Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - The Snow Maiden
L’Opéra National de Paris, 2017
Mikhail Tatarnikov, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Aida Garifullina, Yuriy Mynenko, Martina Serafin, Maxim Paster, Thomas Johannes Mayer, Elena Manistina, Vladimir Ognovenko, Franz Hawlata, Vasily Gorshkov, Carole Wilson, Vasily Efimov, Vincent Morell, Pierpaolo Palloni, Olga Oussova
ARTE Concert - 25 April 2017
Rimsky-Korsakov's telling of the fairy tale of The Snow Maiden is by no means a straightforward narrative. The story itself is simple enough and easy to follow, but it's elaborated on by the composer with all the colours and adornments of an epic Russian legend, with songs, dances, musical interludes, ceremonial folk dances and choruses. This however is not Sadko or The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, and as beautiful as the scoring is, it risks losing sight of the simple message at the heart of the story about love and time, about the seasons bringing change and renewal. You have to wonder then whether Dmitri Tcherniakov doesn't risk adding another level of distance in his production for the Paris Opera that takes it further away from the fairy tale moral.
The Snow Maiden isn't performed as often as other works by Rimsky-Korsakov and it's only recently that we've really had a chance to get to experience a wider selection of the composer's work. It has to be said that for all the controversy that he brings with him, Dmitri Tcherniakov has been at the forefront of introducing rarely heard Russian masterpieces to the West and presenting them in a new meaningful light, and Rimsky-Korsakov works have been very much a part of that. The Snow Maiden however is clearly something of a challenging work to stage effectively. John Fulljames directed a beautiful and wonderfully illuminating production of The Snow Maiden for Opera North last year, but even that failed to thaw the icy heart of the work.
The nature of Ostrovsky's work as a piece of folklore with a very Russian character and a magical fairy tale element shouldn't necessarily present a difficulty to a director like Tcherniakov who wants to modernise it to some extent, but his production of The Snow Maiden seems to fall somewhere in between. Not unexpectedly, the dispute of Mother Spring and Father Frost is seen in a rather more contemporary domestic light, with the unfortunate off-spring of their ill-matched union - the Snow Maiden - being given up for adoption to a old Berendeyan couple. The Berendey village in the woods however, while apparently some kind of little commune, still can't help but retain an old Russian folk character in its dress and customs.
Big and colourful, recreating a small village arrayed in a small semi-circle with a wood of tall trees behind, it's another one of Tcherniakov's extravagant sets that presents a busy stage for all of Rimsky-Korsakov's rich arrangements and choruses. It certainly captures the sense of a close community, and Tcherniakov's direction also creates an impression sense of real meaningful drama between the characters in as far as he is able. He can't resist having Tsar Berendey nod off for a few seconds as Kupova starts on an elaborate answer to the simple question of who has offended her honour, but it's playful and not mocking, recognising that there's a lot of filler and conventionalism in the telling of the story.
The connection between the tides and seasons of nature of those that bring about changes in the nature of man however isn't drawn quite as cleverly as John Fulljames' production for Opera North. Everything that needs to be said however is said fairly directly in the libretto; "The hearts of people are getting colder. I see less warmth in their love", Tsar Berendey observes. If Dmitri Tcherniakov doesn't really draw out or highlight the folk elements and rhythms of nature in his direction, nor find anything new or insightful to bring to it, his direction doesn't quite go as far as obscuring the intentions and the moral of the story. But when it does come to life, it seems to be more to do with the lovely performance of the Paris orchestra and the fine singing performances.
The fact that Rimsky-Korsakov's score is sumptuously beautiful is clearly apparent, but under the direction of conductor Mikhail Tatarnikov, the skill with which the composer has matched the score to the dramatic and narrative side of the work is even more evident here. It also works beautifully hand-in-hand with the singing. Aida Garifullina has everything you want of a snow maiden, glowing youth and freshness and a voice that soars not with confidence, but with an otherworldly beauty. It was quite extraordinary to hear Lel sung not by a female contralto, but by a male countertenor. Yuriy Mynenko brought out another dynamic out of the work, a persuasive beauty that Lel's songs should really possess.
Musically and in terms of the singing performances, the Paris production is indeed beyond reproach, with other fine performances to enjoy in Martina Serafin's Kupova, in Maxim Paster's Tsar and Thomas Johannes Mayer's Mizguir. Aside from the opening introduction sequence, which appears somewhat at odds with fairy tale nature of the remainder of the production, Dmitri Tcherniakov's direction actually tells the story clearly and without over-complicating matters and it looks marvellous. With its naturalistic approach to the simple folk lifestyle of living life out in the woods, it does promote more of a back-to-nature sentiment as a way of opening one's heart to the radiant flame of life, but despite the exquisite beauty of the work, it still feels a rather cold and lifeless affair that never really connects to human emotions in the way that you would like. Cold and beautiful however might just be the actual nature of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Snow Maiden.
Links: L’Opéra National de Paris, ARTE Concert
Sergei Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel
Bayerische Staatsoper, 2015
Vladimir Jurowski, Barrie Kosky, Evgeny Nikitin, Svetlana Sozdateleva, Heike Grötzinger, Elena Manistina, Vladimir Galouzine, Kevin Conners, Okka von der Damerau, Igor Tsarkov, Jens Larsen
Staatsoper.TV - 12th December 2015
We are well used to seeing productions from the Bavarian State Opera that are more than a little unconventional, often even seeming to have scant regard for the directions of the libretto. With Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel - a fairly rare work that was first performed only after the composer's death - the Munich opera company seem to have found a work that is truly bizarre enough to fit with what commonly takes place on their stage. Somewhat surprisingly then, especially since it's Barrie Kosky who is given charge of the direction here, the production struggles to match or keep up with the strange happenings that take place in Prokofiev's highly unusual work.
Even by Prokofiev's extravagant operatic range, The Fiery Angel is over-the-top in almost every respect. This is a composer who can plunge into the particularly Russian nature of the worlds of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky with ambitious and dynamic works like War and Peace and The Gambler, but he also reveals a side for the comic and the absurd in his Betrothal in a Monastery and The Love for Three Oranges. Musically and thematically, The Fiery Angel is no less flamboyantly orchestrated for the rhythms, patterns and strange paths that its plot takes. It's not an opera that is memorable for melodies or arias, but every dramatic line and gesture is underscored with complex arrangements and an invigorating punchy delivery.
The music then is perfectly suitable for a work that has few recognisable sentiments in its headlong descent into madness. The person suffering from delusions that take her on a spiraling sequence of hallucinations is a young woman called Renata. She has been discovered by Ruprecht, a rather more worldly-wise man who has found her in his hotel room raving about her childhood encounter with a fiery angel, Madiel. The angel however, becoming aware of Renata's growing carnal lust, abandoned her, but Renata believed that Madiel subsequently took human form in the shape of Count Heinrich. However, he too abandoned her after a year.
Ruprecht is inclined to take advantage of the young woman's delusions in her search for Heinrich/Madiel, her fiery angel, but as he makes the pretence of assisting her by exploring esoteric texts and seeking instruction from Agrippa von Nettesheim, he soon becomes caught up in the strange world that Renata lives in. The line between fantasy and reality (and erotic role-playing) becomes increasingly blurred as they are visited by nightmarish visions of Faust and Mephistopheles, which in turn leads to a kind of religious epiphany when Renata decides to enter a convent only to face trail by the Inquisitor for being possessed by a demon. The whole nightmarish descent into deeper madness is played through here over almost two and quarter hours without an interval. With Vladimir Jurowski conducting the Bayerisches Staatsorchester through Prokofiev's challenging score, it really is a whirlwind ride.
With such a subject and treatment, you would expect that the stage presentation would also be on the extravagant side, particularly as it's the Bayerische Staatsoper and Barrie Kosky is directing. Surprisingly, the opera set for the hotel room looks more like the Marschallin's boudoir in Der Rosenkavalier, with numerous footmen and porters on call at Ruprecht's arrival. With Prokofiev's tone being fairly manic from the start, perhaps Kosky felt it might be a little better to introduce a little bit of normality at this stage by way of contrast to where the opera goes later. That might not be a bad idea if the director were able to establish a more consistent tone that works with the opera, but instead all Kosky has to contrast it with in the latter half of the work is all the familiar camp hallmarks that seem rather too crude to have any bearing on the intent of the opera.
Kosky goes to town of course on the tavern scene, with the obligatory dancing men in drag, and he has Mephistopheles wave his willie around and play suggestively with large sausages. As one of the more unhinged scenes in a fairly bizarre opera, one doesn't expect the director to read anything deep into the irreverent and sexually-charged content, but there are surely more inventive ways of doing it than this. In a work like The Fiery Angel, you're not so much looking for elucidation as something that might engage and hold the audience through the increasingly absurd turn of events. On its own, Prokofiev's difficult score is fascinating in its own right, but at over two hours long and with no intermission (an intermission would only break the mood and the flow), it needs a little more visual engagement. The letterboxing of the stage and Rebecca Ringst's set designs at least manages to inventively keep things moving through a five-act opera, suggesting an interior world more than actual locations.
The uninterrupted two and a quarter length of the work is just as much a challenge for the performers, particularly as Vladimir Jurowski is intent on keeping up the pace and momentum, fairly rattling though the complexities of the score. Taking on most of the singing challenges as Renata and on the stage for pretty much the entire length of the performance, Svetlana Sozdateleva copes incredibly well, even when she has to endure the indignities of Kosky's direction. Such is the commitment and personality that she brings to a difficult character that Sozdateleva makes almost everyone else seem rather dull by comparison - Kevin Conners' delirious Mephistopheles excepted. Evgeny Nikitin consequently, while he sings well, never seems to get to grips with who Ruprecht is or what he wants. Prokofiev, admittedly, doesn't make that easy to determine, but you might have hoped for more from Kosky and the Bayerische Staatsoper.
The next live opera broadcast from the Bayerische Staatsoper is a new production of Verdi's UN BALLO IN MASCHERA on 19th March, conducted by Zubin Mehta and directed by Johannes Erath, with an outstanding cast that includes Piotr Beczala, Simon Keenlyside (fingers crossed) and Anja Harteros.
Links: StaatsoperTV
