducting is slightly sluggish
Was banned initially because it struck a chord as it was taken as lampooning the Tsar and his government for inefficiency. The singing is excellent, although I think the conducting is slightly sluggish. I remember in the 70's Scottish Opera performed it and it was really funny and I felt the conducting was sharper.
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