Modest Mussorgsky - Khovanshchina
Dutch National Opera, 2016
Ingo Metzmacher, Christof Loy, Dmitry Ivaschenko, Maxim Aksenov, Kurt Streit, Gábor Bretz, Orlin Anastassov, Anita Rachvelishvili, Olga Savova, Andrei Popov, Svetlana Ignatovitch, Roger Smeets, Vasily Efimov, Morschi Franz, Vitali Rozynko, Sulkhan Jaiani, Richard Prada
Nationale Opera & Ballet, Amsterdam - 16 March 2016
With its complex view of Russian history and society, Khovanshchina must be one of the most overreachingly ambitious works of opera ever undertaken, the piece worked on by Mussorgsky for nine years before being left still in an unfinished state after the composer's death. Pulling the work together into something more coherent has been a challenge for other composers including Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovitch, but Khovanshchina is still an enormous challenge to stage. The Dutch National Opera's new production directed by Christof Loy bravely takes on the challenge, but almost inevitably it's not entirely successful.
There's a lot to get up on the stage in Khovanshchina, both physically and conceptually. Mussorgsky's great unfinished work is layered not only with the various political factions competing for power or even simply survival under the reign of the new ruler Peter the Great, but it also takes in the wider strata of society that is comprised of nobles, soldiers, religious factions and the common worker. All those various entities are further boiled down into the form of individual people with personal lives that are greatly affected by the uncertainty and the brutality of the times. It's a huge slice of Russian history up there on the stage in a fragmentary drama. No wonder Mussorgsky tried and failed to finish such a work.
It's no wonder too that Khovanshschina often fails on the stage. The recent Vienna production was heavily criticised for its static nature - this is a work that surely should be anything but static - but its vertical staging there did at least succeed in establishing the hierarchical nature of the Russian society and the attempts by each to climb its heights and end up falling low. Christof Loy's new production of the opera for the DNO similarly attempts to establish a construct that puts the work into context by connecting it to the present day, but in a work that already gives you a lot to take in, it's perhaps an unnecessary complication that doesn't really yield any greater insights into the Russia of the past or the present.
It wouldn't be the first time I haven't followed exactly what Loy is attempting to get across in his productions and yet have still been impressed at how he still gets the essence and full impact of the work across. The initial idea and inspiration behind the DNO's Khovanshchina is at least transparent, the curtain rising to reveal a tableau vivant of Vasily Surikov's 1881 painting 'Morning of the Streltsy's Execution', the epic scene of the painting reproduced in large scale behind the figures on the stage. One notable difference between the painting and the stage is the overturned cart and the dead white horse, both of which adorn the stage throughout most of the five acts. It's symbolism writ large, to which you can apply whatever meaning that comes to mind as you listen to the equally epic music that accompanies the unfolding horror of the events that lead up to the scene depicted in the painting.
Once the first act gets underway however we get the more familiar Christof Loy touches. The characters, or some of them at least, strip out of their period costumes and into modern-day suits. There remains a mix of period and modern dress that is evidently intended to draw a connection to how the past has influenced the present, but it's hard to see any direct link, particularly as there is enough to take in and remain focussed on just working out who the various historical factions are and where their allegiances lie. That actually is established fairly well, but whatever commentary is being made about the present regime, or whether there even is a direct commentary here, is less easy to discern.
More than just stripping off period historical baggage that might mean little to a modern audience, Loy's minimalism also serves to de-clutter the stage for those key scenes where Mussorgsky's epic drama has perhaps its greatest impact. Many of those scenes involve filling the stage for the huge choral pieces and crowd scenes that make such an impression and are such a vital part of a work that is about the Russian people, but Loy's quirky approach also achieves impact and results in other scenes of high drama such as the murder of Ivan Khovansky that precipitates the fall of the Streltsy. The dance of the Persian slaves for the Prince is performed by very young girls in shiny dresses (to the background of a glitter curtain) and it's superbly choreographed and performed, creating a suitably sinister environment even before Khovansky is stabbed by a little girl standing innocently alongside him.
Loy employs many such touches, large and small, including a marching brass band on the stage and, by no means least since he has a tremendous resource at his disposal, making good use of the chorus. This is my first live experience of the famous DNO chorus, although I have seen and heard them many times on DVD and on Dutch radio NTR4, and you couldn't ask for another work that would display their talents more fully than Khovanshchina. Their input was simply phenomenal. If it's hard to say that Loy succeeded in putting all of Russia on the stage, the chorus nonetheless contributed greatly towards it, and it helped also that there was also a cast of fine Russian principal singers in this production.
Among a consistently strong line-up, Anita Rachvelishvili was most impressive as Marfa and Dmitry Ivaschenko an authoritative Khovansky, but Kurt Streit also held his own among all those Russian voices with a fine performance as Prince Golitsin. Ingo Metzmacher conducted the orchestra through the Shostakovitch edition of the work, which might not have the same epic quality and refinement of the Rimsky-Korsakov's version, but in line with the production, the singing and the acting performances, the emphasis was on the importance of the individual human stories caught up in the vast scope of the historical period drama. On that level at least, this was certainly a successful account of the work.
Links: Nationale Opera & Ballet, NTR4 Radio Broadcast
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - The Legend of Invisible City of Kitezh
De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam 2012
Marc Albrecht, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Svetlana Ignatovich, Vladimir Vanseev, Maxim Aksenov, John Daszak, Alexey Markov, Mayram Sokolova, Morschi Franz, Peter Arink, Gennady Beszubenkov
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
At the heart of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Legend of Invisible City of Kitezh is an epic battle between the forces of good and evil that recounts the legend of the invasion of the city by Mongol hordes. The librettist for the work however, Vladimir Belsky, also brought Christian elements into the story from the legend of Saint Fevronya and from folklore that lift the work towards flights of spiritual mysticism and rapture. There's something of a gulf then between the realistic literal depiction of the horrors of war and the pantheistic depiction of nature that doesn't entirely come together in Rimsky-Korsakov's score, but in many ways it just makes it all the more fascinating. I'm not sure that either the conductor Marc Albrecht or director Dmitri Tcherniakov manage to reconcile the inconsistencies in the opera, but it remains a glorious, intriguing work.
The first thing to note about Tcherniakov's direction is that he changes the plot slightly in order, presumably, to highlight the contrasts in the work and perhaps find a way to bring them together. Consequently he invents an 'end of the world' scenario, where Fevroniya is not some holy fool who communes with nature in the woods, but has fled there because, in Tcherniakov's prelude description, "after what has happened on earth, life can never go on as before". The beautiful set consequently depicts a Tarkovsky-like post-apocalyptic spiritual view of nature seen in The Sacrifice, and it's one that is also well-suited to the Cunning Little Vixen quality of Fevroniya's oneness with nature, Fevroniya even dining with human versions of the crane, the bear and the auroch that are referred to in the libretto. The intrusion of the outside world in the form of the Prince Vesvelod who asks her to marry him still doesn't fit realistically however with the main body of the legend of the invisible city and the attack on it by the Mongol hordes.
The beautiful scenes at the beginning and the end of the work (Tarkovksy again looking to be the inspiration for the familiar boxed lighted rustic house/room that is a familiar feature in many Tcherniakov productions) do at least serve to bookend the highlighted ugliness of the central scenes of the drunken revelry of Grishka in Little Kitezh, the horror of the invasion of the Tartars and the lamentations of the citizens at the destruction that has been visited upon them. You couldn't really say that the director captures the majesty of the long central third act, relocating it from the Cathedral Square in Great Kitezh to a makeshift refugee camp, while the miracle of the invisible city heralded by the spontaneous tolling of the bells is reduced inexplicably to a flickering strip of neon. The scene is very much underplayed, but when you listen to the gorgeous musical composition and striking arrangement of this act, it is undoubtedly a scene that is problematic to stage.
The first scene of this extraordinary third Act for example has long Parsifal-like symphonic and choral arrangements, as Prince Yury, a gusli-player and the Page sing for the fate of the city and its people in mournful laments with folk rhythms with a sweep of shimmering symphonic strings. It's deeply mystical in its sentiments, evoking the city of Kitezh as a celestial paradise, a light in the impenetrable darkness, a spiritual "haven and a refuge to all who suffer, thirst and seek". The act is divided however by a symphonic battle in which Prince Vesvelod is killed off-stage, the second scene taking place on the shore of Lake Yar, where Grishka and Fevoniya are held captive by the Tartars. Grishka has led them to Great Kitezh, but he has blamed their new Princess Fevroniya for the betrayal.
The third act should be the dramatic turning point of the work, the one that contrasts and attempts to join the two stark and contrasting visions of the world, where the actions of the good and faithful in the material world of war and death will be rewarded in the afterlife (in Act IV). The drunken, bitter, trouble-making and traitorous Grishka's has no conception of any world outside his own small ugly little existence, and it's such a shock to Fevroniya that she even thinks he might be the Antichrist. Tcherniakov isn't able to bring the two views convincingly together, but - as beautiful and uplifting as the music is - it's debatable whether Rimsky-Korsakov, the composer opposed to the religious Wagnerian liturgical touches of Belsky's libretto, manages to reconcile them either. Despite this, and despite the staging attempting to undercut the mysticism further, the third Act is still wondrously operatic.
If it all does indeed manage to come together and even raise itself onto another plane by the final fourth act, much of it is to do with the singing and Rimsky-Korsakov's writing for the voice. There are no real arias in The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, or overt folk dances and set pieces that you might find in other mythological works by the composer like Sadko or The Golden Cockerel. It's more through composed, with a Romantic sweep and even some Wagnerian quotes in spite of Rimsky-Korsakov's opposition. It's the naturalistic roll of the Russian consonants however, flowing out unstrained in long solid arioso singing and in glorious, glorifying choral arrangements that anchor the sentiments in the real world even as they achieve a level of rapturous transcendence.
The Amsterdam production is marvellous then in that it has the deservedly much-praised chorus of the De Nederlandse on fine form, but it also has a fine mostly Russian cast that give solid, unfailing performances throughout. They are led by the young soprano Svetlana Ignatovich, who fulfils every vocal and visual requirement for the saintly role of Fevroniya. The picture of innocence and strength, of faith and forgiveness, the completion of her transformation into martyrdom and sainthood at the end of the work is achieved with an ecstatic acceptance of her fate. Tcherniakov again downplays any elaborately literal vision of paradise much in the same way that Rimsky-Korsakov refuses to let the music push it too far (the direction of the orchestra under Marc Albrecht similarly restrained yet ecstatic, resisting the usual Russian bombast), but everything that needs to be expressed has been done so in the writing for the voices and in the performances here.
The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh is released on Blu-ray disc by Opus Arte and it looks and sounds impressive in the High Definition format. In addition to a Cast Gallery, there is the usual informative look behind the scenes at De Nederlandse in a short 20-minute featurette with interviews that hint at the conflicts between the music and the staging. The BD is region-free and subtitles for this release are in English, French, German, Dutch, Japanese and Korean.
