"Am I dreaming this is real?"13 December 2016Music118 mins
‘A beautiful song – a shame that it shows such disrespect to the Mayor!’ This remark from the score of The Golden Cockerel highlights the delicious ambiguity of this work. Principally inspired by Washington Irving and Pushkin, Rimsky-Korsakov called on the talents of Vladimir Belsky, an author of other libretti of a fairy-tale, legendary nature and an expert on Russian folk literature. The composer, a genius at orchestration, has given us sparkling music, with oriental touches, that creates fully rounded characters. This is the perfect occasion for Alain Altinoglu to direct his first opera in his new role as Music Director of La Monnaie. After the success of his Don Quichotte and Cendrillon, Laurent Pelly returns to La Monnaie to stage this exuberant political satire, an adventure in unrestrained rhythm. More than a century has passed since its first performance, yet the opera has lost none of its boisterous sarcasm.
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