The lands ruled by Tsar Dodon are plagued by crises: they are threatened by his enemies, he himself has grown old and his sons are incapable of ruling. An Astrologer appears in court and offers the Tsar a Golden Cockerel that will warn him in good time of every danger. When the Tsar goes to war once again he falls in love with the Tsaritsa of Shemakha. But now the Astrologer demands precisely this woman as payment for the cockerel. The Golden Cockerel, brought into the tsardom as a miraculous saviour, now turns out to be a prophet of disaster, destruction and violence. The story ends with the Tsar’s death and a country left helpless by its rulers. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov composed his last opera, The Golden Cockerel, in 1909. Based on a fairy tale poem by Alexander Pushkin, it satirises the rule of the tsars in Russia while at the same time telling a tale of power, manipulation and failure. For the Russian director Maxim Didenko, the work is thus a parable of present-day authoritarian regimes and virtual powers, promises of salvation through technology and failed utopias. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Zolotoy petushok is a transitional work between the fairy tale operas of the nineteenth century and modern, expressionist musical theatre, placing elements of the Russian folk tradition alongside Oriental music and the orchestral splendour of Impressionism. Bass Günther Groissböck will return to the MusikTheater an der Wien to play the role of the Tsar.

In Russian with German and English surtitles

Introduction to the work 30 minutes before curtain-up