Adults only

Stars of the White Nights opened with the premiere of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde

The intentions of director Dmitry Chernyakov, who staged “Tristan” at the Mariinsky Theater, according to him, were as follows. There are two main traditions of staging this opera: historical, “Bayreuth” - when they strictly follow the detailed directions of the meticulous composer, which prescribes piling up fake rocks, castles and a linden tree with three girths on the stage, silvering in the rays of the electric moon; and conditional - in empty space it is no longer so much people who sing as certain abstractions. Chernyakov decided to challenge both, returning psychological concreteness to the story, but avoiding dusty decorativeness. He promised a performance without any flashy staging techniques, but like in a movie. Let's say Bergman.

The artist Zinovy ​​Margolin, in collaboration with the director, realized it this way. The stage mirror is halved in height and narrowed in width. The resulting “frame” frame limits the classic theater pavilion, which is as close as possible to the ramp. There are three pavilions - for each act: a cabin, a hotel room, a room where the mortally wounded Tristan dies. Costumes and furniture date the action to around 1980. All the details and details are worked out naturalistically: the ship’s instruments glow with deathly green screens and red lights, in the hotel the numbers on the alarm clock count down the real time of the endless Liebensnacht duet, there is brown dried blood on Tristan’s bandages and shirt.

The decision, frankly speaking, is risky. Everything is at stake as an actor. The action in this opera, as we know, moves a teaspoon at a time - each event is separated by twenty minutes of singing. In the conditions that Chernyakov created, success depends solely on the fullness of the performers, just like in cinema: the actor holds a close-up or not, there is life in his eyes or they are empty.

It worked! In the extensive Mariinsky Wagnerian Larisa Gogolevskaya sings all the power parts, but we have never seen her like this. She appeared as a stylish, aristocratic European woman, in whom inner strength, bound by a steely intellect, rages like an icy flame. She really looks like Bergman's Nordic heroines.

But which Tristan does this Isolde hate and then love? Tenor Sergei Lyadov was left with the appearance he has. And there is a bald head, a beard, glasses, for the same Bergman he would play an ordinary clerk. And vocally he is inferior to his partner, but this, paradoxically, also works for the meaning.

The meaning - now, one hundred and forty years after the premiere of the opera - seems essential for understanding the very phenomenon of Richard Wagner. In one of the articles included in a good-quality and beautiful booklet, it is rightly noted that there are a lot of books about the composer. However, to know is one thing, to feel is another. No matter how much you read about the magical influence of Wagner’s personality on his contemporaries, it is still difficult to reconcile (at least for me) a deeply disgusting person in life, smug, narcissistic, dishonest, who acted disgustingly towards his loved ones, and even an outwardly repulsive little man - and a genius who composed an unearthly and piercingly earthly at the same time, powerful, tender, passionately sad, infinitely sensual and ultimately tragic music. The same booklet prompts a comparison of a portrait in which the creator, with the inspired gaze of beautiful transparent eyes, foreseeing the enchanted distance where Beauty and Harmony reign, and a photograph from about the same time: Faust turned into Mephistopheles with disgustingly pursed lips and a viciously cold gaze.

And Chernyakov placed the spirit of Tristan in Wagner’s body. The point is not that Wagner lusted after Mathilde Wesendonck and sublimated this unrealized lust into Tristan. And the fact is that a person can accommodate everything small, material and carnal - and the pure eros of the spirit. The opposition “to insects is voluptuousness, an angel stands before God” here turns into unity.

This is convincingly and plastically realized in the material of the performance. For example, the very famous “Night of Love” - the viewer is placed in a maliciously provocative situation. Given: a hotel bedroom, a large bed, a man and a woman, and everyone knows that there is love between them. It is easy to imagine the expectations of an enlightened audience, and it is precisely the way the director ignores the provocation he himself created that gives the scene poignancy and brightness. Imagine how greasy it would be if these people, not the first youth and beauty, and even thickly built, had at least held hands (not to mention hugged). But they stand motionless in different corners, and their voices are intertwined in the embrace.

It's not just the director's taste. The performance produces an effect that is obvious to me, yet inexplicable (which is actually a defining feature of live theater). In what Chernyakov did, cinematic authenticity is mysteriously fused with cosmic music, and as a result, the Wagnerian universe becomes close.

All this, of course, is very far from the entertainment function that modern theater has voluntarily assumed. The spectacle is not at all condescending to the public, there is no opera in it, which lovers of cultural leisure are so eager for. If we continue the cinematic comparisons, this colossus (four and a quarter hours of pure sound) is not a blockbuster, but an auteur cinema. To understand and feel the subtle, complex things contained in it, spiritual maturity is required.

A year ago, in an interview with me, Dmitry Chernyakov said: “Real life, a long journey ahead, but now I’m just playing theater.” It seems that it was so. In any case, when the inhabitants of his Kitezh appeared before their death dressed in costumes of all times and peoples, it looked completely naive as a teenager. And "Double Impermanence" was about how bad adults torment good teenagers. But the current “Tristan” is definitely the work of an adult. Finally.

Dmitry TSILIKIN, St. Petersburg