OPERA: In the steps of Anton Rubinstein
Music in Moscow I
Anton Rubinstein’s Demon at the Novaya Opera, 17th January 2003
Giuseppe Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera at the Bolshoi Theatre, 18th January 2003
I have had occasion before in the pages of ERO to comment on the complex interrelation of opera, since its earliest inception, with the world of politics. The same complexity, of course with a unique Russian flavour, is visible in Moscow today, as in Mantua in the 1600s and Paris of the 1820s and 1830s; the remarkable endemic drive of the State to assert itself by the curious means of purveying this most heady of artistic delights to a demanding public continues to manifest itself. True to Russia’s drive towards competition and pluralism, other political institutions are even challenging this monopoly, for rewards that can hardly be economic and are even less likely to be rooted in aesthetics. Clearly the prestige of operatic patronage still counts for something, even in a country where the young army conscripts, facing starvation in their barracks, beg you softly for loose change as you pass them.
The ‘Novaya Opera’ (New Opera) is a prime example of this phenomenon. Founded ten years ago with the support of the highly politically ambitious Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, it is housed in an attractive 700-seat theatre built especially for it in Karetny Ryad, about twenty minutes walk from the Government-funded Bolshoi Theatre (or forty minutes in the current grime and slush). The Novaya is very consciously everything that its crumbling competitor is not. As well as a new building it has a new and young staff, front-of house, in the orchestra pit and onstage. The contrast with the sombre doormen and the aged retainers lurking in the cloakrooms of the Bolshoi could not be more evident from the moment you pass through the doors. Moreover whilst the Bolshoi depends on the standard repertoire to pull in its clientele, the Novaya, under its glitzy musical director Evgeny Kolobov, tends to go for more adventurous stuff such as Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, Amrose Thomas’s Hamlet, and their 1999 production of Rubinstein’s Demon, the revival of which I recently attended.
Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894) is now almost forgotten in the West, apart perhaps from his insidious ‘Melody in F’ (you would recognize the tune it if you heard it). But he holds a place in the history of Russian music which is both important and (considering his origins in the family of a Jewish Russian provincial landowner) surprising. His virtuosity at the keyboard propelled him when only a teenager into the Paris of Liszt and Chopin, both of whom admired and befriended him, (and indeed the Paris of my hero Alkan, to whom Rubinstein was to dedicate his Fifth Piano Concerto). Unlike the members of the nationalist ‘Kuchka’ group centered on Balakirev, Mussorgsky and Borodin, Rubinstein was the first Russian musician to aspire to, and be accepted as part of, the sophisticated musical elite of Western Europe. He brought back those Western European ideals to Russia, founding the St. Petersburg Conservatoire (his brother, the almost equally gifted Nikolai, founded the Conservatoire in Moscow) and thereby laying the foundations for the main-line Russian tradition of Tchaikovsky, Taneyev, Skryabin, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich.
Demon, first produced in 1871 (with Stravinsky’s father, a noted bass-singer, in the cast) is the only one of his operas to retain a hold on the repertoire, and a tenuous one at that — before the Novaya Opera revival the last Moscow production was apparently in the 1950s. The story is based on a narrative poem by Lermontov — the Demon falls from grace, and is smitten by love for the Princess Tamara who he sees whilst visiting Earth; but on the verge of his redemption through love he is thwarted by angelic intervention. Not a very dramatic scenario, and this is indeed one of the work’s substantial weaknesses; it would be just as good (or in some ways better) as an oratorio, and I believe there is a forthcoming concert performance in London (to be conducted by Gergiev) which may demonstrate this.
However the production (by Mikhail Efremov) scores a genuine coup de théâtre in its handling of the Demon himself, who, standing on a platform at the end of a jib or gantry (rather like a souped-up version of those machines that repair lamp-posts) is able literally to fly at all levels and in all directions across the stage and even out over the orchestra towards the audience — his first appearance, to the accompaniment of Wagnerian trembling in the orchestra and a wailing of lesser demons, against a dark background interspersed with brilliant searchlights, is memorable indeed.
It would be difficult to keep up the pace after this, and despite sterling efforts by cast and orchestra, (conducted by Valery Kritzkov), Rubinstein is just not up to it. He clearly learnt something of orchestral handling from Wagner, but he did not, for example, take the point that, however fantastic the events that unfold, they must leave the characters in the drama changed. When the chorus, planning to celebrate the wedding of Tamara to her fiancé Price Sinodal, learn that he is dead (at the instructions of the Demon), they leave the stage with much the same music as they came on. Sinodal in fact appears only in scene 3 of the first act, and his couple of arias before he is topped hardly make for dramatic proportion. And the balance throughout between grand opera debates on love and religion and the Kuchka-style use of folk-motifs and dances is never properly struck.
Exactly why the Demon is so struck by Tamara when he flies past her at the riverside during Act I is not clear, but maybe he discerned the powerful embonpoint which her Act II costume reveals, (which display perhaps explains the unease she clearly felt in this act, despite her impeccable singing). M. Shagotsky, who sang the Demon, was excellent throughout in both singing and emotion. It would be clearly unfair to expect him to compete with the still chilling recording, albeit almost a century old, of Chaliapin in the Act II aria ‘Na vodushnom okeanie’, perhaps the opera’s musical high-point, where the Demon sings to Tamara in a dream. By this point in the production, the Demon’s mode of transport, out of which he did not step until the last part of Act III, was becoming a serious impediment to the emotional interaction of the characters. In the Demon’s last intercession with Tamara, when he finally and literally came down to earth, the two lead singers were certainly able to hit the spot. In all, not exactly a lost masterpiece, but a fascinating and rewarding evening.
As to what has been going on at the Bolshoi over recent years, I should like to display the veneer of omniscience with which I usually overlay my dispatches to ERO, but will have to be shown up shamelessly, as I am presently far removed from my sources of reference. There was a period of brief renaissance a year or two ago under the artistic guidance of Gennadi Rozhdestvensky but this terminated in his resignation in not quite clarified circumstances. According to some, he was fed up with continuing attempts to prevent him staging Prokofiev’s The Gambler — which brings faint echoes of the campaigns generations ago against Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Surely the ghost of Stalin’s music commissar, Zhdanov, cannot still be haunting the corridors?
Anyway the theatre has fallen on difficult times. It may have been the weather — it may have been the after-effects of September 11th and the ‘Nord-Ost’ theatre catastrophe — it may be the still faltering Russian economy — but for the first time that I can remember, I was able to go up to the Bolshoi box-office on the day of the performance and buy a ticket for that evening at the standard price (about a UK tenner in the centre stalls). The touts seemed to have vanished. Inside, as ever, one passes through dingy, ill-lit corridors and staircases, or gets a glass of shampanskoye and a bit of fish on a slice of bread in equally unprepossessing bars. A little progress has been made in the auditorium. There is a surtitle screen (in Russian of course), and the drapery above the proscenium arch is now embroidered with the words ‘Rossiya’ (Russia). But the mighty front curtain is still the old one, announcing ‘CCCP’, the Russian letters signifying ‘USSR’. And the pilasters on either side of the proscenium arch still sport prominent hammers and sickles.
Un Ballo in Maschera needs little introduction in the West, though we nowadays I think nearly always perform it in the original version where King Gustav of Sweden is the victim. Although more or less the same libretto, conceived by Scribe, had been used successfully by Auber in the 1830s in Paris, where the magnificent representation of the palace in Stockholm had been regarded as one of the Opéra’s most sensational achievements, the Austrian censors of 1857 forced Verdi to adapt the location to the American colonies of the 18th century. In this resulting version, the English governor is plotted against by Count Tom and Count Samuel, and the whole thing makes even less sense than most grand operas. As the production I saw dated from 1979, there may have been some obscure Cold War reason for the Bolshoi to have chosen the American version — or perhaps they just relished the opportunity to present the gypsy fortune-teller Ulrica as a Native American shaman.
I have to say that I shamelessly enjoyed the evening. How wonderful for a change to see a production of a major Verdi opera that is not trying to tell us something about modern, or indeed any other, society, but simply indulges itself in a full-blooded retailing of a melodrama. Big chunky, colourful sets, incorporating both Red Indian (there, I said it!) and colonial motifs as appropriate, were provided by the designer Nikolay Benois — he is listed in the programme as being resident in Italy, but he must surely be a descendant of the great Benois Russian theatre family, after whom indeed a whole tier of the Bolshoi seating is named? The orchestra, under Lyutauras Balchyunas, was in great form, from the overture in which we fist hear the plotting of the conspirators through to the ball itself which ends the opera and the life of Count Richard.
Count Richard himself was sung by the Georgian Badri Maysuradze, whose stocky build and pugnacious character were well fitted to the part. Like most of the other singers, he had the tone, character and accuracy for grand opera but perhaps lacked enough staying power to keep all of these up at the same level to the end of the proceedings. But that should be regarded as only a quibble. He was well partnered by Irina Rubtsova as Amelia, the object of his passions, and Valdimir Redkin as his secretary and Amelia’s husband, Renato, who eventually joins the conspiracy and delivers the fatal blow. The shaman-style Ulrica (Irina Makarova) must be singled out for a most powerful and gripping interpretation, and Oksana Lomova in the travesty role of the page Oskar was delightful. Despite the lavish staging and costumes I am afraid that the Bolshoi chorus remains on the wooden side when it comes to moving about stage, although the conspirator’s laughing chorus, one of my favourite moments in opera, came off very well. I commend this evening to anyone who wants a good night out in Moscow.
Of course the touts have not quite vanished. In fact they have discovered that their real market these days is the new Russia rich rather than the few remaining tourists — a few days later, at the Conservatoire concert to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of the viola-player Yuri Bashmet, the streets were full of unshaven characters in donkey jackets and wooly hats who, it was clear, would not even have understood the most basic of viola jokes (“In what way is a viola better than a violin?” “It burns for longer”). If you wanted to join the audience of glitterati within these guys would gladly have sold you a ticket for $400 — if they had one to sell. I am glad to report that the many genuine Russian music-lovers flocking to the hall were not seduced by their bids. As I had no ticket and I did not have a spare — even if theoretical — $400, I dropped in on the Nemirovich-Danchenko theatre instead — but that will have to wait for my next dispatch, along with some comments on late Prokofiev, a Russian premiere of a 200-year old opera about Peter the Great, and a visit to the first musical light-show and the house of its inventor. In the meantime I am about to venture into the great Russian interior — anyone know the way to Maloyaroslavets? — from which I hope to emerge with my musical sensibilities honed afresh.
Allen Buchler, January 26, 2003 12:04 PM