Sat 3/1 @ 12PM
Wed 3/5 @ 6:30PM
If you try to follow the ornate plot of Alexander Borodin’s late 19th-century opera Prince Igor, you will get a crashing headache. Sure, many operas have battles, betrayals, kidnapped maidens, drunken brawls, destroyed cities, warriors killed in battle, rules jockeying for power, characters who have premonitions of doom.
Prince Igor just has more of them in a mad jumble that appears to have been thrown together randomly.
It also has the Polovtsian Dances, a familiar piece of music which has entered the standard classic repertoire.
New York’s Metropolitan Opera hasn’t done the thing in 100 years, but it’s jumping in now with a new production (obviously). It features noted bass-baritone Ildar Abdrazakov in the title role, Ukrainian soprano Oksana Dyka as his long-suffering wife and new staging by Dmitri Tcherniakov.
Even if you cannot get to New York to see it live, you can catch it as part of the Met’s Opera HD series, screening at many area movie theaters — you can find the listing here.
Tickets are $22.
metoperafamily.org/metopera/liveinhd/LiveinHD