Music reviews

The Fiery Angel’s libretto is based upon the novel The Fiery Angel by Valery Bryusov, and its supernatural theme greatly attracted Prokofiev, who was interested in cabbalism, the occult, mysticism, Christian Science and other such esoteric subjects. It’s one of the weirdest operas I’ve ever seen staged, and its subject matter is as far from traditional as you can get. The music is evocative, declamatory and frenzied, with haunting and powerful orchestration, and its Russian text gives it a wonderfully dark sound. It’s definitely not one of my favourite operas, but it is worth listening to, just for its bizarreness!

The story is set in mediæval Germany in the 1500s, with a knight, Ruprecht, returning after a long absence. Taking lodgings in an inn, his rest is disturbed by shrieks and cries from the room next to him – occupied by a young woman, Renata, who is wrestling with terrifying demonic visions that make her life a misery. She explains her story: from her childhood onwards, she has been visited by a “fiery angel” named Madiel, who brought her under his control by magic. When she reached the age of sixteen, she wanted to consummate their relationship physically, but he flew into a fury… However, later Renata believed that he had become incarnate in the person of Count Heinrich, and she and Heinrich lived together happily for a year. When he left her (possibly having become fed up with her hysterical outbursts and her certainty that he was some sort of spectral being), she was in despair… and was searching for him everywhere, continually tormented by terrible spirits.

How Ruprecht eventually pledged himself to help her, how his passionate love for Renata led him to involve himself in cabbalism and in seeking strange knowledge in order to control demons by sorcery so that he could force them to obey Renata (as she manipulates him into believing necessary), becomes the bizarre progress of this story. A duel, a boy-eating Mephistopheles, a strange disruption in a convent where Renata takes refuge, nuns going completely off their rocker in hysterical certainty that they are taken over by demons… it’s all wildly technicolour and completely mad. Although Ruprecht tries to save Renata, the opera ends with her being condemned to undergo torture and death when the Inquisitor declares she has been fornicating with demons.

Prokofiev actually wrote part of this opera while staying in the Bavarian Alps near Oberammergau (which is justly famous for its staging of mediæval Passion Plays, and I think you can see the influence of these plays in this opera). This is not an easy opera to listen to; there aren’t any memorable and lyrical tunes you’ll be humming, but the images brought to life by the score may well haunt you for a while. The performance in this recording (and in the DVD with the same cast) is just terrific and extraordinarily chilling (the singers are outstanding, and the orchestra couldn’t be bettered) – it’s the opera itself which brings my rating down to 4 stars.

Recommended mainly for its bizarre and uncanny weirdness. (Warning: the DVD contains nudity and other scenes which definitely makes it unsuitable for younger viewers.)