Olga Borodina: Salammbô

The Kirov Opera
conductor: Valery Gergiev
Royal Opera House
Covent Garden 09-04-1992

[@klemet2]

The music Mussorgsky wrote for Salammbo is just some of the most beautiful and imaginitive music ever written. It's so unique and inspired. I love that Mussorgsky didn't finish it and that his technical skills were so undeveloped. It gives the music such a child-like, dreamy wonder.

[@thesilvershining]

I agree, this is lovely. I think Mussorgsky was the most naturally talented of the Five, even though his orchestrations are (really) kind of hideous during points in Boris, it’s kind of endearing too in a way? I very much disagree with messing with an artist’s work. I didn’t know until several years back that Rimsky-Korsakov took so many liberties with Mussorgsky’s music and “fixed” what he thought needed fixing and orchestrated how he thought it should be. While he did save his comrades’ music from obscurity, I just wish I could hear everything the way Mussorgsky envisioned :(

[@sergeymedvedev2493]

@@thesilvershining but the current video is not Rimsky-Korsakov's edition, its Nagovitsin's edition.

[@davidbastardo4154]

I disagree. I wish with all my soul that Mussorgsky had completed his operatic adaptation of Salammbô.

[@sergeymedvedev2493]

@@davidbastardo4154 I'm working at such project, but of course, it won't be authentic music by Mussorgsky. It will be the full opera 'Salammbo' based on his materials.

[@robertberger3475]

One dislike . How could anyone dislike such gorgeous music and gorgeous singing ?

[@ANFeuerstahl]

+Robert Berger A Justin Bieber fan.

[@alfredoloyola921]

she has a great mezzosoprano voice!!

[@PrevitaliA]

What an interesting discovery, thanks! The second part of the air contains already the music of Boris death. Borodina's voice is gorgeaous!

[@derlouis1]

As in the book,she is a character that gets into your soul. Mussorgskys way of getting into the soul is beyond depth by its inspiration as it was never deeper in music before.

[@Nacidodelmar]

I love when the singer somehow matches the physical appearance of the character. She looks so beautiful! Most of the time that is not the case! Ay! It doesn't' matter, but it does ;-)

[@latrociniOpera]

Qué belleza!

[@michaelroberts6894]

Is this unbelievably beautiful singing or is it more so because few are around today who can sing this beautifully?

[@marcelkegels7749]

Prachtig ! Salambo is een absoluut ondergewaardeerd werk ! Wanneer een integrale uitvoering ?

[@kimmillard9445]

I always thought this was a fictional "opera" from Citizen Kane. I didn't realize this was an actual work by Mussorgsky.

[@baltoman24]

Actually, there is a second complete opera Salammbo by French composer, Ernest Reyer, also late 19th century. Borodina is superb in this excerpt- I wish Mussorgsky had completed this opera. I also love the Bernard Herrmann scene that he wrote for Citizen Kane.

[@mazdak2028]

Has not this opera a composer?!?

[@alanhill4957]

I feel aligned with all the comments here. Except I object to phrases such as "his technical skills were so undeveloped." I am willing to assume he said what he wanted to say, in whatever form he wrote, and no matter what changes he might have made in future revisions (like he made in his own revision of Boris). I object to the intentional misrepresentations that give rise to a second-rate composer like Rimsky-Korsakov, claiming he was correcting, in Boris, what he considered to be "the fragmentary character of the musical phrases, the harshness of the harmonies and modulations, the faulty counterpoint, the poverty of the instrumentation, and the general weakness of the work from the technical point of view.", justifying the "need", which only Rimsky-Korsakov could satisfy, of a "musicologically accurate edition" "for making [Mussorgsky's] colossal talent known". What he made known in Russia and then throughout Europe and America was not Mussorgsky's "colossal talent" but his so-called "weaknesses" and "undevelopedness", and Rimsky-Korsakov's self-called superior skills and musicological accuracy. And what the public heard was not Chaliapin in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, but Chaliapin in Rimsky-Korsakov's Boris Godunov. And even today, that is what that adulterated version should be called. And it is still heard wrongly attributed to Mussorgsky, and produced, because people keep believing the original version has been "bettered". Not even the most crass money-hungry painting or museum marketer would stoop to bettering Titian by correcting the harshness of his colors or the "general weakness" "from the technical point of view" of his later works in line and contours, To call Mussorgsky "undeveloped" is simply self-promotion, and like Rimsky-Korsakov with his "corrections", conceals the real Mussorgsky.

[@giorgioan4673]

"second-rate composer like Rimsky-Korsakov" ? - Vous est crétin.

[@enriquesanchez2001]

WHY did she bow after the performance? Couldn't that be construed as an incorrect stage action in an opera?

[@kimmillard9445]

It may be a concert version in costumes and not a full production. I'm not sure of the circumstances of this performance.

[@davidbastardo4154]

She is praying to Tanit, the Carthaginian Godess of fertility, the equivalent to Venus in the Phoenician pantheon.

[@hernancampos7835]

@@kimmillard9445 That was a gala in The Covent Garden in 1992 in honor of Saint Petersburg City. Princess Diana and the Major of that Russian city were presented at that event. All artistic corps of Mariinsky Theatre acted on the stage.