Line #41 Theatre/TheTsarsBride


1	''The Tsar’s Bride'' (Russian: Царская невеста, Tsarskaya nevesta) is an opera by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, first performed in 1899. It is based on a historical drama of the same name by Lev Mey. Although it’s frequently performed in the former Soviet Union, it’s little known outside it. Interestingly, another Ivan the Terrible-centered drama by Mey, ''The Maid of Pskov'', had also been previously [[Theatre/TheMaidOfPskov adapted to music]] by the same composer.
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3	The plot is very loosely based on the circumstances surrounding Ivan the Terrible’s third marriage. Marfa Sobakina, a merchant’s daughter, is betrothed to her VictoriousChildhoodFriend Ivan Lykov. However, the wedding is delayed because the Tsar is looking for a new wife, and all highborn maidens must be presented before him.
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5	Meanwhile, Grigory Gryaznoi, an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprichnik oprichnik]], has also fallen madly in love with Marfa and asks the royal physician Bomelius to make him a love potion. However, Gryaznoi’s jealous neglected mistress Lyubasha gets a poison from Bomelius and switches the two potions.
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7	Marfa is chosen as the Tsar’s bride, but after Gryaznoi puts what he thinks is a love potion into her drink, she is taken ill. Gryaznoi frames Lykov for the poisoning and kills him. Hearing the news, Marfa slips into insanity and feverishly calls for Lykov. Gryaznoi, heartbroken, kills Lyubasha and gives himself up for torture and execution.
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9	!! The opera contains examples of:
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11	* AdaptationalVillainy: In the original play, Bomelius is implied to have somewhat stronger feelings for Lyubasha, at one point offering her to move in with him, promising to treat her well. In the opera, it’s all omitted, and he doesn’t even pretend to really care about her.
12	* AscendedExtra: In ''The Maid of Pskov'', Bomelius appears once in the final scene and has the grand total of one line.
13	* BettyAndVeronica: The whole main plot kicks off when Gryaznoi grows tired of the passionate Lyubasha and prefers the sweet and innocent Marfa.
14	* BigBadEnsemble: There are three main villains, each with a different scheme. Gryaznoi wants Marfa for himself with zero consideration for her actual feelings or the feelings of everyone else involved. Lyubasha wants to get her revenge on Gryaznoi by poisoning Marfa (never mind the latter barely knows Gryaznoi exists). Bomelius is ready to mix up any potion, be it a love philter or a poison, as long as he can gain something from it.
15	* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Gryaznoi believes himself [[LoveRedeems reformed]] by his love for Marfa. He doesn’t want to abduct her by force – he [[SarcasmMode only]] wants to slip her a love potion and ruin her engagement with Lykov.
16	* CaughtInTheRain: Bomelius tries to invite Lyubasha indoors on the pretext of bad weather. She’s having none of that. [[SexForServices At first]].
17	* ChildhoodFriendRomance: Lykov and Marfa. Had a high chance of ending happily, too.
18	* DeathByAdaptation: In some productions, such as the one filmed in 2015 in Minsk, Bomelius dies, even though his historical counterpart outlived Marfa Sobakina by eight years and Malyuta, who is usually the one to kill him here unless Bomelius commits suicide, by six.
19	* DeliriousMisidentification: In her madness, Marfa clings to Gryaznoi and sings what she thinks is an aria for a tender romantic scene, believing him to be Lykov.
20	* DramaticIrony: The quartet at Lykov and Marfa’s engagement party, where everyone seemingly heartily congratulates them. Lykov thinks Gryaznoi has helped them pour the drinks, Gryaznoi thinks he has given Marfa a love potion – and the viewers are aware it’s poison, in fact.
21	* DudeMagnet: There are three men crazy about Marfa – her original fiance Lykov, Gryaznoi and Ivan the Terrible.
22	* EasilyOverheardConversation: When Gryaznoi asks Bomelius for the love philtre, Lyubasha eavesdrops and learns for certain that Gryaznoi is over her.
23	* FalseFriend: Lykov believes Gryaznoi to be his closest friend, actually asking him to be his best man on the wedding.
24	* TheGhost: Ivan the Terrible ([[DemotedToExtra after being one of the central figures]] in ''The Maid of Pskov'') appears onstage as a silent role at best.
25	* GreenEyedMonster: Jealousy goes hand-in-hand with villainy. Only Lykov and Marfa trust each other absolutely.
26	** Gryaznoi hates the very thought of Marfa marrying another. Many productions show him stabbing Lykov with malicious pleasure onstage, and he gets physically sick at the thought of Ivan the Terrible choosing to marry Marfa.
27	** Lyubasha is ready to murder the completely unsuspecting Marfa just because Gryaznoi gets infatuated with the latter.
28	** In the original play, even Bomelius has his moments. In particular, when Lyubasha asks whether he has a love-philter that would make a man love her back again, Bomelius replies he has one but won't give it to her.
29	* HonoraryUncle: Malyuta Skuratov, one of the oprichniks, and Lyubasha refer to each other as “godfather” and “goddaughter”… because, as he puts it, he “baptized her kinfolk in blood” when the oprichniks plundered her town. He seems [[MoralityPet genuinely fond of her]], though.
30	* HopeSpot:
31	** Lyubasha looks into the window of Marfa’s house and sighs with relief: the girl’s pretty but nothing unique, and Gryaznoi will quickly get over her. Then it’s revealed it was Marfa’s friend Dunyasha she saw.
32	** From Lykov’s point of view (not for the audience): the moment when he learns Dunyasha will probably marry the Tsar so he and Marfa are free to proceed with their wedding.
33	* IHaveThisFriend: Gryaznoi asks about the love potion “on behalf of a friend”. Neither Bomelius nor Lyubasha is fooled.
34	* InnocentSoprano: Marfa, a lyric coloratura soprano, is innocence personified, a sweet young woman completely oblivious to the plotting and scheming going on around her.
35	* JealousRomanticWitness: Ivan Lykov, being a classic TenorBoy, is unaware that his alleged friend and best man Gryaznoi is madly in love with his bride Marfa. Therefore, Lykov and Marfa happily celebrate their engagement right in front of him. Gryaznoi seems calm and happy for them, but that's because he is planning to slip a LovePotion into Marfa's goblet right during the engagement toast.
36	* KarmaHoudini: Bomelius has mixed both of the potions and forced Lyubasha to sleep with him in exchange for making the poisonous one; he gets no comeuppance in the end. Gryaznoi nearly kills him when he sees Marfa dying and believes the physician has given him the wrong potion, but as Lyubasha steps in to explain, the attention gets focused on her and Bomelius is forgotten.
37	** Some productions avert this: for example, in the 1965 opera film, he is shown led away for trial too, in the 2015 Belarus Opera production, Skuratov kills him, and in the 2018 Astrakhan Opera production, he commits suicide.
38	* LoveDodecahedron: Marfa and Ivan Lykov love each other, Gryaznoi loves Marfa, Ivan the Terrible chooses Marfa as his bride, Lyubasha loves Gryaznoi, and Bomelius wants Lyubasha.
39	* LoveObstructingParents: In the beginning, Lyubasha sings a song of a girl whose mother forces her to reject her beloved and tries to marry her off to an old man. [[{{Foreshadowing}} The girl dies at the wedding]].
40	* LovePotion: Discussed, but eventually never consumed. It’s a powder that Gryaznoi plans to slip into Marfa’s drink, but as Lyubasha puts the poison in its place, we never learn whether it would have worked and how.
41	* LyricalDissonance: The mad scene. Marfa happily sings of her love for Lykov and their upcoming wedding, Gryaznoi sings heart-wrenchingly of his remorse for what he has done to her, and everyone else is lamenting Marfa’s fate.
42	* MistakenForRomance: Tsar Ivan is very interested in Dunyasha and talks to her for a long while. Everyone thinks he shall marry her and is completely dumbstruck when the Tsar announces Marfa as his choice. RealLife showed he picked Dunyasha as a bride for his son (the opera doesn’t mention it).
43	* MurderTheHypotenuse:
44	** Gryaznoi frames and stabs Lykov. At that moment, he still believes that he gave Marfa a love potion and she won’t care about Lykov anyway.
45	** Lyubasha poisons Marfa, even though she realizes it will hardly bring Gryaznoi back to her.
46	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: When Marfa is dying and has lost her grip on reality, it dawns on Gryaznoi that it’s primarily him who has destroyed her life.
47	* NothingPersonal: Lyubasha’s musings when she is thinking of buying the poison for Marfa basically amount to that. She’s doing it not because she hates Marfa personally, but to get her revenge on Gryaznoi.
48	* OneSteveLimit: Downplayed; there are two Ivans and two Grigorys, but as Tsar Ivan barely appears and Grigory #2 is [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname only known as Malyuta Skuratov]], it’s hard to get confused.
49	* PetTheDog: Ivan the Terrible (a complex TragicVillain in Mey’s plays) is very kind and friendly towards Dunyasha when he sees how frightened she is at the bride-choosing ceremony.
50	* PlayfulPursuit: Marfa teasingly reminds her VictoriousChildhoodFriend fiance how they used to chase each other as kids and invites him to try and catch her again. Unfortunately, she does so in a delirium, as she has gone insane after learning of said fiance's murder.
51	* ShesAllGrownUp: Lykov and Marfa realized the romantic nature of their feelings when they met after several years of separation.
52	* ShipperOnDeck: Marfa has many troubles but having LoveObstructingParents isn’t one of them: Sobakin and his wife have shipped her with Lykov since she was a little girl.
53	* SuicideByCop: Lyubasha tells Gryaznoi how she engineered Marfa’s death to provoke him into killing her. Gryaznoi gives himself up to the oprichniks and cries he’ll beg for the worst tortures imagined.
54	* TenorBoy: The good-hearted and naive Lykov is a typical one.
55	* VillainOfAnotherStory: Malyuta Skuratov openly boasts about his killings and doesn't even pretend to be in any way moral. However, in this particular story, he is, if anything, one of the more ''sympathetic'' characters (it helps that he does nothing villainous onscreen, holds no grudge against Lykov or the Sobakin family and, in most productions, is quite nice towards his MoralityPet Lyubasha).
56	* WomanScorned: Lyubasha doesn’t care that she causes two deaths and then gets killed herself. Since Gryaznoi has rejected her, there’s not much of a life for her anyway.
57	* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: Lyubasha was abducted from her hometown by the oprichniks who slaughtered her kin. She found love with Gryaznoi, but he never truly loved her. Then he decided to marry Marfa and cast off Lyubasha who has no family to protect her and, as an ex-mistress, can’t hope for respect. On top of it all, midway through the libretto she is coerced into sleeping with Bomelius, and that breaks what’s left of her dignity. No wonder the poor woman goes AxCrazy.

Context Theatre / TheTsarsBride