RUSSIAN POLITICAL SATIRE

GEORGE COLERICK writes about
Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov's extraordinary opera
'The Golden Cockerel'

Rimsky-Korsakov's fourteenth opera might have been his last but for the shattering events of 1905 and Russia's humiliation in the disastrous war against Japan. It was his expressed sympathy for the unsuccessful uprising against the Tsarist regime that caused his dismissal from the St Petersburg Conservatoire. This led to his composing The Golden Cockerel, his only direct political satire, and unlike any other opera in the existing international repertoire...

NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV

RUSSIA

JAPAN