It wouldn’t be Christmas – or more particularly new year – in Russia without The Snow Maiden. Yet Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s fairytale opera has never quite captured the imagination elsewhere: Opera North’s new production claims to be the first fully professional staging in the UK for 60 years.
The archetypes are a little alien, though not that difficult to understand. The teenage Snow Maiden is the cold-hearted offspring of an unfortunate dalliance between the spring goddess and Father Frost; and now the human population must endure perpetual winter until the Maiden acquires some emotional warmth.
In John Fulljames’s production, the Snow Maiden is dispatched from the mystic forest to a sweatshop in Leeds; or whatever the opposite of a sweatshop is, as the workers sit shivering behind their sewing machines while cheap, winter jackets rattle off the production line.
The concept is a little jarring, as not many Leeds seamstresses are forced to sacrifice themselves to the coming spring by the order of the Tsar. But it adds some tart satire to what might otherwise be a surfeit of whimsy.
Aoife Miskelly sings the part of the Snow Maiden with a pleasing, flutey tone, but it’s a curiously passive role. Rimsky-Korsakov’s score is notable for its inclusiveness – folk tunes in unusual metres, flights of Italianate coloratura, oriental arabesques anticipating Scheherazade – though conductor Leo McFall proceeds with caution rather than abandonment. Overall, it feels like skating over the permafrost of an ancient folk tale without penetrating to its primal roots.
- At Grand theatre, Leeds, until 24 February. Box office: 0844-848 2700. Then touring until 24 March.
