CHAN 9855 B-COVER.Qxd 31/8/07 9:42 Am Page 1
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
CHAN 9855 B-COVER.qxd 31/8/07 9:42 am Page 1 CHANDOS CHAN 9855(4) CHAN 9855 BOOK.qxd 31/8/07 9:54 am Page 2 The British Library Sergey Prokofiev (1891–1953) War and Peace, Op. 91 Recorded live at the 1999 Spoleto Festival Opera in thirteen scenes Libretto by the composer and Mira Mendelson after the novel by Leo Tolstoy Sergey Prokofiev 2 3 CHAN 9855 BOOK.qxd 31/8/07 9:54 am Page 4 Countess Natalya Rostova (Natasha) Dunyasha, young housemaid to the Rostovs – Housemaid to the Bolkonskys Ekaterina Morozova soprano Tatiana Odinokova soprano Count Pyotr Bezukhov (Pierre) – Adjutant to Marshal Berthier Prince Nikolay Bolkonsky – Baron Gourgaud, adjutant from Napoleon's suite – French officer Justin Lavender tenor Vladimir Ognev bass Prince Anatoly Kuragin Mariya Akhrosimova – Mavra Kuzminichna, the Rostovs' old housekeeper – Oleg Balashov tenor Adjutant to Marshal Murat Victoria Livengood contralto Prince Andrey Bolkonsky Fyodor – Ivanov – French Abbé – General Barclay de Tolly Roderick Williams baritone Vadim Zaplechny tenor Sonya, Natasha's cousin – Trishka – Shopkeeper Lieutenant Bonnet – Major-Domo at the ball Pamela Helen Stephen mezzo-soprano Richard Coxon tenor Lieutenant Dolokhov, Anatoly's friend – Tikhon Shcherbatïy – Marshal Berthier Vasilisa – Princess Mariya Bolkonskaya – Matryosha, a gypsy girl – Second French Actress Igor Matioukhin baritone Catherine Pierard mezzo-soprano Countess Hélène Bezukhova Valet to the Bolkonskys – Captain Ramballe – General Belliard – Gavrila – final voice off-stage Elena Ionova mezzo-soprano Dmitry Kanevsky bass Prince Mikhail Kutuzov Marshal Davout – Balaga – General Benigsen Alan Ewing bass Marcus Van Den Akker bass Count Ilya Rostov – Matveyev Platon Karatayev – Adjutant to Prince Eugene Stephen Dupont bass Neil Jenkins tenor Colonel Vasska Denisov – Old Footman to the Bolkonskys – General Rayevsky Napoleon Bonaparte – Dr Métivier Thomas Guthrie baritone Alan Opie baritone 4 5 CHAN 9855 BOOK.qxd 31/8/07 9:54 am Page 6 Gérard – Konovnitsyn – First Staff Officer Henry Moss tenor Nicky Johnston Madame Peronskaya – First French Actress Liuba Chuchrova soprano Host of the ball – De Beausset, Minister of the Court – First Madman – Prince Andrey's Orderly Robert Baker tenor Jacqueau – General Yermolov – Second Staff Officer Charles Austin baritone Young factory worker – Adjutant to General Compans Oleg Dolgov tenor Second Madman Sergei Schirmanov baritone Adjutant to Kutuzov Richard Hetherington tenor Russian State Symphonic Cappella Valeri Polyansky chorus master Spoleto Festival Orchestra Richard Hickox Richard Hickox 6 7 CHAN 9855 BOOK.qxd 31/8/07 9:54 am Page 8 COMPACT DISC ONE Time Page Time Page Scene 3 1 Overture 4:42 59 10 ‘The young Prince’s fiancée’ 5:19 73 Old Footman Scene 1 11 ‘Ah, Madam, young lady…’ 5:55 79 2 ‘The radiance of the sky in spring…’ 3:39 59 Prince Nikolay Bolkonsky Prince Andrey 3 ‘I won’t, I can’t sleep’ 4:58 59 Scene 4 Natasha 12 ‘The charming, delightful Natasha!’ 3:18 83 4 ‘O God, my God! What a shame to sleep!’ 2:57 61 Hélène Natasha 13 ‘She’s wonderful and so beautiful’ 7:12 85 Natasha 5 Scene 2 2:37 63 6 ‘Chorus! Let the chorus begin!’ 4:57 63 Scene 5 Host 14 ‘At ten o’clock in the evening, she’ll be waiting’ 4:09 89 7 ‘Look, the colonel’s dancing the mazurka’ 2:39 69 Anatoly Peronskaya, Akhrosimova, Hélène, Anatoly, 15 ‘Balaga!’ 6:15 93 Count Rostov Dolokhov TT 68:20 8 ‘Will no one choose me as a partner?’ 2:48 69 Natasha 9 ‘When I was at Otradnoye in May’ 6:51 71 Prince Andrey 8 9 CHAN 9855 BOOK.qxd 31/8/07 9:54 am Page 10 COMPACT DISC TWO Time Page COMPACT DISC THREE Time Page Scene 6 Scene 8 1 ‘Oh, my dear Miss Natasha, all is lost, it seems’ 3:38 99 1 ‘Come on lads!’ ‘That’s the way!’ 8:27 121 Dunyasha Volunteers, Tikhon 2 ‘A fine young lady you are!’ 6:34 101 2 ‘Denisov, her first fiancé’ 3:27 129 Akhrosimova Prince Andrey 3 ‘I’ve sought to avoid her’ 11:07 107 3 ‘It’s the master, look at him!’ 6:06 131 Pierre Fyodor 4 ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’ 3:02 137 Scene 7 Chorus of Soldiers 4 ‘Picture the scene, Countess’ 10:49 113 5 ‘There is no people greater than ours’ 10:34 139 Métivier Kutuzov Epigraph Scene 9 5 ‘The forces of two and ten European nations’ 5:19 119 6 ‘The wine is uncorked; we must drink it’ 10:25 145 Chorus Napoleon TT 37:30 Scene 10 7 ‘And so, gentlemen, the question is…’ 6:48 153 Benigsen 8 ‘The enemy bears down on us with fire and steel’ 1:13 157 Soldier 9 ‘When, oh when was this dreadful business decided?’ 9:12 157 Kutuzov TT 59:20 10 11 CHAN 9855 BOOK.qxd 31/8/07 9:54 am Page 12 COMPACT DISC FOUR Time Page Time Page Scene 13 Scene 11 9 ‘We’ve burnt our bridges…’ 5:08 197 1 ‘Moscow’s deserted!’ 8:14 161 Ramballe Ramballe 10 ‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’ 7:27 201 2 ‘I must do the deed, or die’ 4:28 171 Voice off-stage Pierre 11 ‘Dolokhov said that Hélène had passed away’ 2:38 205 3 ‘Where did you get such a good going-over, lads?’ 2:11 175 Pierre Jacqueau 12 ‘The Commander-in-chief is coming!’ 1:44 205 4 ‘Davout, the cruel Davout, the emperor Napoleon’s Adjutant hatchet man!’ 5:16 179 13 ‘The enemy has been put to rout’ 6:15 209 Pierre Kutuzov 5 ‘Nothing matters now, nothing’ 6:41 185 TT 70:00 Pierre 6 ‘What a dreadful scene!’ 4:13 189 Napoleon Scene 12 7 ‘It’s stretching higher and further’ 8:20 191 Prince Andrey 8 ‘Has fate really brought us together so strangely today…’ 7:22 193 Prince Andrey 12 13 CHAN 9855 BOOK.qxd 31/8/07 9:54 am Page 14 greatest (not to mention longest) novels in the sharpen the musical portrayal of Kutuzov, the Prokofiev: War and Peace Russian language. The very scale of Tolstoy’s vast commander who saves Russia from invasion by epic would have daunted a lesser composer. Napoleon. The opportunity to stress the parallel Prokofiev’s solution to the problem of scale was between Kutuzov and Stalin, the saviour of Soviet ‘Sergey Prokofiev’s operatic works are extremely politically undesirable. The incident over Semyon to be selective. His recent experiences as the Russia against the devastating advance of Hitler’s varied and lamentably rarely performed.’ More than Kotko shows the extent to which art and politics in composer of film scores for Yevgeny Onegin and army, was not to be missed. Thus began an a decade after Prokofiev’s death in 1953, such was Soviet Russia were inextricably bound together, and Boris Godunov had shown him how to bring into elaborate process to monumentalise the opera and the view expressed by Boris Pokrovsky, the eminent in his next opera, The Duenna, Prokofiev tried to focus specific moments in the action and throw them shift the balance away from the personal and the Soviet producer who had been so closely involved avoid overly tendentious issues by escaping into the into vivid relief. In the same way the characters in intimate towards the patriotic and the heroic. Among with the early productions of War and Peace. world of Sheridan’s gentle comedy of manners. Any War and Peace appear before us in a succession of the important changes made by Prokofiev was the Pokrovsky was speaking, of course, about the hopes of a production of the new opera, however, loosely connected episodes that emerge as if from a addition of an epigraph, ‘The forces of two and ten performances of Prokofiev’s operas in the Soviet were dashed by Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union vast and brightly coloured canvas. Prokofiev refined European nations have invaded Russia’. This was Union after the composer returned to Moscow in in June 1941. these cinematic techniques still further in the music intended to preface the war scenes although in the 1936. The former enfant terrible of the musical Despite the difficulties which Prokofiev had he wrote for Eisenstein’s grandiose classic Ivan the Bolshoy Theatre production of 1959 (the first more establishment, who had spent the last eighteen experienced in having his operas produced, he was Terrible and they came to influence the revision of or less complete staging of the opera) it was placed years in voluntary exile in the bourgeois West, was full of new ideas. He had contemplated an opera War and Peace just a few years later. In fact he at the very start of the opera, replacing the greeted cautiously by the Soviet authorities. based on a work by Nikolay Leskov, the writer to borrowed several themes, not only from Ivan the orchestral overture. Prokofiev also added Scene 10 Prokofiev quickly realised that his most recent whom Shostakovich had turned for the subject of Terrible, but also from the earlier film scores (the Council of War in the village of Fili) in which the operatic work, The Fiery Angel, would never be Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in the early 1930s. He Lermontov and Yevgeny Onegin (these were used generals, including Kutuzov, deliberate on the best accepted for production. He had to rethink his had also sketched a plan for an opera based on in the ball scene in War and Peace). way to save Russia after the Battle of Borodino had approach and decided to begin the difficult process Tolstoy’s novel Resurrection, but most importantly, The libretto of the new opera was written by failed to check Napoleon’s advance towards of integration into the new Soviet culture with a in April 1941, under the impression of the scene in Prokofiev himself and Mira Mendelson, who later Moscow.