Tchaikovsky's eighth opera, completed in 1887 between Mazeppa and The Queen of Spades, has had a rough ride, mustering a handful of performances in the composer's lifetime and not reaching a British stage until 1996. David Fielding's production for Grange Park Opera is the first here to be sung in Russian and, while it's easy to understand why it has been neglected, the increasingly implausible plot and grande guignol finale carry with them some astonishing, full-blooded music, in which Tchaikovsky's melodic invention is at full throttle.
Grange Park certainly does the piece proud, squeezing every drop of musical and dramatic intensity out of the creaky scenario. Fielding shifts the action from Russia in the 16th century to the present day, so that this tragedy of a father and son (princes Nikita and Yuri) who are both infatuated with a woman of dubious morals, Natasia, becomes a study of sleaze and corruption in small-town Russia. Natasia is transformed into a brothel keeper, Yuri into the town's boss with the scheming Mamirov as his thuggish enforcer, whose thirst for revenge eventually destroys the whole family. The detail in Fielding's designs - pool table and cigarette machine, tarty short skirts, leatherette furniture, flashing neon signs - is meticulous, and when the whole scenario leaves reality behind in the final act, it becomes genuinely surreal as the final riotous disintegration approaches.
The conductor, David Lloyd-Jones, drives home that slightly unbelievable denouement as assuredly as he paces every bar of the opera and shepherds the carefully selected cast and the superbly drilled chorus very carefully through what is a demanding score. Janis Kelly is totally compelling as Natasia, making the smallest gesture count and perfectly catching her mixture of hard-bitten cynicism and touching vulnerability; her duet with Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts's ardent Yuri is the opera's emotional watershed. Nikita is sung solidly and securely by the only Russian in the cast, Vassily Savenko. As his wife, Evpraksia, Carole Wilson also summons a convincing Slavic mezzo sound and Stephen Richardson plays Mamirov with the right mixture of stagey malevolence and introverted menace. It is all a hugely enjoyable, theatrically stirring evening.
· In rep until July 6. Box office: 01962 868888.
