Mazeppa

The conventional wisdom with Tchaikovsky's operas is that there are two great ones (Eugene Onegin and Pique Dame), two good ones (Iolantha and Maid of Orleans) and lots of other sad ones. What a surprise, then, that Mazeppa belongs at the top of the Tchaikovsky opera canon. It begins as a conventional love story between a warrior and a young maiden but turns darker than anything in Italian verismo and more emotionally complicated than most things in Richard Strauss. Though the Deutsche Grammophon recording under Neeme Järvi has a more open acoustic and a starrier cast (including Galina Gorchakova and Sergei Leiferkus), the Kirov outing is more passionately and knowingly conducted by Valery Gergiev, which in some ways makes a stronger case for the opera's viability. The cast tends to be workmanlike and can be somewhat fatiguing, though Nikolai Putilin rises to the challenge of the great title role with an authority that makes up for his lack of tonal luster. --David Patrick Stearns