Borodin’s operatic masterpiece Prince Igor will return to the Met on Feb. 6 for the first time since 1917, in a new production by acclaimed director Dmitri Tcherniakov in his Met debut.
On March 1, the performance will be available as part of the Met in HD series in more than 2,000 movie theaters in 64 countries around the world.
Ildar Abdrazakov stars as the heroic title character, a 12th-century ruler who defended Russia against invading Polovtsian forces.
Gianandrea Noseda, a specialist in Russian music, will conduct a new edition of the opera—left unfinished by Borodin at the time of his sudden death in 1887—which has been specially created for the Met production.
Noseda and Tcherniakov constructed a new version using recent research that incorporates all the known music and orchestration by Borodin, changes the order of some scenes, and includes three pieces of newly orchestrated material by Pavel Smelkov, the Russian composer and conductor, who also leads the Feb. 21 performance.
Prince Igor was performed at the Met just 10 times between 1915 and 1917, always in an Italian translation. The opera then fell out of the company’s repertory, though it continues to be performed regularly elsewhere, particularly in Russia, where it is part of the standard operatic repertoire.
In 1953, Robert Wright and George Forrest adapted parts of the score, as well as other Borodin compositions, into the Broadway musical Kismet, best-known for the standard “Stranger in Paradise” which is set to the music of one of Prince Igor’s Polovtsian Dances.
Performance Dates: February 6, 10, 14, 17, 21, 24, March 1, 4, 8.
For more information and tickets visit the website.
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