Post-Soviet cancan

The cancan in the second act of “Maritsa” is staged as a funny chase of cowboys after zebras (they are portrayed by dancers in striped black and white tights) and looks much more impressive than the “Lido” tour numbers recently shown in Moscow (Photo: Larisa Pedenchuk )

Since the team of participants from the musical “Metro” moved into the Moscow Operetta Theater, the owners of the house have lost peace and sleep. Firstly, they had to give up half of the rehearsal time and space to the guests. Secondly, politely turn a blind eye to the manners of noisy teenagers recruited from the street. But when the show organizers began to advertise their incompetent performers as real artists, the patience of the operetta luminaries ran out. And, mobilizing all their remaining strength, they decided to remind how good their native genre is. So the theater made a sharp turn in its activities.

In the early 90s, the Moscow Operetta Theater was among the first to acquire solid sponsors. And since then he has tried his best to prove that operetta can be modern. The theater persistently tried to transform it, to combine it with a show and a musical. He invited pop designers, mastered “microphones” (working with miniature microphones) and state-of-the-art lighting technology, made jazz adaptations of classical scores, and the like. And I didn’t want to admit that they love operetta precisely for its charming old-fashionedness and romantic atmosphere with ceremonial heroes in evening dresses and tails, heartbreaking passions, slapstick humor, pleasant, easy-to-remember melodies, as well as a full set of carnival “luxury” - feathers, sequins, lush decorations and the like.

In Soviet times, operetta largely lost its taste for “luxury”. She developed an acting style, thanks to which the princes and dukes looked not like aristocrats, but “ordinary people”, similar to those sitting in the hall. Without this, the “bourgeois genre” would not have been able to get along with Soviet ideology. But as a result, the operetta lost the sophistication that is inherent in the works of Offenbach, Strauss, Lehár, and Kalman. And although the need to adhere to a falsely simple tone with its cliched jokes has long disappeared, it took the Moscow Operetta Theater about ten years to realize that it was not the laws of the genre that needed to get rid of, but intonation falseness.

Only after making sure that modernization did not satisfy either the audience or the performers, the theater again turned to the style of the good old operetta. “The Merry Widow” was so decorated with bright costumes and props that already in the middle of the performance the excess of details began to irritate. In "The Serf" they were so carried away by the meticulous reproduction of costumes and accessories of the 18th century that instead of a daring comedy, it turned out to be a museum exhibition. And in “Maritsa” - for the first time in recent years - the directors and performers found the right tone.

The design by Vladimir Arefiev is devoid of the usual operetta clumsiness. There is not a single harsh color in it - only light green shades of spring foliage, lemon highlights of the sun and lilac shadows on white garden furniture. In the production of Vyacheslav Bogachev (who also plays one of the comic roles), traditional techniques are played out playfully, but without mockery: the magnificent appearances of the prima donna on a cart decorated with flowers, the antics of comic characters dashingly dancing during their verses, wittily invented ballet scenes. Choreographer Boris Baranovsky made the gypsies perform virtuoso steps on pointe shoes, and the high-society friends of Countess Maritsa coquettishly juggle with umbrellas and perform exercises at the ballet barre. The cancan in the second act is staged as a funny chase of cowboys after zebras (they are portrayed by dancers in striped black and white tights) and looks much more impressive than the Lido tour numbers recently shown in Moscow.

Unfortunately, the directors did not dare to revise the boring version of the libretto, which at times contradicts elementary logic, created at one time by Grigory Yaron in the proper Soviet spirit. The performers help out by skillfully smoothing out the shortcomings of the text. The theater took a risk by entrusting the roles of young Maritsa and Tasillo to masters of the older generation - Svetlana Varguzova and Yuri Vedeneev in one cast, Liliya Amarfiy and Sergei Alimpiev in another. But there was no way out - the theater’s young artists are not yet able to cope with Kalman’s most difficult roles. The aim is to demonstrate the enviable form of the stars, loved by several generations of viewers. In one of the episodes, for example, Maritza appears in a short bathrobe that reveals her slender legs. Tasillo dashingly dances his famous czardash. And during complex arias, the director fills the stage with the corps de ballet, allowing the soloists to stand quietly in the center and sing. In the roles of the soubrette Lisa and the simpleton Zupan, the experienced Tatiana Konstantinova and Pyotr Borisenko, who recently came to the theater, brilliantly perform, managing to do risky somersaults between vocal phrases.

The music of "Maritsa" was written with a large symphony orchestra and opera choir in mind. The operetta theater has neither one nor the other. Conductor Pavel Salnikov manages to achieve the almost impossible - to achieve a balanced and temperamental sound that creates a “Kalman” atmosphere. One can only dream about the nuances: the quality of the instruments is such that it is not always clear whether the double bass is sounding or the neighbor’s chair is creaking.

Throughout the world, classical musical comedies are typically included in the repertoire of opera companies. Theaters specializing specifically in this genre are a rarity. The Moscow Operetta Theater is one of such unique groups. But for now he can boast not so much of his interpretation of the classics, but of the fact that he has not forgotten the basic professional techniques.


The director of "Maritsa" Vyacheslav Bogachev - in a comic role together with Valentina Zheludeva (Photo: Larisa Pedenchuk )