Richard Wagner’s ‘Ring Cycle’ at the Mariinsky – a great opera company forsakes tradition

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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 vi sually 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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The Mariinsky Theater

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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 work ings. 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 ex quisite 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 Mari insky broke into a fastidious world in a mantle of blue, cream and gold, which give it a pleasant aura of lightness.”.(2)

In 2003 St. Petersburg celebrated its 300th anniversary, and a glance at the origins of the Mariinsky clearly indicates how much the theater is a part of the city’s history. The first Mariinsky was founded in 1783 fol lowing a decree by Empress Catherine the Great to stage the first Russ ian comic operas and the best works of foreign composers, largely Ital ian. The theater, designed by the leading theater architect of the day, Alberto Cavos, was later named for the Empress Maria Alexandrovna, wife of tsar Alexander II. The theater’s opening heralded a golden era in the city’s operatic history. Verdi’s opera La Forza del destino pre miered there in 1862 followed by the premieres of many Russian clas sics, two of which were Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila and Modest Mus sorgsky’s Boris Godunov From 1935 to 1992 it bore the name of Kirov, the well-known early communist leader and Leningrad’s party chief, but in 1992 regained its imperial title: the Mariinsky Theater.

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Concert Opera Takes a Stand

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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.

The route of the delivery of each performance took different paths. The opera, Zaza, performed in the intimate setting at Alice Tully Hall was no doubt a starring vehicle for soprano Aprile Millo, who portrayed the musical theater singer, Zaza, with a true grasp of the role’s emotional turmoil, and who has on more than one occasion suffered the slings and arrows of music critics and a section of the operatic public. As with any performer who steps into the operatic spotlight, criticism has been both accurate and exaggerated, particularly comments about her emphatic acting style. The bottom line is when Millo is at her best, she displays a warm, lyrical voice capable of filling the house and has a particular vocal quality which is often associated with Italian sopranos of an earlier vintage with whom she identifies. When “on” the soprano cannot only be effective in performance but downright moving and in this performance she was able to give full value, not only to the musical expression so necessary in verismo but also delineate the beautiful Italian text.

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