Prokofiev: Betrothal In A Monastery

Prokofiev's setting of Sheridan's convoluted comic play The Duenna takes a host of familiar characters and situations--young lovers attempting to circumvent a disapproving parent, an older woman who wants to wed, requited and unrequited affection, requited and unrequited greed, mistaken identities--and tosses them together with a poke at the Church, a huge cast (23 named characters), and some of Prokofiev's coolest theater music. It's fun, if overlong. Few of the roles call for more than character singing, and most of the cast obliges with just that. The Kirov Orchestra shines, while conductor Valery Gergiev maintains a firm hand over the proceedings. The libretto, curiously, is rendered in the original Cyrillic and English; a phonetic version of the Russian would have been much more helpful for the majority of Western opera lovers, who are less than fluent in Cyrillic. --Sarah Bryan Miller