The Image of Kuma from Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s The Enchantress in Contemporary Opera Productions: Concerning the Question of Musical Rossica

In this article the attempt is made to examine the main protagonist of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s opera The Enchantress through the prism of musical rossica — a new trend in musical scholarship elaborated in Professor Liudmila Kazantseva’s academic school. The author touches upon the questions of comparative analysis of the opera’s productions and the performers’ interpretations of the Kuma’s arioso “Where are you, my desired one?” from Act 4. Among the analyzed examples is Svetlana Kasyan’s operatic vocal performance at the Bolshoi Theater in 2014 and Asmik Grigoryan’s performance at the Oper Frankfurt in 2022). The author arrives at the conclusion that both productions are concentrated on the extroversive peripeteia of the main heroine’s life, as the result of which the formation of the image of Nastasya takes place to a great degree under the sign of visuality. On the other hand, the process of Kuma’s inner transformation, revealing in this protagonist the archetypic features of the Russian national character manifested in Tchaikovsky’s music, does not receive its due disclosure.