Winter means something different in the north – and I don’t mean Buxton, the furthest up the country that English Touring Opera is taking its main autumn productions. The folktale on which Rimsky-Korsakov based his 1882 opera came from a place where dark, freezing seasons would end suddenly and violently – the same Russia Stravinsky was talking about when he described “the whole earth cracking” each springtime. So The Snowmaiden doesn’t play out quite like the fairytales we’re used to. Perhaps if it did, the opera would be a bit more familiar outside Russia.
Snow Princess, as she’s called in Alasdair Middleton’s flowing translation, is the daughter of bickering Spring Beauty and Grandfather Frost, and her story has the community’s salvation from eternal winter hinging upon her learning to love. Or rather, to put out a bit. There are two men in the picture: village boy Lel, sung by a mezzo-soprano, who is famous for his beguiling songs but constantly bothers girls for kisses; and macho Mizgir, who wants more than a kiss and whose forceful attempts to get it eventually find Snow Princess acquiescing, leading her icy heart physically to melt away.
