Borodin's rich and rambling "Prince Igor" brought the Mariinsky Opera's 2008 Japan tour to a close in three performances over the weekend.

NHK Hall provided nothing if not clear sightlines of the vintage 1954 Yevgeny Sokovnin production, with its serve-the-drama painted flats, bold costumes, unfussy stage action, and -- no minor detail -- flowing, biting choreography in the Polovstian Dances. The latter, said the credits, retrace a 99-year-old scheme by Michel Fokine.

Just six weeks earlier, this company and this same opera had graced the brand-new boards of Beijing's National Centre for the Performing Arts.

How exactly China's sparkling "Egg" compares for performers with the Japanese broadcaster's 3,600-seat tired blocky barn is a thing for conjecture. What we do know is that spaces built without regard to scale have never served the interests of classical art.

Still, the Mariinsky Orchestra on Saturday emitted sweet, smooth, clean tones from NHK Hall's pit, lodged forward of the proscenium.

This "opera house" configuration cannot rival Tokyo Bunka Kaikan but it projects a fuller symphonic sound than the "orchestra shell" used for weekly concerts by the house band. The NHK Symphony Orchestra always makes a finer splash on its forays to Suntory Hall, or even to the oddly opera-less Tokyo Opera City.

Borodin toiled for twenty years on the tale of Ukraine-based Igor's failed 1185 raid against nomadic Tartars -- specifically Polovstians -- encamped nearby on the Lower Don. He wrote all the music. He left at least two structural outlines.

St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre (pr. marry-een-ski) hosted the premiere in 1890 using a full score prepared by Borodin's colleagues, the composer having died. The action unfolds in a prologue and four acts.

With this legacy, we might assume the Mariinsky Opera would adhere to Borodin's intentions, as far as those can be known: Igor ignores evil omen, leaves for battle; home rule goes awry; Igor in captivity; Igor escapes; Igor returns. Logical, at least by the standards of opera.

Instead, conductor Valery Gergiev opted to place Act One (chaos back home) at the end, with Igor showing up just in time not to be needed.

Dubbed the "2007 Gergiev Version," this was deployed at the Egg as well. Its flawed drama is mirrored by a jolt and anticlimax in the music. Closing chords resolve in a way detached from what has just been heard, and the musical inspiration does not uphold a three-hour arch. Borodin was a chemist, not a builder. So no goose bumps.

A definitive "Prince Igor" evidently eludes the Mariinsky. Gergiev's 1990s way of putting Act One after Act Two at least offered some merits and needed no tinkering with the score. In fact some music was restored. On the other hand, the company's 2008 website runs an English synopsis with Act One in its 1890 place and Act Three cut entirely, a once-sanctioned "solution."

The singing at NHK Hall fought for attention. Angles and dimensions that suited dinosaur TV cameras in the 1970s have a way of sapping vocal power.

Thus the Mariinsky's bravura chorus threw a wan shadow of its week-earlier self at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan.

The slightly irrelevant lovers, Konchakovna and Vladimir, blended amiably in the duet, Natalia Evstafieva a dusky mezzo, Yevgeny Akimov a nasal tenor with spinto reserves.

Larisa Gogolevskaya introduced a long-taxed, Brunnhilde-like Yaroslavna. Sergei Aleksashkin's bass wobbled and flailed all evening in the kind-barbarian duties of Khan Konchak. Andrei Popov and Grigory Karasev tore up the stage as army deserters Eroshka and Skula, albeit at the wrong point in the proceedings, thanks to editor Gergiev.

Maestro Gergiev, meanwhile, presided over stage and pit with seeming calm at this Japan Arts event. (By Andrew Powell, special to the Mainichi)

Copyright 2005-2006 THE MAINICHI NEWSPAPERS. All rights reserved. Mainichi features the best news in Japan, current news in Japan, Japan news in English, Japan business news, Tokyo Japan news, and Japan entertainment news. Mainichi News is syndicated in accordance with editorial regulations: personal and noncommercial purposes.

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