RACHMANINOV : THE MISERLY KNIGHT

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 13th of December 2009 at 3 -5.30 pm

PRELUDE (Wiki)
SYNOPSIS
EXCERPT
RECORDING (Video)
RECORDING (Audio)
REVIEW (Audio)

SERGEI RACHMANINOV (1873-1943)

The Miserly Knight, an opera in three scenes
Baron............................ Ildar Abdrazakov
Albert........................... Misha Didyk
Duke............................. Sergey Murzaev
Jew............................... Peter Bronder
Servant......................... Gennady Bezzubenkov
BBC Phil/Gianandrea Noseda (Chandos CHAN 10544)

This year (2009) it so happened that I bought a second-hand box-set of this rare piece, under the title The Covetous Knight (Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducting), 2 black discs with libretto, and The Isle of the Dead on Side 4, but I had only just got round to playing it before it was advertized as a coming radio broadcast. Notice 5 males and no females in the cast, and no chorus. This new Noseda disc is a companion to his Francesca da Rimini (opus 25).

As with so much of Russian opera, the poet Pushkin is the source; he had produced three pieces on the seven deadly sins: ENVY (Mozart and Salieri, music by Rimsky-Korsakov), LUST (The Stone Guest [sounds like Don Giovanni], Dargomizhky), and GREED (The Avaricious Knight, I will call it) was greedily, or avidly seized by young Sergei for his opus 24.

The setting is merry Medieval England, with a wastrel pleasure-seeking son, a miser of a father, and a nasty money-lender (Jewish, of course).