Firma Melodiya presents a recording of a wonderful but now so rarely performed Pyotr Tchaikovsky's lyric and comic opera Cherevichki.
The opera was initially named Vakula the Smith. In 1874, Tchaikovsky won a competition announced by the Russian Music Society for the best opera to a libretto by Yakov Polonsky based on the famous story Christmas Eve by Nikolai Gogol from his collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. However, Tchaikovsky was left displeased with his piece and reworked it in 1887. The opera was then staged at the Bolshoi Theatre, and the first night of Cherevichki became Tchaikovsky's debut as a conductor.
Gogol was one of Tchaikovsky's favourite authors. The composer liked to rest in the Ukraine, in his sister's manor Kamenka. Tchaikovsky rendered the world of characters from Gogol's story, their lives, legends and emotions with the help of folk tunes, dance rhythms and expressive lyric intonations. The opera also has a gallant intermezzo – the scene at St. Petersburg court in the 18th century which also attracted the composer in a later opera The Queen of Spades.
The featured recording of Cherevichki was realized in the late 1940's by the Bolshoi troupe led by the outstanding conductor Alexander Melik-Pashayev and featured some of the best performers of the Bolshoi of the time such as Elena Kruglikova, Elizaveta Antonova, Georgy Nelepp, Andrei Ivanov, Maxim Mikhailov and others.
