Sunday Classics: What Prince Igor doesn't know is that what's happening to him is History

Baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky sings Igor's monologue from Act II of Prince Igor, which Borodin surely meant to be the dramatic centerpiece of his never-finished opera. (The performance is billed by the poster as from a 2006 Moscow concert that also featured Renée Fleming.)

PRINCE IGOR: No sleep, no rest for my tormented soul!
The night brings me no comfort or oblivion.
I relive the past alone, in the quiet of the night,
and the threat of the divine omen
and the celebrations for our military achievements,
my victory over the enemy,
and the pitiful end to military glory,
the defeat and the sounds and my capture,
and the death of all my soldiers,
killed in honest battle for their homeland.
All has been lost: my honor and my glory.
I have disgraced my native land!
Captivity, infamous captivity . . .
such is my destiny from now on,
and the thought that I alone am to blame!
Oh, give me, give me freedom . . .
I will succeed in atoning for my disgrace,
I will save my honor and my glory,
I will save the Rus from the enemy!
You alone, my dear love, you alone will not blame me.
with your tender heart
you will understand everything!
You will forgive me everything!
From your high tower you have worn your eyes out watching,
you await your beloved day and night,
and you shed bitter tears.
How could I spend day after day in fruitless captivity,
aware that the enemy is preying on the Rus?
The enemy is like a terrible beast
The Rus moan in the grip of its mighty claws
and lay the blame for this on me!
Oh give, give me freedom,
I will succeed in atoning for my disgrace.
I will save the Rus from the enemy!
No sleep, no rest for my tormented soul!
The night brings me no hope of escape.
I relive yet again the past alone in the quiet of the night . . .
And there is no way out for me!
Oh, I am so miserable, so miserable!
It is so hard to see my impotence!

by Ken

I hope we've had some fun working back and forth between the Polovtsian Dances and songs that recycle some of their tunes in Robert Wright and George Forrest's 1953 musical Kismet -- "Stranger in Paradise" Friday night and "Not Since Nineveh" and "He's in Love" last night. Now it's time to get serious.

Prince Igor starts off in a genre I think we recognize instinctively, even if we can't put our finger on where we recognize it from. It looks -- and sounds -- for all the world like a Heroic Epic, with the people of the Kievan Rus principality of Putivl hailing their brave, heroic leader, Prince Igor, as he sets off on his heroic journey to repel an invading bunch of godless Asiatic savages, the blood-thirsty Polovtsi, who have savagely rampaged their way from the steppes of central Asia to threaten god-fearing Rus civilization with their godless Asiatic savagery.

As far back as memory goes this it how it's been among the Rus. The thing is, memory has a way of conveniently going back way far when it can cause some juicy trouble to do so, and contrarily going back hardly far at all when it's inconvenient. And the fact is that the Rus haven't really been in these parts all that long. Go back not all that far and they were Swedish tribes engaged in southward, um, "visitation." (That's a polite word for "invasion.") But by now they've assimilated with the local population and feel as if they've been here forever, defending their sacred soil -- from, when necessary, invading godless heathens.

Only something goes wrong, very wrong. We'll hear it as soon as we click through, when we're going to hear the Overture, which we've already heard, and the opening scene of the Prologue. By the way, now that we've heard Dmitri Hvorostovsky sing Igor monologue from Act II, more of the Overture should sound familiar.


TO HEAR WHAT GOES WRONG AS PRINCE IGOR
PREPARES FOR RIGHTEOUS GLORY, CLICK HERE

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