Dreams of something better

“Marriage and Other Horrors” at the Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Center

You will not find the name of Vladimir Mirzoev on the poster of this performance. Compiled from fragments of almost all Russian operas based on Gogol’s plots (“Marriage” and “Sorochinskaya Fair” by Mussorgsky, “May Night” and “The Night Before Christmas” by Rimsky-Korsakov, “Cherevichki” by Tchaikovsky, “The Nose” by Shostakovich) and without precise genre definition (fantasy, phantasmagoria, “Gogol-gala” or simply “experiment”), as it turned out during the work, it was seen differently by Mirzoev, who was invited to stage it, and by the compiler, Galina Pavlovna Vishnevskaya. As a result, the director left without completing the performance. Meanwhile, no offense to Vyacheslav Starodubtsev, who made ends meet in an initially confusing and fragmentary project (and did it as carefully as possible), Mirzoyev’s scenes remained the most valuable moments of an intimate, fun spectacle.

The form of the essentially unpretentious “gala” was fashioned in an intricate way: in the first act there was Mussorgsky’s “The Marriage” (the first act of an unfinished opera orchestrated by Rozhdestvensky) with a buffoonish finale (“Gopak” from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “May Night”). The second act with the title “Dreams of Agafya Tikhonovna” is a series of solo and duet numbers from a wide variety of musical Gogol with a finale from “The Nose” (“On the outskirts of St. Petersburg”) and Rimsky (“The Train of Ovsenya and Kolyada”). An absolutely incredible effect in such a situation is dramatic integrity and harmony, Gogolian devilry and tenderness, into which, not without difficulty and not without sadness, all this phantasmagoric and prosaic nonsense turns. Actually, Mirzoyev, in all likelihood, made the entire first act and the ending. Made witty and free. The characters are each endowed with their own strange plasticity, they almost dance, which is terribly suited to the opera genre in general (initially slightly embarrassed by the need for singers to move prosaically around the stage) and especially when strange dances turn the grotesque slow motion of Mussorgsky’s recitative into something similar to a commedia dell’arte. There is the heavy, colossal Colombina (excellently singing Inna Zvenyatskaya-Svakha), the mincing Harlequin Maxim Sazhin (Podkolesin’s friend Kochkarev) and the stupid Pierrot (actually Podkolesin). There is Mirzoev's trump card Moron (Stepan, Podkolesin's servant, in the selflessly artistic performance of Ruslan Rozyev), who gives Mirzoev's fantasies something archetypal and at the same time maliciously relevant. Podkolesin's visions are of tender, young ladies, an evil flock in woolen socks and nightgowns. These are not even nightgowns (the kind that happen in opera performances during romantic moments). This is exactly what was once called “combinations”. Idiotically beautiful “combined onesies” (in which girls used to love to play princesses) complete with scratchy, off-white (sometimes with a black stripe around the ankle) woolen socks are tear-jerkingly recognizable, funny and poignant. The viewer is excited - young Cinderellas, future aunts, curl, rush, caress and bite. They go on to make Agafya Tikhonovna, and Parasya, and Ganna, and Solokha, and Khivri (the last two are ready-made, accomplished aunts). From them grow funny eroticism in the beginning and tender love in the finale. The middle is more or less well-sung and well-designed numbers. The best of them is the duet of Khivri and Teacher from Mussorgsky's Sorochinskaya Fair, excellently performed by Natalia Bobrova and Dmitry Iogman. Moreover, the imaginative play in the middle of the performance, either fueled by Mirzoev’s reserves of fantasy and sense of humor, or simply well-invented, remains light and charmingly not straightforward: Vakula with a noose around his neck seems almost like Hamlet, Parasya imagines himself to be Ophelia, and Ganna and Levko as if they showed up here straight from Zarechnaya Street.

The play is about love and universal, all-pervasive idiocy. The conversation turns out to be angry, funny, effortless and very musical. The last circumstance is important - as practice shows, good dramatic directors do not often cope with the operatic genre. Formally, Mirzoev has opera experience (he participated in the production of Gergiev’s “Ring of the Nibelungs”). But in reality the director of that epic was still Gergiev. And the new project cannot be considered completely successful either. Nevertheless, it seems that Mirzoev’s full-fledged work is simply necessary for the opera stage, which is bored and suffering in the absence of dances and fresh ideas, but is sure to fight against any encroachments on its gigantic statuesqueness.

Yulia BEDEROVA