By Martin Bernheimer [Financial Times, 27 February 2007]
Tchaikovskyís Orleanskaya deva is better known hereabouts, if known at all, as The Maid of Orleans. First staged in St Petersburg in 1881, it represents a bizarre yet wondrous mishmash ñ part grand opera in the old Parisian tradition, part blood-and-guts melodrama predicated on Russian romance, part showpiece for a superhuman mezzo-soprano.