Prokofiev: Story of a Real Man.(Sound Recording Review)

* Deomidova, Leonova; Maslennikov, Kibkalo, Eizen; Bolshoi Theatre Chorus and Orchestra, Ermler. 1961. Text and translation. Chandos CHN 10002

Based on a hackwork novel by Boris Polevoy, Prokofiev's Story of a Real Man, set in 1942, portrays a fighter pilot, Alexei, shot down and wounded, rescued by partisan collective farmers but subjected to double amputation. On the advice of wise Communist elders (a surgeon and a dying Commissar, who reminds Alexei, "But you're a Soviet person!") Alexei returns to active flying duty and reunites with his fiancee, Olga (until the end singing to him only in hallucinations and flashbacks).

Produced only posthumously and in altered form, Story of a Real Man, like all Prokofiev's Soviet operas, is straight-up Socialist Realism; the libretto, like that of War and Peace a domestic collaboration between the composer and Mira Mendelson, blends kitsch with genuine feeling for the wartime suffering of ordinary Soviet people. Only some of the music recalls vintage--late vintage--Prokofiev: the jaunty flight music and the waltz that Alexei dances to demonstrate his regained mobility. Two attractive cantilena stretches for the baritone hero echo related stages of Prince Andrei's suffering. Some passages deliberately court banality, with the choral panorama of the Front a particular low point.