A paranoid Russian ruler plunges into a disastrous war. Inept tactics lead to an appalling death toll. The confused ordinary people are kept in the dark. It’s all horribly familiar. English Touring Opera’s decision to take Rimsky-Korsakov’s sharply satirical The Golden Cockerel around the country this spring seems in equal measure to be both inspired and wincingly inappropriate. Witnessing the cartoonish deaths of young soldiers on stage feels uncomfortably crass when real guns are raging, yet when the deluded ruler declares “I’ll not listen to advice, not even to my own” it really hits home. Ridicule is the weapon despots fear most. For that reason alone this opera would not stand a chance of being staged in Moscow today.
Rimsky never saw it performed. Revolution was in the air, fuelled by the cruel suppression of dissent after the 1905 uprising and Russia’s defeat in the tsar’s ill-judged war against the Japanese. A piece that made fun of an indolent ruler and his doltish family was always going to clash with the censors and it wasn’t staged until 1909, after Rimsky’s death.
