Living at the Opera

In October, 2006, the Kirov Opera and Ballet will come to the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa CA. Billed as the “Mariinsky Festival,” the company will play for three weeks, starting with the Kirov’s production of Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen.” The following observations were recorded about the Valery Gergiev and Georgii Tsypin production on a visit to the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in June 2004.

In June of 2004 the Mariinsky Theater, coming off a successful run of their new production of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” just six months before in Baden-Baden, made a hurried decision to include all four operas of the Ring right in the middle of their annual White Nights Festival held at St. Petersburg. From June 8th to June 15th, opera enthusiasts, many from foreign lands, attended this production of the Ring which was vi­sually framed by a primitive Scythian motif designed by Georgii Tsypin who filled the stage with gargantuan mythic figures complete with some beautiful and fascinating costumes by Tatiana Noginova. But in the end, artistic director Valery Gergiev managed to bring to the fore only a handful of bravura performances.

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This article was written in celebration of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, Russia.

In the foreword to John Ardoin’s book, Valery Gergiev and the Kirov, the late actor and writer Peter Ustinov remarks that for most of us in the West, the history of the Mariinsky Theater has been hidden from view. We have been kept especially ignorant of this theater’s daily work­ings. Ustinov writes, “I had only learned about the Mariinsky opera house by hearsay, a haze of rumors and opinions unleashed by elderly Russian relatives of whom there was no shortage at the time.”(1) He also discusses the physical outlay of the building which gives the eye so much pleasure when seen for the first time. Along with its sea-green exterior bordered in white trim and a blue interior that seems to come right out of the sea, it is washed with colors, both inside and out, that would make Neptune proud. Ustinov’s comparison of the Mariinsky with the appearance of the Bolshoi Theater brings out the differences between the two theaters. “It (the Mariinsky) is a lovely building of ex­quisite proportions which created a scandal at its inception for reasons difficult to comprehend today. It was apparently de rigueur in those days for opera houses to be finished in red, cream and gold. The Mari­insky broke into a fastidious world in a mantle of blue, cream and gold, which give it a pleasant aura of lightness.”.(2)

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In today’s opera world, run over with esoteric opera directors pushing their entangled symbolic productions on to operatic stages, the musical and vocal values, the two most necessary components in presenting opera, often get lost in the shuffle. But not on November 12th and 13th, 2005, when two concert opera performances in New York City took on the frenzy of old- fashioned revival meetings causing their audiences to stand up and give a rousing toast to the musical dramas the Teatro Grattacielo Opera and the Opera Orchestra of New York bestowed on their public. For it was in the performances of Ruggerio Leoncavallo’s Zaza by Gratacielo and Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell by OONY that proved to be the special gifts their devoted fans have been hoping for and were finally delivered to them in bravura style.

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The following comments on Ainadamar were written after a visit to the Santa Fe Opera in the summer of 2005.

There must be a running debate in musical circles, particularly with audiences and music critics, as to whether Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ainadamar” is a theatrical musical piece or an opera. The performance on August 14th, 2005 by the Santa Fe Opera, whose refurbished opera house is situated in the stoic, primeval mountains of Northern New Mexico, certainly did not settle the argument.

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Giuseppe Verdi, October 9/10, 1813 - January 27, 1901

This performance of Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi and a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave was staged by O. Mukhortova at the St. Petersburg Mussorgsky State Academic Opera Theater on May 1st, 2001.

I can still recall with vivid immediacy the visceral excitement I felt just moments after the curtain went up on Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Academic Opera Theater in St. Petersburg. It was on May 21, 2001, to be exact,’ that my eye caught the chorus members ever so gracefully flitting across the stage in perfect harmony with Verdi’s exuberant open­ing chords of Act 1, acting out the regal banality that is so much a part of the Duke of Mantua’s courtly affectations. They projected this atti­tude with such assurance and aplomb that it immediately stirred my emotions. The pleasure I felt on seeing and hearing the Russians pre­sent their unique interpretation of Guiseppe Verdi was based on their skilled acting and their striking vocal rendition.

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Gaetano Donizetti, November 29, 1767 - April 8, 1848

This performance of L’Elisir d’amore by Gaetano Donizetti; libretto by Felice Romano was staged by Ludmila Noletova at the Moscow Theater named after Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Memirovich-Danchenko on May 28, 2001.

To most of today’s opera critics in the Western world, performing an opera in two languages in the same production is suspect, almost subversive. Fortunately for the audience gathered at the Moscow Aca­demic Music Theater for Gaetano Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore on a May evening in 2001 there were no critical detractors present for this bilingual presentation. On that evening, in that historic theater named after Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, the audience was allowed to enjoy L’Elisir without any bothersome out­bursts of disapproval. The production, bordering on the experimental and slightly daring, was carried off with sufficient panache to do away with any misgivings the audience might have had.

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In February 2002 the Kirov* brought two operas to Washington’s Kennedy Center: Musorgsky’s great opera Khovanshchina and Verdi’s Macbeth.

The unexpected is always welcome in opera. The underlying qual­ity desired in every performance is surprise coupled with elements of the unknown. Perhaps it comes in a particular scene, a singer’s charac­terization, or in a small vocal detail that produces an unexpected tone. For me, this moment arrived in the second half of Act Three of Musorgsky’s Khovanshchina as the Streltsy chorus representing the old guard of Russian soldiers, pours its heart out with a multitude of emo­tions. The roaring drunkenness of the Streltsy, who are at the same time being berated by their womenfolk for their behavior; their suspicion of outsiders; and their all-consuming fear of being defeated by Tsar Peter’s forces culminate in their yielding to the wishes of their leader, Prince Ivan Khovansky, that they return to their homes, since Peter’s troops may be too strong an adversary for them to overcome.

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Often the Russians are able to delve deeper into an opera score and find a different slant to the composer’s intent which other companies do not always perceive. Thus it was when Artistic Director and Conductor Valery Gergiev, and Stage Director David McVicar, brought the Kirov Opera’s new production of Verdi’s Macbeth to the Kennedy Center. Some producers do not see the moments of intimate dialogue depicting the covert plottings between Macbeth and his Lady as a force equal to the musically-charged finale of Act One. There we find the court, hor­rified on learning of King Duncan’s murder, raising its voice in a tremendous fff and then dropping to a reflective ppp in which Verdi combines the court’s anxiety about who the new king will be with the most imploring plea to Heaven for mercy ever to be found in any of his operas.

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This performance of Boris Godunov by Modest Musorgsky with the libretto by the composer based freely on a tragedy of the same name by Alexander Pushkin was staged by Yuri Alexandrov by the St Petersburg Opera at the Orpheum Theater, Phoenix, AZ, on November 3, 2001

On November 3rd 2001, the Saint-Petersburg Opera bussed into Phoenix, Arizona, on the last stop of its Southwest tour which took the company first to Los Angeles, then to Santa Barbara. The company’s appearance, sponsored by the 2001-2002 Southwest Arts and Center Group, was certainly an atypical venture for this arts council. What the audience saw that evening in the beautifully refurbished Orpheum The­ater with its gilded bas-relief ceilings and large scenic side murals typi­cal of the 1920s was a memorable performance of Modest Mus­orgsky’s original 1869 version of Boris Godunov, billed in the program as a “Folk Drama in two Acts”.. based on the “tragedy of A. Pushkin, in the first author’s edition. ”

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The following observations are on the video of La Forza del destino, KULTUR Copyright Reiner Moritz Associates Limited, 1998

When Francesco Maria Piave, Verdi’s librettist for La forza del destino traveled to St. Petersburg in 1862 with the composer, he kept a production book in which he commented on many aspects of the new production and included a list of the protagonists’ characteristics. Piave described the tortured hero, Don Alvaro, as being “an Indian of royal stock, of the most passionate spirit, indomitable and always generous.” These are only a few of the personality traits Verdi took to heart as he composed his grand opera inspired by Don Alvaro, o La Fuerza del sino, the Spanish drama by the Duke of Rivas. Attracted by the sprawl­ing and at times unfocused play, Verdi realized the Duke of Rivas had presented him with characters that could grow emotionally in stature in a large multi-layered opera.

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