CBorodin's Prince Igor is packed with pageantry and glorious music, yet it can seem too often like one damned tableau after another. Edinburgh Grand Opera's production on the capacious stage of the Festival Theatre quickly falls prey to this potentially fatal flaw by employing a permanent curving ramp, up and down which a vast cast of soloists, choristers and dancers come and go.
Enclosed by this structure - indeed rather hemmed in by it - is the rest of the action. It's one way of staging a big Russian opera but not necessarily a good one. Yet amid all the choral and choreographic clutter, some superb arias shine forth in some often more than passable performances, even if the voices are much smaller than what a Russian audience would feel entitled to expect.
The women, as so often in amateur productions, tend to be better than the men. But the ever-reliable Ivor Klayton is a sound, if somewhat subdued, Igor and Colin Heggie, while no Chaliapin, catches something of Khan Kontchak's magnificent scena in which he treats his royal captive with true magnanimity. This passage in itself makes the opera worth hearing, but so do the contributions of Yaroslavna, Igor's forlorn wife, sung with sufficient poignancy by Fiona Galloway. In the tiny role of the Polovtsian maiden, Nina Modi seizes her opportunity.
Happily the company has mustered some pleasing dancers, guided by what the programme calls a ''choreologist'', and a sizeable orchestra, which responds with some aplomb to its conductor, Andrew Lees. But the chorus, trained by Morley Whitehead, contributes no less significantly, especially in the last act, where Rita Henderson's finely-lit production suddenly gains real pungency.
Two more performances, tonight and tomorrow.
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