The Tsar's Bride

This is a story of love — passionate, ardent, scorching and, at times, burning out everything around. This is a story about the Russian soul that has always had room for purity, poetry, self-denial and mercy.

At the same time, this is a story about the atrocious time of total lawlessness in Russia, when the authorities treated an individual as a plaything for their own ends. This is a story about our Motherland, where “high above spreads the sky like a spacious marquee”. “Is the sky in foreign lands the same as here?” sings “the Tsar’s bride”, Marfa Sobakina, and Evgeny Kolobov regarded these words as the leitmotif of the opera.

Press

In the middle of the scenic construction is a frame of an observation tower whose shape resembles a woman’s body; attached to the tower are flexible footbridges, inside it there are spiral stairs and passages; and a part of the orchestra pit is covered with a platform, where many of the key scenes and particularly the symbolic episodes take place. The performance begins not with the overture, but with an a capella chorus, to the sounds of which the crowd and the main characters come on to the platform, carrying candles and crossing themselves, and only after this “parade” the action moves to Gryaznoy’s house.

Vyacheslav Shadronov, a freelance journalist and theatre blogger
19 February 2016

In his (Yuri Grymov’s) version "The Tsar’s Bride" has lost much of its length (only two of the four acts are left; many recitatives, choruses and folk dances have disappeared),the overture is replaced by the chorus "Let all mortal flesh keep silent" (in other words with the chant performed at the Holy Saturday liturgy instead of the Cherubic hymn),and the director suggested that the set designer Vladimir Maksimov should build a wooden construction a laLeonardo’searthen horse. Grymovhas made the boyars move on skates, fetishized pieces of clothes fashionable in that time, such as white boots — on the whole, the action has an obvious tincture of aesthetic provocation.

Culbyt.com
15 April 2015

Life after depthdoes exist, and it is fully confirmed byYuri Grymov’s "The Tsar’s Bride" at Novaya Opera, which is every inch a Kolobov-style production, carrying on the Maestro’s radically transforming traditions in handling classical pieces. The performance is short and fast-moving and serves the interests of the modern spectator.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta
27 January 2005