Olga Kabanova. Bang, damn, God

Bang, damn, God
Olga Kabanova

Publication date: March 20, 2000

We all came out of the same sandbox, and we are sitting in it

This week there was a small scandal - the newspapers "Vremya" (now not MN, but news) and "Kommersant" were published with the same headlines for two days in a row (twice in a week). On Thursday, March 16, in the cultural pages of two respected newspapers one could read “Bach With Us” (articles about the opening of the festival dedicated to the 250th anniversary of Bach and the performance of his “St. Matthew Passion” at the Moscow Conservatory). On Friday, without agreeing, both newspapers reviewed the play "Filumena Marturano" at the Lenkom Theater under the title "Marriage in Lenkom's style." The embarrassment that has taken place once again proves that the attitude of newspaper reviewers to a cultural phenomenon is usually identical, that they are all equally educated and do not disdain culture-trading, reminding readers of art history that they are all perspicacious and smart enough not to speak in yellow or black out of a desire to stand out. Is this good, that’s the catch.

"City of Millionaires" in Lenkomov's style

As for the Lenkom performance, the conclusion of the Kommersant theater observer Roman Dolzhansky corresponds to the conclusion of Marina Davydova from Vremya. " Lenkom turns De Filippo's play into a Broadway comedy. And a sitcom, at that. And - what's especially nice - he doesn't hide it at all. ... "City of Millionaires" (that's what the theater calls the play "Filumena Marturano" - O.K. ) was staged without any effort majesty, epoch-making and highly spiritual. But this, it seems to me, is what makes it good. ” It also seems to Dolzhansky: “Finally, a performance has appeared in Moscow, about which we can say that it fully corresponds to the canon of dramatic production, called. Broadway. If we treat this concept without flawed arrogance, which is generated, however, not by real acquaintance with its samples, but by numerous local attempts at it, in contrast, “City of Millions” is a completely victorious and prosperous theatrical product. Both observers recall the legendary Vakhtangov performance based on the play by De Filippo in the mid-50s (both were not yet born then), and both praise Sheintzis’s scenography for its quality. Both praise Inna Churikova and praise Armen Dzhigarkhanyan. “... there is simply no other actress of Inna Churikova’s level in Russia now,” states Davydova. “Generally speaking, she plays brilliantly,” Dolzhansky ventures to assert. So both critics allow commercial theater to live if its performances are skillfully staged, well-designed and performed by great artists.

Bach "moved away"

Elena Cheremnykh in Kommersant, Ekaterina Biryukova in Vremya, Vadim Zhuravlev in Vedomosti reported on the beginning of the BAXXXXI festival at the same time and almost identically. They politely reminded that the great composer during his lifetime was a hard worker and considered himself a craftsman. “Like an ox in plowing, Bach turned over enormous layers of music, essentially single-handedly providing the Protestant reform with a complete musical ritual. He officiated in churches, being at the same time an organist, choral mentor, professional teacher of his young wife and his many children. He served masses that he himself composed, in freedom he played cantatas (there are more than a hundred of them) and concerts of his own composition, Bach moved away in order to start all over again in a new city." This is how Elena Cheremnykh dramatically described the working life of the great composer. Further, all reviewers recalled that for one hundred and fifty years Bach’s legacy was not in demand, but now he has become a symbol of the greatness of classical music, and his name is synonymous with the Creator. Everyone felt sorry for the audience who managed to sit through all three-plus hours of the mediocre performance of “The Passion” by a combined Russian-German cast. Only Pyotr Pospelov made several special remarks in Izvestia. “Our music lover knows the St. Matthew Passion exclusively from records: the last time the director of the Great Hall of the Conservatory, Vladimir Zakharov, could remember, they were performed live within these walls by some group from the Baltics more than ten years ago. As for the records, there is a sea of ​​interpretations , sometimes mutually exclusive: from the lush, symphonic performance of Karl Richter to the naturally poor performance of Nikolaus Harnoncourt with his authentic boyish-male cast. However, high-quality gourmet versions are the privilege of the top ten recording companies and the field for their competition. also a wide layer of the provincial and everyday existence of Bach's music. It was represented by the provincial German professor, organist and cantor Volker Hempfling, who was sent to Moscow by the German embassy (...) Izvestia devotes much less space to culture than other newspapers reviewed. Often the cultural strip goes only to the regions, and is crowded out of the Moscow issue by political and economic news. Therefore, Pospelov’s text came out later than the texts of his colleagues, and perhaps that is why the author bothered to make it more serious. But Pospelov’s material about the premiere of the opera “War and Peace” came out a day earlier than other reports on the production, simply because Izvestia is published on Monday.

"War and Peace" with a diplomatic accent

No one pitied Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin, as well as their wives, for having to sit through Prokofiev's four-hour opera. Apparently, critics considered sitting in the royal box of the Mariinsky Theater not as difficult as sitting in the chairs of the BZK. The majority of those reporting on the premiere treated the fact of the highest presence as an unfortunate incident that interfered with the analysis of the performance and the rating of the performers. One Pospelov in Izvestia saw a didactic meaning in this event: “Having left the orchestra pit, Valery Gergiev goes out to bow. Under his feet on the stage lie the banners of the defeated enemy, remaining from the final picture. Opposite, in the royal box, Vladimir Putin and Tony Blair , each according to his temperament, applauds the participants of the performance. Behind Gergiev is victorious Russia: soldiers in uniforms and with banners, partisans in skins and with batons, women and children. Next to him are Andrei Konchalovsky, Natasha Rostova, Pierre Bezukhov, Kutuzov. and Napoleon. On the street - the police, who by 11 pm had managed to clear away the crowds of onlookers, as well as picketers with red flags, in order to allow drivers of luxury cars waiting for the theatrical departure to the front of the theater.

The premiere of Prokofiev's opera "War and Peace" turned out to be the most high-profile event of the Russian cultural year. Tickets, which cost 20 times more than usual (3,000 rubles for a seat in the stalls versus 150 rubles for the most expensive ballet, “La Bayadère”), were sold out even before it became known how many high-profile people Gergiev managed to get for that evening. As for the people, at least our acting one, he could well feel a little like a student: before his eyes, world-class production was happening, in which Russia set the initiative. (...) In the matter of integrating Russia into the world community, Gergiev, a man of art, has already done much of what politicians have yet to agree on." I will quote a couple more passages from Pospelov, since his assessment of the performance is close to that given by his colleagues, however, they did not make such serious patriotic conclusions. “War and Peace” will delight the St. Petersburg audience several times, and then it will cross the ocean and become a performance at the Metropolitan Opera. Then it will be toured on the stages of La Scala and Covent Garden. The production at the Mariinsky Theater was supported by Alberto Vilar, known as the main private sponsor of the Salzburg Festival. Prokofiev worked on the opera for the last twelve years of his life, either completing or reducing the score, either in accordance with his author’s plan or with instructions from above. is called the “edition of 2000”, fits safely into two acts of an hour and a half and is not equal to any of the author’s versions. Entire pictures are thrown out in it (including the one where Kutuzov sings the famous aria with an overly persistent glorification of Moscow), but the choral one. the prologue has been moved to the second act. Any arbitrariness in relation to the author is subject to jurisdiction; but we must remember that the full version, consisting of 13 scenes, lasts five hours and exceeds the capabilities of an ordinary opera evening. It was observed in only one of the previous productions of the opera - and it was an excellent work by Valery Gergiev and director Graham Vick, a co-production of the Mariinsky Theater with London and Paris, carried out in 1991 and published by Philips on video and audio.

Academic comparison will not do the new production any favors, but it has its own consistency: the first part, more than Prokofiev’s, is reduced to Natasha Rostova, the second to the choral performance of 1812. Accordingly, in the first act everything rests on the art of the artist Anna Netrebko, in the second - on the staging skills of Andrei Konchalovsky.

Anna Netrebko, a young prima who already has a worldwide reputation, may be organically a little cold for Natasha, but she leads the role with such skill and sings so flawlessly that at times (especially in the scene of repentance after a failed escape with Anatole) she moves you to tears. It’s sad that her only appearance in the second act (the scene at the bedside of the dying Prince Andrei) takes place formally and without intense feelings - the director is most likely to blame for this, who was more interested in the stage action than in the characters’ characters.

In the battle-like second act, Konchalovsky demonstrated his Hollywood professionalism, and even more so, his experience as a director of a show on Red Square. For an hour and a half in a row, without lowering the curtain and almost without pauses, he spreads the Napoleonic army and Russian militias across the stage, rolls out cannons, thunders with volleys, reveals to the audience a multi-meter red rooster flapping his wings across the entire stage, not forgetting to give space to Pierre and other heroes, but skillfully mixing them into the crowd. In intimate scenes, Konchalovsky elegantly kept his distance, limiting himself to salon pictures of balls and living rooms. Contrary to expectations, the elite designer of world opera Georgy Tsypin did not show his signature drawn designs - and, judging by the sketches, the plans for perspective with the haze of battle landscapes were richer.

Valery Gergiev, who flew in from New York the day before the premiere, conducted the performance in one breath. There was a huge ensemble of singers to match the excellent orchestra and choir. (...) The new "War and Peace" is not a performance for gourmets. At the same time, there is no cranberry, no lubok, or home-grown cleverness in it. There is a Russian texture and neat Europeanism, there is patriotism and there is no aggression. Right-wing Russia defending itself from the enemy appeared on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater - an image probably needed by the times. However, inseparable from living figures - the best people of Russia, Prince Andrei and Pierre, who believe in the rightness of Russia, but would also like to believe in the “possibility of happiness.” And from Natasha, who is life itself, because she makes mistakes. And from Prokofiev’s music, in which Tolstoy’s prose sounds - exciting the heart, but not cooling the mind with ready-made solutions to all doubts."

Arkady Ippolitov

This week, St. Petersburg art critic Arkady Ippolitov, once an obligatory participant in the Saturday editions of Kommersant, appeared again in the Moscow newspaper space, then published just as regularly in the defunct Russian Telegraph, and now appears on the pages of Moscow newspapers offensively rarely. The random presence of Ippolitov’s texts on newspaper pages, the unpredictable appearance of Degot’s texts on the pages of Kommersant, as well as the departure of Mikhail Bode from the same newspaper make reading art criticism articles in newspapers an optional activity and not promising surprises. The rest write with equal dignity and in general the same way.

On Thursday in Vedomosti - Ippolitov - "The ABC of Pop Art" - about the exhibition of Peter Blake, unnoticed by other newspapers. I'll give you fragments. “In Russia, pop art is associated primarily with the figure of Andy Warhol - Pepsi-Cola and the dollar, transformed by the American artist into iconic images, became symbols of this movement, which largely determined the physiognomy of the second half of our century.” “Unfortunately, popular ideas often sin against the truth. This happened with pop art. This phenomenon originated not in America, and not in New York, but in London and was invented not by the fresh brains of the New World, but by the sophisticated and tired consciousness of the Old - and only then was it transferred across the Atlantic. In fact, the first painting of pop art was Richard Hamilton's masterpiece entitled "What makes today's house so attractive, so modern?" a big guy with a tennis racket and a half-naked model, folded according to the accepted standard 90x60x90.

Young English artists Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Peter Blake were the first to turn to mass culture - and modern art, which from the very beginning of the twentieth century tried to speak in a complicated, difficult and inaccessible way, suddenly began to babble easily in slang that everyone understood. The effect was amazing. The art of Pop Art, as defined by Richard Hamilton, "the public, the consumer, the masses, the young, the witty, the sexy, the deceptive, the brilliant, the art of big business," quickly became a success." There follows another excursion into art history, explaining that "the performance of young pop art artists was like a wave washing away the last remnants of ponderous Victorian respectability from Albion." And also that "it was British artists who created the impulse that the sensitive trickster Andy Warhol captured in New York, who used it in the fight against the important and self-confident avant-garde artists of the new York school of the 50s. America absorbed pop art, and then it conquered the whole world."

Actually, Ippolitov has one passage about the Peter Blake exhibition, which in no way detracts from the value and educational value of the article. It’s just a pity that a columnist for Gelman’s website , busy with the lowly honorable duty of taking the word of his more gifted and happier colleagues working in the paper media, yapped at Ippolitov. It would be better for him to learn inner freedom from him.

Another large text by Ippolitov about the anniversary exhibition of Karl Bryullov was published by the weekly Moscow News. It can be read in its entirety on the newspaper's website by those who are interested in the following fragment. “The scope of the exhibition testifies that Bryullov surprisingly remains a relevant artist for Russia... it is impossible not to think ( at the exhibition - O.K. ) that our native country is wide, that there are many unprecedented miracles in it, about VDNKh, CSU, Tsereteli, Glazunov and the greatness of the Russian spirit. The ponderous triumphalism of the Nicholas style is no less modern than one hundred and fifty years ago.

It is a well-known fact that Russia cannot be understood with the mind and cannot be measured with a yardstick. It is even more difficult to measure it in the system of weights and measures adopted in Western Europe. Bryullov's exhibition is an excellent example of the uselessness of such an approach to the products of Russian artistry. Conversations that Bryullov is a contemporary of Ingres, Géricault and Delacroix, that he cannot withstand comparison with them, that, by the standards of good taste of European artistic practice, his drawing is weak, the composition is far-fetched, and the coloring is clumsy, have nothing to do with the matter. . Russian fine art lies outside these categories.(...)

Karl Bryullov, in his portraits and in his Italian sketches, most adequately reflected the fragile hothouse nature of the Russian Golden Age, the magnificent instability of this product of brilliant aristocratic salons. The literary heights of this time remain heights, but the most important and most attractive thing in the 20s and 30s of the Russian 19th century was the thin cultural layer that formed on the surface of a society that was essentially alien to culture. Duels, balls, living rooms, dinners - we never cease to admire all of this, we dedicate monographs and it is precisely these signs of everyday life that we experience almost religious admiration for. The rainbow glow of this oil stain of culture was reflected by Bryullov.

The manifestations of the Russian Golden Age were by no means all that encouraging. In essence, all his salon bravado was like the puppets’ revolt against Karabas, and the puppetry is palpable in all of Bryullov’s works. Secularity and vanity were the most important feelings and experiences for the heroes of the Golden Age, and this secularism envelops most of Bryullov’s portraits, turning them into wonderful marzipan fruits. Such artificial skill had its own fragile charm, which then aroused the wrath of the next generation - it was not for nothing that Leskov called his novel about Bryullov “Devil’s Dolls.”

The exhibition at the Russian Museum is wonderful precisely because it makes it possible to separate the Bryullov of the Russian Golden Age from that unfortunate artist whom they tried to drag into the great cause of Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality. Just as the fragile world of damn dolls was crushed by the granite machinations of autocratic initiatives, so Bryullov’s light disappeared from all his sketches for Isaac and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. His disease, the abandonment of all grandiose Nikolaev projects and a hasty flight from Russia become his justification from all accusations, which put forward critics of the second half of the century: Leskov, Stasov and Benois. Bryullov, in spite of any efforts, could not correspond to Nikolaev Russia, after the last traces of the aristocratic golden age evaporated, and the exhibition in the Russian Museum draws the tragedy of the artist, tormented by the ambitions of the Russian Empire, unusually instructive and exciting. "

Tar

The only article on the week, the tar was taken from me by a colleague Bychikhin. I send the readerto his review .

Novikov

Mikhail Novikov was slightly reported by his colleague Bychikhin everything in the same review . In vain. Novikov is a dope and loves to tease a party. There is no need to succumb to his teasers. In his Saturday Kommersante column “Time to shit ...” Novikov cleverly interprets into a single plot 1) Luzhkov’s resolution that the owners of the dogs are obliged to remove themselves during the walking of their favorites, 2) the rush of the American climber to go to Everest for garbage collection , 3) a new play by B. Akunin, continuing the Chekhov "Seagull" . All this is the finalization of the following consideration: "Having read (the play Akunin - OK) Yes, I thought that Akunin hardly sets himself for some special literary tasks. And in an interview that his creator now gives right and left He just likes to compose a generosity of Luzhkov to manage the city , if you want, someday you have to clean it, but personally I have no cellophane gloves at hand. ”

Morality

Morality is written if the author is not sure that he managed to express what he wanted. I'm not sure. Therefore, I answer directly to the question posed at the beginning of this review. There is no misfortune that reviewers sometimes write as if under a carbon copy. Only those people who are not a pity can voluntarily read all newspapers. But if you want to be different from the same as you, educated and correct, think more boldly and further, think about your own. Do not put obvious headlines, even if they are very successful. Remember what you write for your own pleasure.