Leaving Russia at the Revolution, severed from the roots of his native language, Rachmaninov also left behind him song and opera. The three one-act operas that survive give evidence of real dramatic talent. Who else has written so accomplished a graduation exercise as Aleko? Tchaikovsky was dazzled, no doubt also flattered, by some suggestions of imitation. It is a number opera, based on Pushkin’s dramatic poem The Gipsies, warning that the urban sophisticate cannot recapture pristine wildness, and has at its centre a superb soliloquy of lost love. Leiferkus takes a lyrical approach; this is a beautiful, tragic performance, ironically set against Ilya Levinsky’s carelessly superficial charm as the Young Gipsy. Zemfira is sung with fierce spirit by Maria Gulegina, especially in her cruel ‘Old husband’ song, and at the end with a lingering caress that seems to be for neither man but for Death itself.
The other operas are different matters, both tinged with Bayreuth experiences that Rachmaninov had absorbed more thoroughly than is sometimes allowed. In her insert-note to The Miserly Knight, Sigrid Neef argues interestingly that he is using tempo leitmotifs to identify the different characters. This is one of the ‘little tragedies’ in which Pushkin presents a moral issue but does not offer a solution. Here, it is the contrast between the old knight, claiming that his devotion to gold has taken him beyond passion into a realm of serenity, and his son, who merely needs the ready. The long central soliloquy, perhaps Rachmaninov’s finest piece of dramatic writing, is superbly delivered by Sergei Aleksashkin, with the wide range of his eloquence drawing sympathy to the miser. Sergei Larin portrays his son Albert as a selfish extrovert; and Ian Caley does what he can to make the Jewish moneylender more human than an unpleasant caricature.
Francesca da Rimini requires Rachmaninov to triumph over an inept libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky. This he does to a remarkable degree, using Modest’s inability to produce a text for the chorus of the damned to good advantage with wordless wails, and filling out the sketchy love duet with some 50 bars of a sensuous orchestral kiss. However, he should have rejected the banal placing of the final line, about the lovers reading no more that day, in favour of its breathtaking place in Dante, when their poring over Lancelot and Guinevere reveals their own love to them. Ilya Levinsky brings a more intensely lyrical line and manner to this than in Aleko, and Maria Gulegina ranges from docility before Lanciotto (Leiferkus again a jealous husband) to rapture in the love duet.
Neeme Jarvi leads all three operas, as the orchestra should do for much of the time, and the beautiful playing he draws from the Gothenburg orchestra helps to make these three records a set extolling Rachmaninov’s operatic talent. It is an excellent ‘trilogy’, excellently presented with a transliteration and good translations into English (by Joan Pemberton Smith), German and French, and helpful essays by Neef, by Harry Halbreich and by DJF.'