Fürst Igor

Prince Igor of Novgorod-Seversk leads his troops into a hopeless battle against the neighbouring Polovtsians and is taken prisoner. Meanwhile his brother-in-law seizes power back home – until the Polovtsians hit back. Ultimately Igor manages to escape. But can he and his homeland still be saved? The catastrophic effects that unnecessary wars, started arbitrarily by power-hungry despots, can have is still all too evident here and now in the present day.

The chemist and hobby composer Alexander Borodin had an enormously difficult time writing the down-to-earth master opera that his friends expected of him. As his template, he chose no less that one of the most powerful heroic epics of Medieval Russian literature – »The Tale of Igor's Campaign«. Too powerful for Borodin, who was constantly occupied with reconciling opposing conflicts and points of view? After 18 years’ work, he left the opera in a still fragmented state when he died in 1887. Alexander Glasunov and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov posthumously shaped the piece for him into the work as we know it today – full of powerful, impressive music and with the famous »Polovtsian Dances«.