Prokofiev - War and Peace (Munich, 2023)

Sergei Prokofiev - War and Peace

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2023

Andrei Zhilikhovsky, Olga Kulchynska, Alexandra Yangel, Kevin Conners, Alexander Fedin, Violeta Urmana, Olga Guryakova, Mischa Schelomianski, Arsen Soghomonyan, Victoria Karkacheva, Bekhzod Davronov, Alexei Botnarciuc, Christian Rieger, Emily Sierra, Martin Snell, Christina Bock, Sergei Leiferkus, Alexander Roslavets, Oksana Volkova, Elmira Karakhanova, Roman Chabaranok, Stanislav Kuflyuk, Maxim Paster, Dmitry Cheblykov, Nikita Volkov, Alexander Fedorov, Xenia Vyaznikova

ARTE Concert - March 2023

Neither the Bavarian State Opera nor director Dmitri Tcherniakov really knew what they were letting themselves in for when they chose to present Prokofiev's War and Peace on the 5th March 2023, on the 70th anniversary of the death of Prokofiev (not to mention the 70th anniversary of the death of Stalin). They evidently knew about the challenges of putting on a complex Russian opera with huge orchestral and choral forces and a large number of principal roles, but at the time it was planned they hadn't really counted on the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the 24th February 2022. By the time it came to put stage the opera in 2023, it was even more of a challenge in a climate where some Russian artists were being cancelled and there were second thoughts about programming works by Russian composers. Serge Dorny however believed that the production they had envisioned for this epic work could stand on its own merits and make its own points. The reception it received justified that decision, but looking at it more critically now away from the heat of March 2023, while it's still a powerful piece, it's just a little less impressive.

Lately there have been two sides to the operas directed by Dmitri Tchernaikov, or maybe just two sides of the same coin. On one side is the psychoanalytical, taking a distanced perspective and exploring the undercurrents to familiar stories from a kind of laboratory experiment (Les Troyens, Pelléas et Mélisande, Carmen, Das Rheingold) and on the other a kind of deflating of grand myths and legends (Der Freischütz, Parsifal - most of his Wagner) reducing them down into human terms. You could see them both as the same approach, finding the human element within grand sweeps of history and legend. His approach to Russian giants of Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Borodin and Prokofiev has been a little different, seeing in them something of the history, character and nature of ordinary Russian people, something that perhaps comes more from the original literary sources. There is no greater Russian literary source than Tolstoy's 'War and Peace', but how is a director of Russian origin supposed to approach a Russian opera when there is war in the Ukraine?

Well, as it happens, almost exactly the same way as Tcherniakov has done before. If 'War and Peace' tells us anything, it's how ordinary lives are disrupted by war, how our stories and loves are coloured by war, how our view on life and history is irrevocably transformed by war. That goes for the lives of the high society aristocracy that Tolstoy grew up in and primarily writes about in the novel, and it perhaps brings them down to the same level as everyone else and reminds them of their essential humanity. So, it's a given that there is going to be no glamour in Tchernikov's production of Prokofiev's opera version of War and Peace, but a reminder, as if anyone needed it at the moment, of the nature of life in a time of war.

The director chooses to set the opera not in the grand mansions an ballrooms of Russian high society, nor on the battlefields of Ostrovno or Berezina (and indeed avoids the burning down of Moscow altogether), but instead locates the whole opera in the Hall of Unions in Moscow (which actually survived the burning), where in the past Lenin, Stalin and Brezhnev have all lain in state. Here it's become something of a refugee centre, even before the war has started in the opera timeline. The room is filled with camp beds, mattresses, where masses of civilians are dressed in everyday clothes that they have presumably been wearing for days. The whole scope of the high society engagement of Natasha Rostova and Prince Andrei Bolkonsky takes place among this mess of humanity in peacetime, but even as that relationship is thrown into turmoil by the playboy Khuragin's attempt to elope with Natasha, the very real threat of war looms nonetheless.

The love lives of the aristocracy may seems trivial however when compared to the upheaval that is to take place when Napoleon Bonaparte invades, but it's far from trivial in Tolstoy's eyes. He, like Pierre, who although married loves Natasha deeply himself, comes to despise the trappings of wealth and privilege, society, but nonetheless in his search for meaning and value in life, finds the essence of humanity lies at the heart of it. It may be torn apart by war, but love and family are the essence of society or a nation and it is what keeps people going and enduring the hardships they face. Tcherniakov, while not quite going as far as Graham Vick in explicitly reversing the idea of 'War' and 'Peace' in his Mariinsky production, nonetheless similarly opens his production with Prince Andrei Bolkonsky contemplating suicide, and gives more or less equal weight to both sides of the equation.

The second half when war breaks out is however more of a challenge to accept within the limitations of the House of Unions setting that the director has set for himself and the progress of the opera. It's understandable that you would want to downplay any sense of wartime heroics - not that there is much of that in Tolstoy's vision of the horror of Napoleon's 1812 invasion - but it's harder to work it into the context of a room of refugees who indulge in a "Military-patriotic game ‘Battle of Boprodino' ". It risks downplaying the horror of the reality of the war - and by extension the unavoidable comparison to Ukraine. It's a tough balance to strike, but I would like to think he could have done more with this. Even Les Troyens, while succumbing to it being a play-acting of traumatised victims of war, was able to find a way around the traditional and humanise it without trivialising it. It might have had impact in the theatre, but looking at it now, it seems faintly ridiculous and ill-judged alongside a Russia currently at war in Ukraine.

There's certainly a case for ridiculing the world leaders and warmongers, but the scene of Napoleon played out like a comedy act for the entertainment of the assembled, prancing around throwing wine and food around, chewing his tie to hoots and howls of laughter, doesn't really get across the greater loss of life his ambitions and actions cause for ordinary soldiers and citizens. For all those irritating tropes of it looking like a madhouse, there is however more to direction than scene setting, and the fact that it takes place entirely within Moscow does allude to the fact that the war is within and that figures arise out of this mass and horror begins. This is at least borne out fully in the stage directions and acting performances, which do delve into those deep emotional and life upheavals, particularly on the part of Pierre who is central to the whole work. Its also there evidently in the music, which depicts all the inhumanity that war visits on the ordinary people. 

Given Tcherniakov's previous explorations of the nature of the Russian people through their legends, their literature and their composers, his take on Prokofiev's War and Peace could be seen a lament for the state of Russia perhaps, or the Russian people, or their victims. Which is another way to look at war, but hardly insightful either in the light of war in Ukraine or indeed in the depth to which Tolstoy explores the subject. Bearing in mind the challenges that had to be faced at the time of the production however, and the delicate balance that had to be maintained, it's about as much as you could expect, and it certainly hit the mark with the audience in Munich. Tcherniakov, who is more accustomed to facing boos and howls of derision at a curtain-call, is met here with roars of approval from an audience who clearly have been deeply emotionally engaged with what has been shown on the stage.

That may have been partly due to the highly charged atmosphere in a time of war - opera should be 'of the moment' and meaningful to a modern audience and Tcherniakov undoubtedly succeeded in striking a chord with his audience - but the director also did it on his own terms, finding the essential human quality within the work and also finding a way to explore the essential idea of Russian character and nature facing the upheaval of life that lies at the heart of the work ('Russian' in spite of the fact that many of singers are also from former soviet states), taking nothing away from the challenge of striking a balance and finding a universal character to the work. The highest praise in that regard however has to be reserved for the central singing performances: Moldovan Andrei Zhilikhovsky as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, Ukrainian Olga Kulchynska as Natasha Rostova as Armenian Arsen Soghomonyan as Count Pierre Besukhov all never anything less than impressive.

The success of how that is put across is also testament to the power of Prokofiev's musical "reduction" of War and Peace, but reduction is hardly the appropriate term for this opera. With its huge cast required for the principal roles, its huge chorus and huge orchestral forces required to play Prokofiev's complex score, no undertaking of War and Peace is taken lightly. Vladimir Jurowski took a measured approach to the score, including some significant cuts, but only in terms of managing sensitivities which could not be ignored or taken lightly in the present climate. It's clear however that he takes on such challenges without losing any of the impact or intent of the score. The decision to go ahead with some judicious cuts was clearly the right one, Tcherniakov's production might not look now like it really addresses the complexities of the work, but it was the right one for the time, the power of the work and its importance enhanced by the reality of current events.

External Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, ARTE Concert

Rimsky-Korsakov - The Tale of Tsar Saltan (Brussels, 2019)

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - The Tale of Tsar Saltan

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2019

Alain Altinoglu, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Svetlana Aksenova, Bogdan Volkov, Olga Kulchynska, Ante Jerkunica, Stine Marie Fischer, Bernarda Bobro, Carole Wilson, Vasily Gorshkov, Alexander Vassiliev, Nicky Spence, Alexander Kravets

La Monnaie steaming - June 2019

The Russian director Dmitri Tcherniakov has lately been viewing opera in the context of therapy, in productions like Carmen, Pelléas et Mélisande and Les Troyens, the intention always clearly to delve more deeply into the works and explore their underlying themes. The results have been to varying levels of success and suitability for their subjects, but with Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan, the director is on much more familiar ground, in Russian opera where some of his best work has been achieved.

The idea of exploring the underlying psychology of works actually has a two-fold purpose, perhaps even three in the case of The Tale of Tsar Saltan. One is to bring less familiar Russian classics to the attention of a modern western audience who may be less enamoured of fairy-tales and make them accessible. The second is indeed to delve into the subtext of the fairy tale, and - when considered as being a technique used widely by this director - the third is to show perhaps that opera is indeed a kind of therapy in its own right, reaching out and communicating on a non-verbal level through music and dramatic subtext.

In the La Monnaie production of The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Dmitri Tcherniakov adds a modern-day real-world framing device around the fairy tale that doesn't so much put the magical fantasy at a distance as bring us closer to it. (This is something that Romeo Castellucci has also been doing to powerful effect in the mythology of Orphée et Eurydice and the monumentally fantastical The Magic Flute). Here the fairy story is told to a young boy with autism. He has never seen his father and doesn't understand why his parents are estranged, so his mother tells him The Tale of Tsar Saltan, finding that the only way of reaching him is through the toy soldiers and magical tales that so enchant him, hoping to communicate the truth through the fable, casting herself as the tsarina.

The characteristics of Pushkin's fairy tale are familiar, his mother suffering a kind of Cinderella upbringing, abused by her mother and two wicked sisters. When they are presented to the tsar who is looking for a bride her sisters can only promise extravagant weddings while the youngest girl - a humble seamstress - promises she can deliver a worthy heir for the tsar. And becoming tsarina she does, but on the birth of the child her disgruntled sisters intercept the messenger and the tsar is informed that that the tsarina has given birth to a monster. To the astonishment of the villagers on this occasion for happiness and celebration, a message returns from the tsar saying that his wife and child should be thrown into the sea in a barrel.

Mythology and fairy tales traditionally have an important role to play in putting an important message across to a wide audience in a way that can endure for centuries, and opera can be seen to fulfil the same function. More than just musical drama for entertainment, and certainly more than being a singing contest to debate over who sings roles best, opera at its best and most meaningful - like Die Zauberflöte cited above - communicates something essential about our understanding of the world and of humanity's place within it, along with all the joys and troubles that come with it.

Tcherniakov's production of Tsar Saltan is a way of finding a route back to the underlying meaning of the work and to some extent necessarily reinterpreting it for a new age. The fairy tale and the opera are essentially about the loss of innocence of a child struggling to come to terms with the reality of the world. The realisation that it can be cruel, unfair and unjust needs to be reconciled with an awareness that life itself is a miracle, and that it can still be possible to find good within it. Using an autistic child allows the audience a way of seeing the 'magic' in the fairy tale of existence again.

In fact watching the opera in this way the concept is so good and the performances so impressive that it feels completely natural and authentic, as if this is the only way to see the opera and you couldn't imagine it being done any differently. And it's hard to imagine a more traditional representation being as profoundly moving as the progression and resolution that Tcherniakov devises for it, which - very much in line with truth and reality - doesn't mean that there is necessarily a happy ending to the fairy tale, much as one might wish for it.

There's much more that needs to be done to make this more than just a clever idea and Tcherniakov's production design is perfectly up to the task. It starts with a plain wood panelling background, mother and child playing together enveloped in a dull reality. As the story is related, the narrative magic exerts its influence and begins to take over, first populated by characters in cross-hatched puffy costumes (similar to David Hockney's designs for the famous Glyndebourne production of A Rake's Progress), with sketchy animation gradually drawing the boy/Gvidon into the swan's womb-like world of security. The blending and balance of ugly reality with animated magical fantasy is masterful.

There are of course other benefits to be gained from Dmitri Tcherniakov introducing a work well-known only in Russia in such an effective manner to western Europe, and primarily that's permitting us to enjoy Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's beautiful orchestration and melodic flair - the Flight of the Bumblebee originating from this work - perfectly attuned to the dramatic and emotional core of the story, overflowing with glorious choruses. These are all very much essential Russian opera characteristics of course and brought out marvellously by Alain Altinoglu conducting the orchestra of La Monnaie.

Just as wondrous are the singing performances since Rimsky-Korsakov's vocal writing can be underestimated in favour of his considerable fame as an orchestrator. Svetlana Aksenova as the mother/tsarina and Bogdan Volkov as the boy/Gvidon are just incredible with the kind of Russian voices needed here; strong in delivery, but filled with warmth and passion and a little bit of an edge of bordering on despair. This is another outstanding, imaginative production from Tcherniakov, Altinoglu and La Monnaie, every element working perfectly in service of the opera, recognising the extraordinary ability of the medium to communicate on so many levels, and using them all brilliantly.

Links: La Monnaie-De Munt

Mozart - Le Nozze di Figaro (Munich, 2017)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Le Nozze di Figaro

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2017

Constantinos Carydis, Christof Loy, Christian Gerhaher, Federica Lombardi, Solenn' Lavanant-Linke, Alex Esposito, Olga Kulchynska, Paolo Bordogna, Anne Sofie von Otter, Manuel Günther, Dean Power, Milan Siljanov, Anna El-Khashem, Paula Iancic, Niamh O’Sullivan

Staatsoper Live - 28th October 2017

Christof Loy really does have opera directing down to a fine art. Not everything he does is perfect, and there have been some rather abstract and minimalist productions where the set has been reduced down to nothing but a few chairs, but I've always found his approach to thought-provoking and fully engaged with the work in question, responsive to its themes and moods. Le Nozze di Figaro is a work of such perfection that it doesn't need a great deal of elaboration, and Loy manages to strike a good balance between hands-off in relation to the concept and hands-on with the characterisation in this new Bavarian State Opera production.

From the opening of the first act and most of the way through it, it certainly looks like Loy is rather short on ideas and reluctant to impose any radical intervention on the work. The chair is already in place with a drape over it for Cherubino to hide under, the doors are well placed for all the entrances and exits. You can pretty much see how the whole of the first half of the work is blocked out on the stage right from the opening of the curtains. Except it's not quite that simple, because the curtain-up is prefaced with a little puppet show on a miniature of the stage of the Munich opera house at Max-Joseph-Platz.

It's more than just suggesting that Figaro and Susanna are just puppets of Count Almaviva. The real Figaro emerges and starts measuring up the new room that he will soon share with his bride-to-be. The world that the servants occupy in this world is about to get a little bit bigger by the time we get to the conclusion of Mozart's opera and the influence and importance of the nobility will not go unchallenged. Beaumarchais's revolutionary play might have played its own small part in changing social attitudes of course, as events in France would subsequently show, but as you can imagine, Christof Loy is more interested in what Le Nozze di Figaro says now than what part it might or might not have played in its foreshadowing of the French revolution.

So while the first half of Munich's Figaro plays out very much along conventional lines, it's with a few more modern touches, or at least within a non-time specific context. The room with its stage/window backdrop is a view on the world where social attitudes are changing. The barriers go beyond class, although the aristocracy (Count and Countess Almaviva), the middle-classes (Bartolo and Marcellina), and the working classes (Figaro and Susanna) are all represented; there's also a greater emphasis on the freedom of expression of women, of the individual, and perhaps even in the freedom to choose one's sexual identity in Cherubino.

Loy in an interview states that he has other ideas for Cherubino, seeing him as representing something from a more innocent age. And it's true that Cherubino is the only figure who wears a period costume from Mozart's era. The spirit of Cherubino can be an essential element in Le Nozze di Figaro, a spirit that is part of the whole rich fabric of life and society as Mozart and Da Ponte saw it. Loy is certainly right to give Cherubino a meaningful role in this respect, and he is wonderfully played as such by Solenn' Lavanant-Linke, who also sings the role well and with some character.

Loy's interventions then are therefore subtle and minimal, finding a way to bring out the humanist sentiments of the work without disrupting the humour, character and essential fabric of the original too much. It doesn't always hit the mark - the familiar comic set-pieces occasionally feel a little laboured, with pauses losing the momentum that is very much a part of the magic of the composition - but Loy demonstrates a great awareness of the construction of the work as a whole, how its humour and social commentary play off one another, how it grips an audience and engages them in the important message it has to share about individual freedoms.

A considerable part of the genius of that construction is of course within Mozart's incredible music itself, and in the wonderful singing roles that he gifts each of the singers with as an expression of personality. Constantinos Carydis surprises by the fast tempo that he adopts for the work at the start, and much of the work fairly sprints along, buoyed by both harpsichord and forte-piano accompaniment that provide some beautiful textures to the music. It is however varied according to mood even if, it has to be said, it feels a bit inconsistent and drags in other places. The Countess's 'Porgi Amor' feels overly drawn-out, but it does seem to be very much an attempt to better relate to how the work itself is constructed, having fun exposing hypocrisy in the first half, but with a more serious reflection on events in the second half of the work. Has there ever been a more generous opera?

It's certainly generous for its melodies and arias, and they are all given due attention in the production, which has a very capable cast of singers. When I say due attention, it's consideration of the importance of the arias within the whole dramatic flow and fabric of the work and not as standalone pieces to show off the abilities of the singers, as some people like to view opera. Alex Esposito has been specialising in Mozart and Rossini baritone roles, but does have a tendency to over-play. Not so much here. His Figaro is lively, engaging and well-sung, if not quite fully rounded. Rising star Olga Kulchynska makes for a fine Susanna with a quality performance.

The other roles are all similarly well sung with a degree of character, although there's no real stand-out performances here. In the egalitarian context of The Marriage of Figaro, I think that's an advantage and, as such, Christian Gerhaher is an ideal Count Almaviva. All too often Almaviva can be a caricature, a comedy villain or a bit of an oaf, when there really needs to be a more sensitive side displayed as well. We get that here with Gerhaher, and consequently it interacts well with the other singing performances; with Federica Lombardi's capable Countess and with Solenn' Lavanant-Linke's Cherubino. It's perhaps not the most memorable, insightful or humorous Le Nozze di Figaro then, but Christof Loy's Munich production is balanced, coherent and entertaining, and Mozart's score is treated well by Constantinos Carydis.

The next streamed production from the Bayerische Staastoper will be Puccini's Il Trittico on the 23 December 2017; Conductor: Kirill Petrenko , Production: Lotte de Beer. With Wolfgang Koch, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Yonghoon Lee, Pavol Breslik, Ermonela Jaho, Michaela Schuster, Ambrogio Maestri, Rosa Feola.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper.TV

Bellini - I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Zurich, 2015 - Zurich)

Vincenzo Bellini - I Capuleti e i Montecchi

Opernhaus Zürich, 2015

Fabio Luisi, Christof Loy, Alexei Botnarciuc, Olga Kulchynska, Joyce DiDonato, Benjamin Bernheim, Roberto Lorenzi, Gieorgij Puchalski 

Zurich - 5 July 2015

Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi bears little enough relation to Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' as it is, so it's a bit of a challenge to add another level of distance from the original and still meet expectations. But then the director here for Zurich's new production is Christof Loy, so some deviation and modernisation from the original stage directions is expected, and if anyone can make that work it's Loy. Loy is fortunate - but it can't be a coincidence - to be able to work with great performers in such productions. In the case of I Capuleti e i Montecchi, the team is an exceptional one, and the new production consequently an overwhelming success.

Essentially what is left of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' in I Capuleti e i Montecchi (the libretto actually taken from another source) is two rival Italian families teetering on the brink of all-out gang war, and a young couple from the two families who want to get married and live a life without fear of the constant feuds and assassinations. It's 'The Godfather' really, Romeo the Michael Corleone of the family, a young man with progressive ideas refusing to inherit the role as the boss of a murderous mob family, but he is drawn in against his will, unable to escape the blood ties that determine how he must act.

Put like that, it seems obvious to stage I Capuleti e i Montecchi in such a way, but it's not at all obvious that it would work or that Bellini's bel canto music is up to the relocation of a more modern setting. Between Fabio Luisi's musical direction and Loy's dramatic direction of it on the stage, it turns out however that it is more than capable of sustaining just such an interpretation. The mood is well established during the overture, the revolving set showing a series of rooms littered with bodies of gentlemen in suits. Bodies piled up in offices, in anterooms, in bathrooms, in bedrooms. We also see a young child being prepared for a wedding, and later see her as a young woman. As the stage revolves and the scenes flow, we see however that she is clearly traumatised by the carnage. Death is all she has ever known.

The mood is sustained by the dimly lit, sepia toned lighting through the Venetian blinds spilling shadowy lines across the wood-panelled sparsely decorated rooms. The rooms are invariably inhabited by powerful men in dark suits and tuxedos, standing around looking threatening. The tension is such that you feel a fight could break out at any moment and inevitably it does, though mostly off-stage, the set revolving like the sweep of a camera pan to the adjoining room where more bodies litter the floor. Loy also brings in an additional non-singing character to shadow the performers. He/she is an adjutant for Romeo, a go-between that permits the otherwise unlikely frequent incursions that the Montecchi Romeo seems to be able to freely make into Capuletti turf to visit Giulietta's room. This silent sinister figure however also incorporates the musical motif of premonitory death that lies between them.

There's a lot more to making the staging of I Capuleti e i Montecchi work than simply dressing the sets and the characters like it were 'The Godfather' although Alexei Botnarciuc gives a great Brando impersonation as Capellio, the head of the Cappelli family. It's Loy's direction of the singers as actors that makes it work convincingly, his use of the stage as ever impeccable, every single scene and movement contributing to the drama, looking cool and stylish. It's not enough however to turn a Romeo and Juliet story into a Mob film, and Loy doesn't neglect this either. You never at any stage (including the violent opening overture) forget that there are other scarcely any less violent passions involved here between Romeo and Giulietta.

Fabio Luisi recognises this too and his conducting of Philharmonia Zürich was remarkable, fully exploring the moods underlying the melodies. With a view of the orchestra, there were occasions when my attention was drawn away from the stage, just to see how Luisi was vigorously and precisely managing the orchestra to marshal Bellini's musical forces in service of the drama. Any distraction however is short-lived due to the increasing tensions that occur on the stage and by the singing performances that interpret them.

If there was rigour in terms of matching the intensity of the music with the dramatic direction, it was only enhanced by a uniformly impressive cast. Joyce DiDonato is not unexpectedly something of a phenomenon as Romeo, convincing in the trouser role, if not quite comfortable wearing the boots it seems. A few high notes were less than secure, but as a whole, the dramatic nature of the role suited her and she sang and played with real intensity. Olga Kulchynska was more than a capable match as Giulietta, her voice soaring with the high drama. Benjamin Bernheim also made a very strong impression as Tebaldo, his performance warmly received by the audience at the curtain call.

This production is now available to view for free streaming on-line on ARTE Concert.

Links: Festspiele Zürich, ARTE Concert