Short Summary
Iolanta, the daughter of Provençal King René, who has been blind from birth, lives in hiding in the Vosges mountains.
Her father hopes that she will be cured by the famous physician Ibn-Hakia - only when she can see will Iolanta meet her fiancé Robert of Burgundy. But things turn out differently: Robert wants to break off the engagement because he loves another princess. His companion and friend Vaudemont, on the other hand, falls in love with Iolanta at first sight and she returns his love. Love becomes the key to treatment, the cure succeeds and Iolanta learns to see.
Iolanta
Storyline
Iolanta lives hidden from the world in a magical rose garden. Protected and cared for by her nurse Marta and her husband Bertrand, and entertained by Brigitta, Laura and other friends. But she senses that something is wrong and accuses her friends of hiding something from her. Bertrand and Marta explain Iolanta's situation to the royal armor-bearer Almerik: she has been blind since birth. Her father, King René, has kept her hidden from the world. Her fiancé from childhood, Duke Robert of Burgundy, is not to find out about her blindness. She herself is kept in the dark about her situation. There must be no talk of sight or light in her presence. Almerik announces the arrival of the king accompanied by the physician Ibn-Hakia. The doctor is said to have the ability to cure Iolanta's blindness.
When the king and Ibn-Hakia arrive and the doctor has seen the sleeping Iolanta, he explains that the princess must be informed of her condition. The desire to see is a condition for healing; soul and body must be brought into harmony. Ibn-Hakia wants to wait until the evening in the king's castle for his decision. The king cannot imagine informing Iolanta of her fate.
Duke Robert and his companion and friend Count Vaudémont fight their way through the thicket around Iolanta's garden. Robert has fallen in love with another woman and wants to ask King René to break off his engagement to Iolanta. Despite a warning sign threatening any intruder in the garden with death, the two friends continue on their way and find Iolanta asleep in the garden. Vaudémont is mesmerized by the sight of her. Robert warns and suspects a spell behind the beauty's sleep.
Iolanta wakes up and is delighted to see the strangers. While she fetches them some wine, the suspicious Robert leaves to fetch reinforcements. Vaudémont irritates Iolanta with his compliments - after all, he doesn't even know her yet. The knight does not want to pester her any further and asks her to pick him a rose as a farewell and a memento. When, despite her repeated requests, she keeps giving him a white rose instead of a red one, Vaudé- mont realizes Iolanta's situation. He explains to her that she is blind. She cannot, he explains, fully grasp the benefits of creation without seeing the light - "God's first becoming". Iolanta disagrees and gives her own diverse sensory impressions to consider. However, he has awakened feelings in her and she wants to be able to see what he sees.
The court, the king and the doctor call out for Iolanta. The king is beside himself to find the strange knight with her. When he asks, Iolanta declares that she has now been informed of the miracle of light.
The king introduces Iolanta to the doctor and the plan to cure her. When she declares that she cannot feel the desire for something she does not know, IbnHakia doubts to the king that she can be cured. The king resorts to a ruse: if the healing does not succeed, Vaudémont is to be executed. After all, he has entered the garden despite the ban. Iolanta is determined to prevent this and agrees to Ibn-Hakia's treatment. The king apologizes to Vaudémont for his earlier unruliness and the death sentence. He had been right to tell Iolanta about blindness and light. Vaudémont asks for Iolanta's hand in marriage. The king refuses, citing his betrothal to Robert. Robert has returned and asks the king to release him for Mathilde. The king agrees and promises Vaudémont that he will give Iolanta to him as his wife if she is cured. Vaudémont wants to marry the princess in any case, even if she remains blind. Bertrand reports that she has been cured. Ibn-Hakia leads Iolanta in. She can see. Everyone praises God and the miracle of healing.
»I thought,« says Evgeny Titov in an interview about his production, »in an opera that is so much about light, there must also be shadows.«
And so the director takes his audience into a rose garden of a somewhat more sinister kind. Rufus Didwiszus' spatial stage shows it as a »place within a place«, within the walls of times gone by, whose perspective is unsettling. Those who enter Iolanta's refuge from outside can see that not everything can be right there. Inside, Otto Pichler's choreography raises doubts as to whether Iolanta's followers still consist of »friends« or »servants« - or whether they should be described in a completely different way. The detailed art of irritation in Evgeny Titov's production brings to a head the question with which the director began his examination of Piotr Tchaikovsky's last production: »What does it mean when we say: we take off all our blinkers and look at the world?«
Piotr Tchaikovsky set the antagonism of light and darkness to music in the juxtaposition of "dark" B flat keys - for example in the unusual orchestral introduction scored only for woodwinds and horns - with the triumphant C major finale. The composer uses trenchant harmony and instrumentation to make the gradually questionable natural idyll in Iolanta's rose garden just as atmospherically tangible as Iolanta's driven nature, King René's doubts or Ibn-Hakia's philosophical reflections on the connections between psyche and body. Finally, Iolanta and Vaudemont's rapturous duet in G major seems to combine romantic love and knowledge (of God) - the solution? Or a new delusion?
The suggestion for this material came from Tchaikovsky himself. In a conversation with the magazine Peterburgskaja Zizn' in November 1892, he explained: "About eight years ago, I received an issue of the [Moscow] magazine Russldj Vestnik [Russian Messenger, note] in which the drama play King Rene's Daughter by the Danish playwright Henrik Hertz was printed in the Russian translation by F. B. Miller. This material enchanted me with its poetry and originality as well as its wealth of lyrical moments. At the time, I promised myself that I would set it to music one day."
