War and Peace and libretti and info

[NickBz]

Metropolitan Opera House, New York, conducted by Gergiev in 2002. Broadcast on R3 on 5th December 2020.
If anybody heard this, let me know what you think. I will catch it on the BBC iPlayer.
I wanted to comment about a synopsis, or a complete libretto. Why can the BBC R3 website not link to this, at least?
I know that many of us have a libretto, and years of expreience also, but is it too much to ask for BBC researchers and their website colleagues to put a link to a libretto and some background information?
I will have the same question for almost all R3 performances, and remember how we were when we started exploring this music, searching for information, before the internet existed.
I feel like I could help out, with all sorts of background information and libretti. I'm sure many friends here could do the same, but I have some spare time available.
Many thanks to the R3 Forum and all its musical inhabitants ;-)

[kernelbogey]

Welcome NickBz!

I hope you get some answers here. I was able to listen to just a few minutes at the beginning of this broadcast. I noticed that the presenters, who were working from home to introduce this recording, didn't go into the usual detail of the synopsis. As though this broadcast was done 'on the cheap'?

Your more general point is a good one!

[gurnemanz]

I got the very good Decca Prokofiev opera box with Gergiev a few years ago. Still around (I bought it at the time for only about £30.) As is all too often the case, no librettos were included and none was available on the Decca site. However, I did manage to download a pdf for War and Peace via Chandos (link) and found it very useful.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Metropolitan Opera House, New York, conducted by Gergiev in 2002. Broadcast on R3 on 5th December 2020.
If anybody heard this, let me know what you think. I will catch it on the BBC iPlayer.
I wanted to comment about a synopsis, or a complete libretto. Why can the BBC R3 website not link to this, at least?
I know that many of us have a libretto, and years of expreience also, but is it too much to ask for BBC researchers and their website colleagues to put a link to a libretto and some background information?
I will have the same question for almost all R3 performances, and remember how we were when we started exploring this music, searching for information, before the internet existed.
I feel like I could help out, with all sorts of background information and libretti. I'm sure many friends here could do the same, but I have some spare time available.
Many thanks to the R3 Forum and all its musical inhabitants ;-)

Welcome to the Forum. Opera buffs are always extra welcome! I get the feeling this was a last minute substitution. It was a 2002 production with Netrebko and the late and great Dimitri Hvorotovsky - a cast that is unlikely to bettered soon. I heard an hour and thought it was excellent. I think the reason there is no link to the libretto is probably because of copyright issues.,

[Cockney Sparrow]

I managed to see the WNO / Pountney production at the ROH in July last year.

https://wno.org.uk/news/war-and-peace-a-look-back-at-the-epic-production

A great experience, and whilst its not the Met nor in Russia I thouhght it tremendously well done in all departments.To see it again, I'd probably have to travel to another continent its such an undertaking to stage.

Thanks for the steer as to a libretto. I bought the Rostropovitch performance on Erato where he writes about promising Prokofiev (as he visited him in his final weeks) to have War and Peace performed and known. That just has a snopsis.