| The Mariinsky Theater presented the premiere of Glinka's opera Today Russia celebrates the 200th anniversary of the birth of composer Mikhail Glinka. He is called either Pushkin or Lomonosov of Russian music - depending on whether we are talking about the status of a classic or the role of the founder of the corresponding professional art. Meanwhile, there is not much Glinka’s music in the current repertoire. A pair of concert orchestral pieces, including the overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila, romances and two operas revered as national symbols. Even as the author of the national anthem, the composer did not last even ten years. The melody seemed awkward to sing.
On the eve of the anniversary, Russian musicians decided to play more of Glinka. Moreover, every second concert has the subtitle “The Unknown Glinka,” which is not surprising given such a weak demand for the main, and also not limitless, body of Glinka’s music. In April, a small conservatory festival dedicated to Glinka was held. Tomorrow a series of chamber music concerts in museums and estates opens: the ensemble of soloists “Excelente” will perform in Ostankino. A modest mini-festival began at the State Central Museum of Musical Culture named after. Glinka. Bigger events take place on bigger stages. At the Philharmonic - a literary and musical evening with reading letters and music performed by Yuri Bashmet, Naum Shtarkman and RNO. At the Bolshoi Theater there is a gala concert with fragments from “Ivan Susanin” and “Ruslan and Lyudmila” performed by Marina Meshcheryakova, Vladimir Matorin, ballet soloists, orchestra and conductor Alexander Vedernikov. The premiere of the new version of “A Life for the Tsar” took place at the Mariinsky, Dmitry TSILIKIN talks about the performance.
At the premiere of “A Life for the Tsar,” they were waiting for the president: somehow he (who, by the way, exempted Glinka’s music from performing the duties of the state anthem) would see the texts of Baron Rosen, which were returned in return for the poems of Sergei Gorodetsky in 1939? For example: “We need a legitimate King - And the earth is saved!” However, in my opinion, the best option for the newest Russian ideology, which is a mix of the ideology of Count Uvarov and the Soviet one (which are one thing - imperial), seems to be a compilation of Nikolaev and Stalin's librettos.
But, as it turned out, the high authorities seem to be coming to the second performance, so I can’t say anything about their reaction.
With the text, everything was decided simply: the diction of the soloists and choir is such that nothing (or almost nothing) can be understood, therefore there is no difference whether Rosen is with God and the Tsar or Gorodetsky is with the Motherland and the People. In the synopsis included in the booklet, instead of Poles, “Enemy” is listed - as it turned out, for good reason. In Act II (“Polish”), a certain pompous interior of the type of Ilya Glazunov and Pavel Borodin opens. Men in dark suits, ladies in furs. When news arrives of unfavorable changes in the political situation, everyone is given a piece of paper with the words of a chauvinist chorus performed by the establishment, lined up across the stage. Thanks to the conventionality of the boundaries between plans of action, Susanin is able to see all this.
Epilogue - in the same room. People in light, dressed more simply, standing in the same line, with red folders in their hands, sing “Hail.” Antonida sobs - having realized, perhaps, that her father sacrificed his life to a false idea: surnames change within the walls of the ancient Kremlin, but the essence remains. The orphaned family - Antonida, Vanya and Sobinin - returns to their small apartment with a three-armed chandelier, sits down at the table, the performance ends almost in the last stage of "Uncle Vanya". Private life is more important than the so-called state interests. No abstract idea (not even Universal Happiness, let alone Imperial Greatness) is worth the blood of even one good person. And none at all.
What a beautiful, what a true thought!
Alas, retelling it is much more interesting than watching it. Of course, it would be strange to expect from director and set designer Dmitry Chernyakov natural snow-covered forests and Susanin glued to his beard, bassing “They Smell the Truth” under a spreading spruce tree. All operaticism has been exterminated, when an order is expressed by a sharp pointing gesture to the floor, determination by an upward call, and indignation by throwing various objects (letters, portraits, flowers and jewelry) onto the floor. The characters' lives are filled with everyday details flowing into each other: here they wash themselves, drink tea, grate apples for a wedding, cut sausages, open canned food, the Kremlin mafia talks on mobile phones, etc. But you see, this detailed and deliberate stage fabric is quite formal. This is not the fault of the director or the artists - here, it seems to me, there is a problem of a more general nature.
The best place, oddly enough (in fact, naturally), turned out to be the dances of Act II (choreographer Sergei Vikharev). Instead of the expected characteristic Poles, girls came out in tutus, on pointe shoes, in kokoshniks and with white muslin on their shoulders - a direct parody of the Russian Soul from the ever-memorable “Swan Lake” by Vladimir Vasiliev. That is, the leavened wampuka of the Bolshoi Theater turned into the pretentious kitsch of a government concert. Then the girls were replaced by officers in modern dress uniforms with aiguillettes and little ballet girls with something like carbines in their hands. Oh, what they all began to do is worthy of a holiday in honor of their beloved leader Kim Jong Il. The hall thundered and burst into applause. The mockery of the deceitful “patriotic” officialdom turned out to be the most lyrical - that is, sincere - statement.
But the chorus “Glory” is sincere . Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka is the man who wrote “Separation”, “I Remember a Wonderful Moment”, “Lark”, “Ruslana”, the message to the world about spiritual purity and good quality (as well as simplicity, kindness, truth, without which, as L teaches us .N. Tolstoy, there is no greatness). Then Russian music in many ways distorted its path and began to talk about how mold penetrated into the hiding place of the soul and, moreover, settled there, multiplied and occupied almost the entire soul. And modern singers are great at talking about this. But it’s impossible to sing the trio “Don’t be tormented, my dear” from Act I of “Susanin” so that the listener’s nose tingles - not because the parts are not mastered, but because for this you need to cultivate an affinity with this music. . As a result, “Life for the Tsar” does not sound nutritious, so to speak: there is no feeling of happy saturation with sound, the melody does not imperiously attract you to follow its every movement, bend, not even with your ear, but with your whole being...
It’s impossible to simply stage Glinka and come up with and implement a stage solution. But the reality of the modern theater (not just the Mariinsky - any) does not imply a painstaking “education of feelings” that gives the internal right to perform this author. We can only rely on artists who already have such feelings - I have great hopes in Gennady Bezzubenkov, one of the most profound modern Russian singers, who rehearsed Susanin along with Sergei Aleksashkin, who sang the premiere. Dmitry TSILIKIN |
|
