Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - The Queen of Spades
Salzburg Festival, 2018
Mariss
Jansons, Hans Neuenfels, Brandon Jovanovich, Vladislav Sulimsky, Igor
Golovatenko, Evgenia Muraveva, Oksana Volkova, Hanna Schwarz, Alexander
Kravets, Stanislav Trofimov, Gleb Peryazev, Pavel Petrov, Margarita
Nekrasova, Oleg Zalytskiy, Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, Yulia Suleimanova,
Imola Kacso, Márton Gláser, Juan Aguila Cuevas
Medici.tv - 16 August 2018
No
matter how familiar you might be with an opera, there is always the
potential for a new production to bring something new out of it. Mariss Jansons exploring the richness Tchaikovsky is always a great
experience, finding a human warmth in it where other conductors find
Russian coldness and stiff formality. Both aspects are actually present
in The Queen of Spades and Jansons controls and paces wonderfully to
bring that out here in Salzburg, as he has done elsewhere.
A
good director can also find something new and surprising to explore in
the work of a great composer, and while he can be controversial and
somewhat 'out there' at times, the very least you can say about Hans Neuenfels is that he has a unique vision that will be quite unlike any
other interpretation of the work. Expectations and conventions must be
put aside as you never know what will come next, and it can be very
revealing to see a familiar work afresh, as it were, see it from a
different perspective. If a work is rich enough, it is capable of
endlessly revealing new truths and interpretations.
Even a
work that is ostensibly a ghost story? Yes,
certainly. Stefan Herheim most recently and convincingly demonstrated
how much of Tchaikovsky (it's a lot!) is in The Queen of Spades at the Dutch National Opera (soon to be transferring to the Royal Opera House),
again with Mariss Jansons conducting there. Hans Neuenfels not
unexpectedly has an entirely different outlook on the opera for the 2018
Salzburg production, but surprisingly, while abstraction holds out over
naturalism in the set designs, he sticks fairly closely to the stage
directions, finding other ways to delve deeply into the subject and
themes of the work.
And to some extent that is determined
by the variety of tones, by the hot and cold nature of the work itself
that Jansons brings out here, from the heat of passion to the chilling
cold-bloodedness of murder and ghostly revenge. As with his Lohengrin
for Bayreuth, those divisions are expressed visually in a
black-and-white manner, and the chorus also have an important role to
play in highlighting those extremes between the darkness of inner
torment and the longing for the light of purity and innocence.
That's
brought out right upfront in the opening scene of The Queen of Spades,
where the children's chorus are subjected to almost militaristic
control. It's always been a strange way to open and it doesn't seem to
have much direct relevance to anything else that develops in the opera
unless you contrast it with other parallel and equivalent scenes. For
Hans Neuenfels, that's a matter of setting things in black or white, so the
children are all dressed in white, while Liza, Pauline and her 'Circle
of Friends', in the following scene quite literally form a circle,
dressed in black like some kind of secret society. Pauline's song of
life's morning looking towards the grave certainly takes on a different
complexion here.
Quite what this contrast is precisely
trying to say is hard to pin down and it seems a little reductive - as
it often did in his Bayreuth Lohengrin - to mark divisions this way, but
it is effective and makes an impression that forces you to reconsider
how you look at the opera. What it does clearly mark out however is the
contrast between how Hermann (in red) and the Countess dress
colourfully in contrast to everyone else. The key to this can perhaps
be found in the nurses with the children and with Liza's governess's
words to her and her friends, that you must follow the "rules of
society", know what is "proper and right" and "observe the conventions".
Hermann and the Countess lie outside those strict black and white
principles.
The structure of the work and its music also
throws up such contrasts, from singing about happy days and enjoyment of
life to being besieged by sudden storms, and that is the kind of
emotional turmoil that Liza (who wears both black and white) seems to be
most susceptible to. Hermann is just another blazing, burning ember on
the fire of the confusion, uncertainty and naivety that lies with her,
attractive and exciting in how he acts and behaves in a way that lies
totally outside those normal rules of acceptable social behaviour.
If
Neuenfels breaks the work down into such abstract terms while still
holding to the familiar dramatic line, it's supported well by Jansons'
elegant and passionate response to the music, alive to the precision of
detail within it. The human element is brought out much more
effectively by the characterisation and performances of a cast that
boasts two exceptional leads in Brandon Jovanovich and Evgenia Muraveva
as Hermann and Liza. I've become too used to Misha Didyk monopolising
the role recently, but Jovanovich brings a much more lyrical and
sympathetic interpretation to the madness of Hermann. Muraveva brings
out Liza's innocence likewise in a sympathetic manner and sings
marvellously, her Act III aria on the bridge absolutely heart-breaking.
With
secondary roles all well cast and sung and a strong chorus that
expresses all the variety of colour in the work with its little
Pastorale and other diversions, this is an outstanding production at
Salzburg that dispenses with operatic mannerisms, touches on its deeper themes and makes the ghost story at the centre of the work feel real and truly tragic.
Links: Salzburg Festspiele
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - The Golden Cockerel
La Monnaie-De Munt, 2016
Alain Altinoglu, Laurent Pelly, Pavlo Hunka, Alexey Dolgov, Alexander Vassiliev, Agnes Zwierko, Alexander Kravets, Venera Gimadieva, Konstantin Shushakov, Sheva Tehoval, Sarah Demarthe, John Manning, Marcel Schmitz, Marc Coulon
The Opera Platform - December 2016
These are undoubtedly strange times we are living through at the moment, so it's probably not a surprise that our views on artistic expression can be coloured and filtered by what is currently going on in the world. Who would have thought however that Rimsky-Korsakov's comic fairytale opera The Golden Cockerel could ever again be anything more than a satire on an obscure conflict long ago in a far off part of the world? Oh, how we used to laugh at the ridiculous ruler Dodon (now there's a name that is looking a little too close to reality for comfort) trying to keep foreign enemies out of his country and petulantly exclaiming "Laws? Don't know the meaning of the word. My whims and orders are the law".
But of course, Rimsky-Korsakov's satire was indeed based on reality of Russian imperialism, militarism during the Russo-Japanese war. That could perhaps account for its uncanny accuracy and relevance, revealing in the process how history has an unfortunate way of repeating itself. But let's not get either too carried away or demoralised at what seems to be a scarily realistic look at the Trump administration, or at least not just yet. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera is a delightful, colourful confection of amusing scenes and sparkling music, and representing that more so than any attempts at satire or contemporary relevance seems to be the main purpose of Laurent Pelly's production for La Monnaie in Brussels.
The set designs for Pelly's production of The Golden Cockerel are typically gorgeous, with bold cartoony figures that bring a comic energy to the work. And yet -not unlike his recent DNO production of Chabrier's L'Etoile - behind all the comic capers of stupid, incompetent and paranoid rulers, you can detect a darker and more sinister undercurrent. Tsar Dodon barks out his orders from a silver bed on a small mound of slate-coloured rocks of an almost post-apocalyptic world, his adoring people who never doubt his word all dressed in dark rags. Much of the atmosphere is achieved through Joël Adam's impeccable lighting and colouration, but the cartoon-like figures in outlandish costumes and wigs, and the strutting golden cockerel who calls out whenever the enemy's troops are approaching the border, all stand-out impressively from this background.
There are clearly no overt references to the current US administration in a production that I'm sure was prepared well in advance of its December 2016 performances at La Monnaie, but there is no bouffant combover needed to see the similarities in the dunderheaded policy decisions and arrogance of an incompetent ruler. Dodon's sons look a little like Jedward, and to be honest, I wouldn't rule them out as future candidates for the US President's team of advisors should he have any more firings and resignations. Nothing would surprise me about the Trump administration or indeed how applicable the author and librettist Vladimir Belsky's observations on such an administration seem to be. The Russian references and the 'sleeping with the enemy' aspect of the work however could be much too close for comfort.
Comparing the Tsarita Shemakha to Theresa May on the other hand might be taking contemporary analogies a little too far, but again - and maybe it's just because of the exceptional and deeply uncertain times we are living in at the moment - it's tempting to see something of the deluded British PM's unfathomable mishandling of the Brexit issue in the situations. Shemakha's kingdom is "a small island between sea and sky", where "everything obeys my whim and will (...) but it's all an illusion" and "I'm alone on my dream island". It's a tenuous comparison I admit, but you have to amuse yourself somehow, for as beautiful as Rimsky-Korsakov's music is with its little oriental touches and as pretty as Laurent Pelly's production looks, it's the satire that counts and there's not that much of it brought out here.
If The Golden Cockerel has any fault, it's that there's not much of dramatic interest in the opera. It's the kind of work where you get the message fairly quickly and can then just settle down to enjoy it for the music and hopefully some inspired fairytale visuals to match. By and large, that's what you get here, but not much else. Any 'interpretation' is entirely down to whatever you can apply to it from your own (over-)imagination. The performance at La Monnaie is fine but Alain Altinoglu, in his first opera as the new Music Director of La Monnaie, doesn't really succeed in making the music and the drama come to life. It's good/essential to have Russian leads in this work and Pavlo Hunka and Venera Gimadieva give enjoyable performances as Dodon and Shemakha, but neither are enough to elevate the opera in this production to anything more than just a colourful fairy tale.
Links: La Monnaie, The Opera Platform
Dmitri Shostakovich - The Nose
Royal Opera House, London - 2016
Barrie Kosky, Ingo Metzmacher, Martin Winkler, John Tomlinson, Rosie Aldridge, Alexander Kravets, Alexander Lewis, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, Peter Bronder,Helene Schneiderman, Susan Bickley, Ailish Tynan, Jeremy White
Opera Platform - 9th November 2016
Outrageous. I think that's the key word to aim for in a production of Shostakovich's The Nose. Gogol's wonderfully absurd and satirical comedy is given a musically extravagant treatment by Dmitri Shostakovich and it calls out for an outrageously surreal comic response on the stage. I'm surprised that Terry Gilliam hasn't been ear-marked for this one at some stage, but The Met's recent production at least found an appropriate illustrator's flourish in William Kentridge. If it's outrageous you're looking for however, Barrie Kosky is your man.
In Gogol's story and Shostakovich's opera, the nose of interest is that of the Collegiate Assessor Platon Kuzmitch Kovalev. Somehow it disappears from his face, is found in the bread mix of the barber's wife and then goes off to have an independent life of its own, much to the consternation of Kovalev. Even worse, it seems to be having a better life than him, being seen in all the important places around the city and even making the rank of State Councillor. Kovalev meanwhile finds that the absence of a nose don't confer much credibility on him with anyone, not with the police or the newspapers when he tries to report it missing, and it pretty much kills any prospects of marriage he might have had.
Kosky delivers an energetic staging that matches Shostakovich's musically eclectic score for The Nose, even adding a tap dancing routine to a score folk and jazzy rhythms, oomph-pah trombones and tuba and even a balalaika ballad, the music alternating between moments of dark reflection, comic verve and symphonic interludes. It's a technical challenge to find the right mood for each scene, particularly as the work is played straight through without an interval and with minimal time for scene changes, but Kosky and his design team come up with some inventive solutions that don't compromise on the director's individual sense of style and his tableau arrangements.
Barrie Kosky doesn't do obvious, but he has some familiar tics and tricks that are starting to become quite predictable. There is some of the director's trademark campness thrown into the Royal Opera House's all-singing all-dancing production, with gratuitous male dancers in corsets and suspenders, but primarily what you get in a Barrie Kosky production of the Nose is an appropriate sense of irreverence. And noses evidently. Lots of noses. It's not just Kovalov's nose that is prominent here, there are noses everywhere you look - which is kind of obvious. As obvious as... well, you know what.
Well, maybe not so obvious, since there is a rather large dose of comic absurdity and satire in The Nose, and any attempt to look for deep meaning in it is doomed to appear rather silly. Kosky gets the comic absurdity, but doesn't really do the satire. But then, Gogol's satire was very much to do with certain peculiarities of Russian society, with its system of rank and position, with power and authority, with corruption and bribery. There is a pre-Kafkaesque edge to it, but that's not what Shostakovich goes for, and neither does Barrie Kosky.
So what does Kosky find in this Royal Opera House production of The Nose? You might not be surprised to find that Kosky picks up on the undercurrents of a castration complex that Kovalev undergoes in his emasculation. Without his nose, Kovalov no longer feels like a man, he is unable to pursue women, and marriage to the daughter of Pelageya Podtotschina Grigorievna is out of the question (although he was always ambivalent about this match in the first place). Evidently you would expect Kosky to make a big deal of this, and literally at one stage he does indeed make a 'big thing' out of the nose.
So it's typically Kosky, a little bit camp, a little bit vulgar (David Poutney's funny English translation keeping it nice and sweary as well), but it's also clever, entertaining and fun. There's some inventive use of tables and desks driven on wheels to keep things moving along. The production is funny in some places and kind of laboured dead air in others, but it's that kind of a hit and miss opera. Summing up the whole enterprise however, an observer comes on to the stage and gets the audience laughing at the idea that anyone would make an opera out of this "sorry little tale"; "It's of no use to any of us". So there's no point in, ahem, looking down your nose at it.
Singing The Nose in English is perhaps a necessity unless you have a large cast of Russian singers ready to take on the 78 singing and speaking parts (outside of Russia, I would think that only the Bayerische Staatsoper have that kind of resource to draw on). English works just fine, particularly in Poutney's good translation, and we get good singing and speak-singing performances from Martin Winkler as Kovalev and John Tomlinson in a variety of colourful roles that he assumes brilliantly. Alexander Kravets's District Inspector is terrific, and Susan Bickley and Ailish Tynan enter into the spirit of the whole thing wonderfully. I'm not at all familiar with the music, but Ingo Metzmacher's conducting of the orchestra certainly holds together all the varied rhythms, moods and peculiarities of the piece.
Links: Royal Opera House, Opera Platform
