Written to form a double bill with The Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky’s last opera has long divided opinion. Part fairytale, part religious parable, it deals with a blind princess who is deliberately kept in ignorance of her condition; on learning the truth, she wills herself to see so that she can experience human love and look upon “the light of God” as reflected in the natural universe. Its detractors have always deemed it mawkish and religiose. Those in its favour have seen its feverish tone and dark orchestration as prefigurations of the Sixth Symphony with all the intimations of psychodrama the latter entails.
Though not unknown in the UK, it’s never been hugely popular outside Russia, a fact that star soprano Anna Netrebko has been anxious to rectify by championing the score in the west. Her recording was made live in Essen in 2012 during her tour with the work; its release coincides with her appearance in a new production at the New York Met and forms a prelude to her single London performance later this year.
The recording doesn’t really do the piece justice, though this is not Netrebko’s responsibility. Her commitment is never in doubt, nor her artistry. Her deployment of unearthly, veiled tones in the opening scenes suggest a waif-like figure troubled by emotions she can barely comprehend. Later, as light enters Iolanta’s life for the first time, her terror and rapture are quite shockingly vivid.
The drawbacks lie elsewhere. There are strong performances from Sergei Skorokhodov as Iolanta’s lover, Vaudémont, Alexey Markov as his macho chum Robert, and Lucas Meachem as Ibn-Hakia, the Muslim doctor who effects the final cure. But Vitalij Kowaljow is nondescript as Iolanta’s father, and too many of the smaller roles are indifferently sung. Conductor Emmanuel Villaume is unaccountably sluggish, which results in longueurs where we don’t usually experience them. The recording is also oddly balanced, with the voices very forward and the orchestra too far back, resulting in a loss of detail in some of Tchaikovsky’s most subtle instrumental writing.
