Translated material
Poisons of modernity
The opera start of the year will not be complete without Pletnev
This coming Thursday, January 31, at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, Mikhail Pletnev and his orchestra will perform Wagner for the first time, which has already intrigued the entire local musical community. In his usual (and unusual) repertoire preferences, he has so far avoided Wagner's mysteriously ardent scale. All the more interesting will be their interpretation, presented by a famous master of intellectual subtlety, quiet ghostly beauties and nervously proud sadness. A collection of symphonic fragments from Wagner's operas (from Siegfried, Twilight of the Gods, Tristan and Isolde, Tannhäuser) will become a kind of overture to a couple of opera premieres in the coming month.On February 5, Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theater will bring to Moscow for “The Mask” (as usual, long before the start of the official competition) their version of the dark “Electra” by Richard Strauss (directed by Jonathan Kent). In the hopeless scenery of Paul Brown (on the top floor - the luxurious world of Electra's criminal mother Clytemnestra, in the destroyed basement - the main character, and an insurmountable hole between them), with a specific Straussian passion and expressionistic ease, a dark ancient drama about the revenge of the daughter of her mother, who betrayed her, unfolds her and killing her father, ending with the death of the main character. A huge orchestra, a sea of mythology, overwhelming monologues and composer's ingenuity (in the score - creaking, howling, wind and the mooing of sacrificial animals) send the listener to Wagner's operatic principles, but the directors make it possible to feel in Strauss's opera not only the magnificent romantic heritage, but also clear sharp taste of modernity. This is greatly helped by the performer of the role of Electra, Larisa Gogolevskaya, who is as vocally convincing as she is dramatically (since the time of Isolde in the Mariinsky version of Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde”) extraordinary and interesting.
The second premiere in the near future is also tailored according to modernist patterns. Although in Rimsky-Korsakov's early opera "May Night" there is less emphasis on the specific delightful mixture of mysticism-symbolism-pantheism, there is also two worlds here (the real everyday, gentle and humorous world of Hanna, Levko and his father, the old boss of the Head - and the shifting kingdom of mermaids - the drowned women led by the beautiful Pannochka), a spacious breath of orchestral fantasy, a mosaic of dizzying parts (Levko’s part is one of the most complex in the tenor repertoire), ardor, ease of travel between worlds and the strangely sweet poison of separation. And the composition of the production team (director Alexander Titel, artist Vladimir Arefiev and conductor Felix Korobov) promises the viewer tenderness and ease of the story.
Meanwhile, the same “May Night” will be played in a concert performance this spring by the same Pletnev, and they say that the part of Levko will be none other than Nikolai Baskov.
Another Rimsky-Korsakov (“Scheherazade”) will be touched upon in its performances on the stage of the Galina Vishnevskaya School of Opera Singing by the Italian marionette theater Carlo Colla e Figli, which has already been to Moscow with “Aida” (now its shows on February 1, 2 and 3 also include music "Petrushki" by Stravinsky).
The cantata-oratorio genre, adjacent to the opera, will be answered in the near future by Vladimir Fedoseev (on February 5 at the BZK the long-promised Berlioz oratorio “The Childhood of Christ” with four French and one Swiss soloists) and after him on February 8 - a promising break from sweet strangeness and gloomy wonders of modernism Alexander Rudin. In the concert of music dedicated to Empress Maria Theresa, the main number is Haydn's Theresa Mass with foreign soloists who know a lot about the ancient style.