Since Borodin had a day job (research chemist) and never finished the opera, producers have some freedom in how they organize it. The Met showed the Polovetzian sequence behind a scrim and projected videos of Igor or his dead soldiers when there were major transitions. This gave a slightly hazy appearance to the production, in keeping with the producer’s claim in an interview that the sequence was a hallucination of a man with a concussion.
The outline is simple enough: prince Igor goes to war. His army is destroyed and he (and his son and a few others) are captured. The next section is a somewhat disconnected/surreal collection of songs and dances surrounding Igor’s experiences in captivity. Meanwhile back at home his brother-in-law’s dissolute ways and attempted coup are wrecking readiness and leave the city unprepared for the counterattack. In the last act the city has been ransacked and a penitent Igor returns to a warm welcome.
This version used as the intro to the opera a quote to the effect that a man goes to war to escape himself. (Which seems a little odd, especially when applied to the current Ukraine conflicts.) The setting is WWI gear and weapons, which makes some of the lyrics sound a little funny, but meant that the projected battle scenes could be just people and explosions. At the end Igor pushes away his adoring subjects and starts leading by example in rebuilding.
Igor never seems to be very enthusiastic about his wife. That’s plot-driven, I suppose: in the first part he’s about to head off to war, in the middle he’s a glum hallucinating prisoner (who once says his wife will forgive him, and then largely ignores her when she shows up), and in the last he’s full of guilt. Still. . .
Either Russian has an incredible number of syllables or else the subtitle writers were a little terse.
As you would expect the music was excellent and the sets were imaginative and effective.
I’d forgotten about it completely until yesterday when Youngest Daughter suggested it as a date for me and my Better Half before I head out of town for a week. It was a good idea. Everybody knows the Dances section, but there was good music throughout.
It took some effort to keep my mind from playing through “Stranger in Paradise” during that section. (I tried to concentrate on hearing the Russian syllables.)
If you'll recall, Igor is suffering from PTSD and survivor's guilt. And please remember how often we hear about soldiers whose marriages fall apart after they return from war because they're going through PTSD. That's why Igor seems to largely ignore Yaroslavna when he returns from war.
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