Rachmaninoff - Troika (La Monnaie, 2015 - Webcast)

Sergei Rachmaninoff - Troika

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2015

Mikhail Tatarnikov, Kirsten Dehlholm, Kostas Smoriginas, Sergey Semishkur, Alexander Vassiliev, Anna Nechaeva, Yaroslava Kozina, Sergei Leiferkus, Dmitry Golovnin, Ilya Silchukov, Alexander Kravets, Dimitris Tiliakos

La Monnaie Web Streaming

Based on works by Pushkin and Dante, it's not as if there aren't dramatic possibilities in the three one-act operas composed by Rachmaninoff. L'Opéra National de Lorraine at Nancy not only successfully staged a pairing of Aleko and Francesca da Rimini recently, but director Silviu Purcărete also managed to link the similar themes of the two works together into a single workable concept. Kirsten Dehlholm's approach to La Monnaie's presentation of all three Rachmaninoff's short opera works is, typically for the adventurous Belgian company, very different.

While there is an overall thematic connection between the works that is reflected in the set design, each of the three works very much has their own look and feel. None of the operas however are what you would call fully staged. Partly that may be dictated by La Monnaie's transfer to the Théâtre National while renovations are being carried out to La Monnaie's regular home, right through the next season. On the other hand, La Monnaie do tend to think 'outside the box', so to speak in their productions, and that's very much in evidence in their staging of the Rachmaninoff Troika. 

Russian opera suits big colourful spectacle and pageantry and certain productions of Rimsky-Korsakov's Sadko and The Golden Cockerel come to mind in Kirsten Dehlholm's bold setting of Aleko. A traditional staging of Rachnaminov's first opera, written as a graduation competition piece when the composer was nineteen (1892), and based on Pushkin's short story, 'The Gypsies', will usually draw unavoidable comparison with Carmen and Pagliacci. That certainly was the impression given in the recent Nancy production. Dehlholm's setting takes it far away from that.

Staged almost oratorio-like on a tiered platform of steps, Aleko doesn't really play to the storytelling drama aspect of the story. Nothing about the stylised rainbow-coloured costumes either suggests a naturalistic time period or gypsy culture. The story of Aleko's jealousy over his wife's affair with her lover that leads to their murder isn't wholly acted out either, with characters only moving into place alongside one another without acting out any drama. There are one or two props - some cut-out trees and tarot cards that indicate fate at play - but the force of the dramatic impact relies more on lighting and colouration exploding in psychedelic bursts of kaleidoscopic patterns that are nonetheless wholly informed by the music.

Rachmaninoff's music instrumentally takes up a considerable part of drama from the sparsely scripted libretti of Aleko and Francesca da Rimini, and it's no coincidence that the orchestra are more visible during these two operas. The orchestra might be on stage primarily due to the absence of a natural pit at the Théâtre National, but the instrumental elements of the operas are also very much a part of the dramatic fabric of the works. Just how important that is becomes more evident with the rich, melodic, dynamic Romantic sweep that Mikhail Tatarnikov draws from the orchestra here. Impressive singing too really gets the dramatic content across.

The Miserly Knight, again drawn from Pushkin, is more dialogue driven, taking the author's text almost directly from the page. It consequently pushes the focus back onto the characters at the front of the stage, the orchestra remaining behind the curtain that shows projections of a ruined building and a few filmed sequences. The situation is a relatively simple one that doesn't rely on a lot of dramatic action, but its still richly scored by Rachmaninoff, who sets the story, the characterisation and the relationships between the characters beautifully in the music.

The story of The Miserly Knight concerns Albert, a knight who has fallen on hard times, who can't even raise enough money to enter a tournament. It's particularly galling to Albert since his father, the Baron, is a very rich man who avariciously hoards all his wealth, horrified that his worthless son might one day inherit it all without having had to sweat for it. A Jewish money-lender suggests to Albert that he might want to hasten the day he inherits the money with a few drops of a potion that he can obtain for him, but nature takes its own course when the Earl himself suggests that the Baron might want to help Albert by placing him into his court.

Written in 1904, some nine years after his first one-act opera, Rachnaminoff's own distinctive voice is much more in evidence in The Miserly Knight. Despite the limited action it's lushly scored, giving strong character to the all the roles, not just the principals. The stage setting of the work tries to find a way to reflect this in the images of a ruined abandoned building, which means that occasional graffiti is thrown up unusual associations - Jimi Hendrix appearing on the screen at one point - but combined again here with very strong singing performances from Dmitry Golovnin and Sergei Leiferkus, it comes across impressively.

Although never composed to play as a trilogy, the order of composition sequence works well for the purposes of the La Monnaie Rachmaninoff Troika in progression and development. By the time we get to Francesca da Rimini (1905), the full force and brilliance of the orchestral composition, arrangements and dramatic intent is striking. The haunting choruses of the damned in the opening section where Dante and the Ghost of Virgil descend into the Second Circle of Hell and the musical colour and sweep that Rachmaninoff has composed for this theatrical extravaganza is given full expression too in Mikhail Tatarnikov's marvellous conducting of the rich orchestration.

Other than some projections of swirling mists and the descent of Dante and Virgil on cables, there's not really any effort made to give any traditional depiction of Hell in the staging. Perhaps recognising that the visual element needs no additional 'colour', the costumes and lighting go for a contrasting monochrome palette. As with Aleko, the effects are mostly limited to lighting and simple pattern effects that give the impression of the steps being fluid and wavy. It's visually spectacular, but not one that draws the dramatic element out as well as Purcărete's Nancy production. With a strong, consistent visual element and terrific performances across each of the three operas, the La Monnaie Troika creates a fascinating Rachmaninoff narrative of its own.

Links: La Monnaie-De Munt

Janáček - The Cunning Little Vixen

Leoš Janáček - The Cunning Little Vixen

Glyndebourne 2012

Vladimir Jurowski, Melly Still, Sergei Leiferkus, Lucy Crowe, Emma Bell, Mischa Schelomianski, William Dazeley, Jean Rigby, Adrian Thompson, Colin Judson, Sarah Pring

Opus Arte

With its charming depiction of life and nature, with the animals of the forest featuring throughout as characters, it’s common to see Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen staged like a pantomime and aimed at a younger audience, even though some of the behaviour of the creatures is indeed quite frankly “animalistic”. The opera is not of course essentially about animals but about life and, indeed, the facts of life, so it’s interesting to see the opera treated with a more mature outlook for the 2012 production at Glyndebourne. It may perhaps lose a little bit of its innocent charm in the process, but there’s more than enough gained from the usual fine attention that Glyndebourne give to the production - and the opera - as a complete package.

Rather than having children and older performers dressed in the usual colourful animal suits, the creatures of the forest are still characterised as animals here, but without the full make-up. Instead they carry only an object by which they can be identified, the idea seeming to be to remind us that their animal behaviour isn’t all that different from humans. A man holds an udder in his hand for the forester to milk, the dog, Lapák, holds a snake-like tail an shakes it about, the cockerel waves his dangly bits proudly and menacingly for the lady hens who are all in frilly lace underwear. As for the vixen, she’s dressed like a gypsy girl, in a woolly jumper with a hooped pattern, flowing gypsy skirt, trilby hat and scarf, with a shaggy mane of red hair, carrying a bushy tail and a hunter’s knife instead of sharp teeth. The characterisation is a bit of a half-way house and doesn’t always allow the anthromorphic elements to come fully to life, but combined with other elements of the stage setting, it does work to express the themes on a literal level as well figuratively.

The set itself places man both within this natural world and at the same time outside it, showing nature to be bold and colourful, while the indoors scenes - kept in the Janacek’s period and Moravian setting - are drab by comparison. Two features however dominate Tom Pye’s set designs that serve to bring those two different worlds together. One is a large winding path rising vertically at the back of the stage which at one time can be a path and at other times a burrow. It seems a little over-elaborate, requiring the use of stand-ins on harnesses, but it works. The other more significant feature however is a huge tree made up of a swirl of planks that alone functions as the strongest image and is at the centre of the stage for most of the production. It’s the one enduring constant that stands there throughout the seasons and the passing of generations, serving as a home for the birds, as a place to protect Forester from the sun while he sleeps, it’s where Sharp Ears the vixen is tied-up on the farm and it’s her shelter and home for her family later, made over into a den after the old badger has been driven out. Eventually, towards the end, even little saplings appear around the tree as well.

The strongest element of the production however, and the one that most eloquently describes the natural world it depicts, is undoubtedly Janáček’s music itself, which is wonderfully played by the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski. This gorgeous music - for me the most evocative and beautiful of all Janáček’s work - is almost achingly beautiful in its apparently simple rhythms. Not only does it flow however to Janáček’s familiar speech patterns and folk-like textures, but it’s also almost onomatopoeic in its capturing of the sounds, the rhythm and the flow of life, the passing of time and the eternal timelessness of nature. In its melodies also however it seems to mingle joy and sadness, beauty and cruelty, the spontaneity of living and the wisdom of ages. It’s undoubtedly this element that everything else must respond to in a production of The Cunning Little Vixen and, with only a few minor concerns, Melly Still’s direction - and particularly the beautiful choreography of the dancers - seems to respond to the music and its meaning as does the exceptionally fine performance of the orchestra conducted by Jurowski.

If there’s any one concern it’s a minor one about the pacing. Not the tempo. The rhythm and flow feel marvellous, but everything seems to fly past so quickly as if in a haste to get to the next scene, and it’s all over before you knew it. A bit like life I suppose - which may have been the intention. It’s true that The Cunning Little Vixen is not a long work and Janáček deliberately leaves no time for sentimentality about the natural order of things passing on and making way for renewal, but at the same time there seems to be little time in this production for you to connect with some of the most beautiful key moments and let them sink in. There may even be a few trims to the score to indeed prevent the audience from dwelling too long on events that ultimately are just another stage in the greater scheme of things, to be played out continually in the cycle of life.

This is particularly evident in the singing, which is fine throughout but tends to keep the singers - and consequently the audience - a little step removed from the characters, preventing them from really springing into life. Lucy Crowe however handles the complex Czech language requirements with its flow of consonants well, maintaining the necessary rhythm while performing fox-like moves very impressively. Emma Bell too sang beautifully and fitted well into the role of Golden Mane. There is perhaps rather more care given to the human figures, the Forester (Sergei Leiferkus) and his colleagues, and their disillusionment or sense of detachment with the true nature of the world - too caught up in themselves to see their part in the greater scheme of things. If the intention is to restore the human element back into a work where there can be too much emphasis placed on the cute antics of the animals, Melly Still’s production certainly manages that, and in conjunction with the overall tone of the production it works well, revealing all the magnificent beauty of one of the finest works in all opera, even if it loses just a little bit of its innocent charm in the process.

The production comes across reasonably well on the Blu-ray release. Some of the darker scenes have some post-production brightening applied, which creates a ringing halo around figures, but this isn’t evident in more than one or two scenes. Otherwise, the full colourful quality of the work is evident. The audio tracks are the usual PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1. Extras include a Cast Gallery and a 22-minute Making Of featurette, with interviews covering the concept, the music and the production design with some rehearsal footage. The BD is all-region, BD25 (for a 97 minute opera), with subtitles in English, French, German and Korean.