The Golden Rooster

The realm of King Dodon is shaken by crises: His enemies threaten the land, the king himself has grown old, and his sons are incapable of ruling. Then an astrologer appears at the court, offering the king a golden rooster that warns him in time of all dangers. When the king goes to war again, he falls for the queen of Shemakha. But now the astrologer demands this very woman as payment for the rooster. The golden rooster, which had come to the realm as a miraculous harbinger of salvation, turns out to be a messenger of misfortune, destruction, and violence. In the end, the king's death looms, and a people is left bewildered by those in power. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's last opera, The Golden Rooster, composed in 1909 based on a story by Alexander Pushkin, is a satire on Russian tsarist rule and simultaneously tells a fairy tale about power, manipulation, and failure. The Russian director Maxim Didenko thus understands the work as a parable about authoritarian systems and the virtual powers of the present, about technological promises of salvation and failed utopias. Rimsky-Korsakov's Solotoi petushok is a work that bridges the fairy tale operas of the 19th century and the expressionist music theater of modernity, where Russian folk tones resonate alongside oriental music and the orchestral brilliance of Impressionism. In the role of the king, bass Günther Groissböck will return to the MusikTheater an der Wien.

In Russian with German and English surtitles

Introduction to the work 30 minutes before the performance begins.