|
Back
No mere boom London
Royal Opera House
07/10/2000 - and 11, 14, 15 July 2000
Sergei Prokofiev War and peace
Vladimir Moroz (Andrei Bolonsky), Anna Netrebko (Natasha), Ekaterina
Semenchuk (Sonya), Larissa Shevchenko (Maria Akhrossimova), Sergei
Alexashkin (Count Ilya Rostov), Alexie Steblianko (Pierre), Olga Savova
(Hélène), Oleg Balashov (Anatol), Zlata Bulycheva (Maria
Bolonskaya), Fyodor Kuznetsov (Prince Nikolai Bolonsky), Edem Umerov
(Denisov), Mikhail Peternko (Tikhon), Viktor Chernomertsov (Matvyev),
Gennady Bezzubenkov (Kutuzov), Fyodor Moshaev (Bonaparte)
Chorus and orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre
Valery Gergiev (conductor), Andrei Konchalovsky (director) The Kirov Opera's summer season at Covent Garden has shown that it is one
of the world's great companies, with the emphasis on company. A
reconstruction of the original Mazeppa production was visually
gorgeous (flapping scenery and all) and musically overwhelming, a feast of
great Russian voices in a drama of impossible love, virulent revenge and
madness, even with the putative second cast. But then Mazeppa would
be close to a being perfect opera if it weren't so grim.
On the other hand, Semyon Kotko, Prokofiev's 1940 Soviet opera, here
getting its UK première, is a sympathetic hair's breath from Madame
Mao's "Red detachment of women". Starting out as an operettaish village
romance, it shifts suddenly via a disturbing mad scene to a relentless
depiction of the brutal suppression of Ukrainian partisans by the Germans
in 1918. (Ironically, the Germans were still in an alliance with the Soviet
Union when Kotko was written -- it was Stalin who had been
massacring Ukrainian peasants.) Yet the production, set in a landscape of
crashed engines and ripped up railway lines in perhaps deliberately
contrasting style to Mazeppa, was still a stunning ensemble
achievement. Well defined characters took their place memorably in a
progression of scenes held together by often cinematically expressive
music.
Prokofiev's War and Peace, written during and immediately after the
war, looks back in its first part (peace, more or less, the story of
Natasha and Andrei) to Onegin and verismo, with dances and young
lovers in trouble, and in its war-based second part to Gudunov and
Verdian nationalism, with endless patriotic choruses and a clear-eyed
general tragically facing an overwheening tyrant with the loyal support of
his people. But it too has a kind of cinematic structure of short, often
intimate, scenes, and, even, similarities with King Vidor's film of ten
years later. (An incidental, but highly rewarding, similarity in this
production is the resemblance of Anna Netrebko as Natasha to Audrey
Hepburn.) The division into two parts, sharply contrasted and each a film's
worth, also recalls Ivan the terrible. A forty minute interval
between the two parts might have been necessary for set changes, but
suggested delusions of Glyndebourne.
George Tsypin's economical, though possibly not cheap, set provided an epic
setting, a circular floor apparently mirroring a coffered ceiling, with
cracks, for the first part with its balls and domestic scenes. The circle
turned for the second part into a flattened earth-covered dome, which
Napoleon stood on like the globe, that at times cracked open. Andrei
Konchalovsky worked with pools of light for the close-up scenes,
wonderfully in Andrei's first encounter with Natasha, and filled the stage
with blocks of chorus and dancers fraying into humanity at the edges for
the public scenes. Andrei and Natasha's last meeting took place on the edge
of the fully lit circle, now covered in mud, temporarily empty of the
armies and about to be tramped over again, exposing the significance of
their love as the proverbial hill of beans.
Once again, the ensemble and the orchestra triumphed. The first night cast
included very few singers familiar outside St Petersburg, probably only
Anna Netrebko, who has studied in San Francisco. The main singers were
certainly right for their parts. Netrebko seemed to be pushing too hard in
the opening scenes, but she was heart-breaking at Andrei's death. Vladimir
Moroz was a lyrical, suitably elegaic Andrei, dashing and expressive, and
Alexei Steblianko was an understated but moving Pierre, with more than a
touch of the Gremins in his love for Natasha. Gennady Bezzubenkov as
Khutusov sounded elderly but heroic, plausibly carrying the weight of his
country's fate in the second part, while Fyodor Mozhaev sang Napoleon in a
beautiful, hard-edged voice.
But the vast number of smaller roles -- society ladies and generals as well
as Andrei's batty father and uptight sister -- were all individually
characterized and sung. Perhaps only Oleg Balashov as Anatol lacked the
necessary character. The chorus, mainly in massive tableaux, were often
overwhelmingly intense in the patriotic choruses of the second part,
particularly the one after Moscow is abandoned. The orchestra played with
focussed excitement, that perhaps made the music sound more substantial
than it is. You could say that Prokofiev's War and Peace, and this
production in particular, is essentially a theatrical work with music
rather than an opera. But with those terrific voices pouring out music and
emotion, the distinction is irrelevant.
H.E. Elsom
|
