The Enchantress

Two intertwined love triangles, jealousy, unfaithfulness, revenge, escape, sorcerer, poison, two murders, one madness and a threatening thunder at the close: The Enchantress has it all. It can boast a full spectrum of tried and tested tricks of the 19th century Romantic opera. The Enchantress was written by a great composer, who was at the peak of his creative genius at the time, and a popular playwright, who made his debut as a librettist. These circumstances have defined the opera’s contours; its score is brilliant from ouverture to the finale, while the writing sometimes lacks in skill. People, their feelings and relationships are described vividly, thoroughly, and masterfully; however, the situations they find themselves in often seem too melodramatic to the spectators, especially modern ones. This feature of The Enchantress has affected its not-so-joyous life on stage. Despite the fact that musically it is in no way inferior to either Eugene Onegin, which was written almost a decade earlier, or The Queen of Spades, created three years later, The Enchantress is a rare guest on the operatic stage. The current performance of The Enchantress at the Mariinsky Theatre is the first one following a decade-long break. The Enchantress was Tchaikovsky’s favorite brainchild. It took the composer two years of hard work (from 1885 to 1887) at the picturesque Maidanovo house, where he had lodgings, to finish the opera. Tchaikovsky’s correspondence and diary preserved every step of this work, which at different times made the composer elated or reduced him to a nervous wreck. He did not have a complete libretto as Ippolit Shpazhinsky sent it in parts, which Tchaikovsky would analyze and then present his recommendations. The world premiere took place on 20 October 1887 at the Mariinsky Theatre; the composer himself conducted the first four performances. The greatest singers of the Mariinsky Theatre appeared in lead roles, including Ivan Melnikov (Grand Prince), Maria Slavina (Princess, his wife), and Fyodor Stravinsky (Mamyrov). The opera was not a success; a total of twelve performances were given at the theatre. Tchaikovsky was greatly shaken and rattled by this failure; he wrote to Nadezhda von Meck: “I am still convinced it is my best work. Meanwhile The Enchantress is laid aside to collect dust in the archives.” Indeed, The Enchantress should not be laid aside, but rather performed on modern stage. Love and freedom – its two main themes – belong to the category of eternal ones. The Enchantress amounts to a treatise on different kinds of love. Kuma’s love for the Prince is a transforming, passionate, and all-encompassing love of a young independent woman. The Prince’s love for Kuma is a young man’s first passionate feeling, which leads him to almost completely disown his parents. The Grand Prince’s love for Kuma is an animalistic, tormenting, suffocating passion of an aged and severe man, who is not adverse to violence. The spousal love between the Grand Prince and Princess is destroyed by his lustfulness and her vengeful jealousy. The Grand Princess’ motherly love for the Prince turns her soul inside out; in the last moments we see this “fanatic aristocrat” (Tchaikovsky) as a grieving mother, who mourns the loss of her child.
The theme of love is almost always closely linked to the theme of freedom. The symbol of freedom in The Enchantress is Russian landscape, those boundless and vast spaces, where Kuma sings she wants to fly free as a bird. Longing for freedom permeates the entire opera. Kuma’s house, which stands where the Oka River flows into the Volga, attracts the visitors with its spirit of freedom, both literally and figuratively. The love between Kuma and the Prince can survive only in total freedom – both from societal hierarchy and his parents’ self-will – and that is why they escape, using the great river as their ally. On the contrary, absence of freedom leads to violence, to which the Grand Prince resorts as a slave to “love,” and the Princess and Mamyrov – as slaves to “honour.”
“The listener/spectator will leave the theatre staggered, yet reconciled and satisfied,” wrote Tchaikovsky to Shpazhinsky about their work. The Enchantress does the same for the modern spectators as well.
Khristina Strekalovskaya