Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
The Tsar's Bride

This is a story of love – passionate, ardent, scorching and, at times, burning out everything around. This is a story about the Russian soul that has always had room for purity, poetry, self-denial and mercy.

At the same time, this is a story about the atrocious time of total lawlessness in Russia, when the authorities treated an individual as a plaything for their own ends. This is a story about our Motherland, where “high above spreads the sky like a spacious marquee”. “Is the sky in foreign lands the same as here?” sings “the Tsar’s bride”, Marfa Sobakina, and Evgeny Kolobov regarded these words as the leitmotif of the opera.

“Life after death does exist, and ample proof that is provided by 'The Tsar’s Bride' directed by Yuri Grymov for the Novaya Opera. This is a thoroughly Kolobovian production, which carries on the Maestro’s traditions of radical transformation of classical operas. <…> Short and dynamic, the production meets the requirements of the modern audience”.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta
January 27, 2005