Chandos completes its series of recordings of Rachmaninov's three one-act operas with his first, Aleko, written in 1893 when he was 19 and a student at the Moscow Conservatory. It was his first great success, but it lacks the musical distinction and dramatic power to have secured a place in the repertoire. Based on Pushkin, the opera tells of an outsider who has joined a band of gypsies who turns to murder when he discovers that his wife has betrayed him. The narrative connection with Carmen is no coincidence; Prosper Merim ...
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Chandos completes its series of recordings of Rachmaninov's three one-act operas with his first, Aleko, written in 1893 when he was 19 and a student at the Moscow Conservatory. It was his first great success, but it lacks the musical distinction and dramatic power to have secured a place in the repertoire. Based on Pushkin, the opera tells of an outsider who has joined a band of gypsies who turns to murder when he discovers that his wife has betrayed him. The narrative connection with Carmen is no coincidence; Prosper Merimée, a great admirer of Pushkin, had translated the original poem into French at about the same time he published the novella on which Bizet's opera is based. The musical originality of the opera is a reflection of the composer's youth and inexperience. While it is skillfully and professionally constructed, the influences of Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Cavalleria Rusticana (whose Moscow premiere the young composer had attended two years earlier), and, not surprisingly, Carmen, are...
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