Get a goat

The theater of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko is not looking for easy life. The central premiere of this season is the opera "ENUFA" Leos Yanachek . Neither the name nor the name of the Great Czech composer to our opera public really says anything. The hall even on the premiere evening gaps with empty seats. Enuf with its musical beauty and a nicer plot was put in Moscow only once-at the end of the 50s in the Bolshoi Theater. Back in the same years, there was a production in Novosibirsk and in our time - at Gergiev in Mariinka. That's all.

The reasons for this situation are already pointless to discuss. The meaning has - act. The new work of the theater on Bolshaya Dmitrovka is an important, thoughtful and even revolutionary step, paradoxically, it sounds in relation to the score of 1904. The fact is that Yanachek (thanks to which Czech is now one of the opera languages ​​necessary for singers) here is not singing in the language of the original, but in the language of the public, that is, in Russian. Nowadays, this can be compared, for example, with permission to clap between parts. It is not accepted. But - although it’s a shame to admit it - I often want it.

In short, there is now a precedent, it can be discussed. The audience will not hear the charming melodics of Czech speech, of course, decorating this music. But sitting with a continuously lifted head (Russian credits have not gone away, but the singers delight with a good diction) now it is not necessary. You can focus on what is happening on the stage and in the orchestra pit.

For both, the artistic director of the theater Alexander Titel and his ally according to the legendary Sverdlovsk opera of the 80s, conductor Evgeny Brazhnik, are responsible. The orchestra sounds delicately, subtly, does not interfere with the singers, but without luxury. It would be stronger to fall in love with the audience into this spicy music.

Titel offers a souvenir-ethnographic frame on the topic of respectable rural life. Everything is clean, neat, pretty and does not seem to be completely dangerous. Brief dresses in a flower, old -regime men's suits with vests, knife grinders, glass, which causes a revitalization of the hall of a living goat on a rope. Artist Vladimir Arefiev, as always, is concise. The two main components of the decorations are a huge knitted log that blocks the scene (after each intermission, it is destroyed on all smaller details), and a video with a waterfall on the backdrop (unchanged from beginning to end). The director puts the main characters into this paradise without preventing them from tightening the audience into household blood pressure.

The plot of the opera, written based on the play by Gabriela Preismova, is simple and rude. In order to hide the shame and give her stepdaughter another chance to live life “as expected”, the bark drowns the illegitimate child of Enufa in the hole and tells her that he died during her illness. The deception is revealed in the spring, when they find a children's corpse. Kostelnichka is recognized in everything and is ready to accept Kar. Enuf and the new groom are straining strainedly to tax on "as expected." How successful - depends on the desire of the director.

Titel clearly looks at their future without optimism. But the most important point in the play is not this one, but the one when the Kostelnichka decides to become a killer, freezes in ancient flour and groans: "I disappeared." Here, perhaps, you finally come to terms with the Russian language.

Elena Guseva sang perfectly in the premiere composition of Enuf, surrounded by the vocalities of Nazhmiddin Mavlyanova (Nicholas Erokhin's Non -Paul Bridegroom). But the performance is still not done by her, but by Natalya Muradimova as a boner. The creepy role of the children's role already perfectly approached her in Luigi Karubini, who was walking in the Mede theater. And here she again appears to be a large tragic actress, from whom she can not come off.

The repertoire acquisition of the theater does not promise easy life to the cashiers, but it is absolutely not superfluous.