Translated material
Without a shadow of a doubt
The premiere of Richard Strauss's little-known opera in Russia took place at the Mariinsky Theater
“Woman Without a Shadow” by the main German opera composer of the 20th century, Richard Strauss, was initially considered unperformable. Then the opera was staged anyway - in 1919 in Vienna, after waiting until the European land calmed down from the First World War. They unanimously complained about the difficulty of perception, and forgot for a long time. The great Karajan pulled it out of oblivion after that single performance already in the sixties, staged it again at the Vienna Staatsoper, but he also could not break the resistance of the public. And only Karl Böhm in 1977 made opera connoisseurs believe in all the symbolic tricks of the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the seriousness of the composer’s substantive achievements. And the opera went on a victorious march around the world, in the most advanced theaters. And now I have reached the only truly advanced opera house in our country - the Mariinsky. This premiere sits comfortably between the other premieres of "Woman Without a Shadow" this year - at the Berlin Deutsche Oper and at the Zurich Opera.The current season is deliberately being built by Gergiev as a time to storm new heights. The Mariinsky Theater has already, it would seem, proven that it can do everything: it has staged eight operas by Wagner, presented new Russian and English operas, and staged the same Richard Strauss in three titles (and “Salome” twice), not to mention everything standard operatic repertoire. But this season, the most complex “Woman without a Shadow” will be followed by the dimensionless and great “The Trojans” by Berlioz and the spiritually loaded “Mystery of the Apostle Paul” by Nikolai Karetnikov - with a layer of pure atonality.
The British, director Jonathan Kent and artist Paul Brown, were invited to the production of “Women Without a Shadow,” as well as to “Electra.” The latter once again proved his uniqueness, again demonstrated his originality of thinking. Through his solutions, one can easily read the internal accents of new products. In “The Woman Without a Shadow,” as in some of Gozzi’s fiabs (not only Goethe and Wieland were inspired by Hofmannsthal!), there are creatures from the world of fairies and living, earthly people. And the main humanistic pathos is that becoming a human means learning to suffer. In general, this has always been known, but in the context of a large symbolic structure on stage it was not presented so often.
The artist separates the two layers sharply and literally. With a great deal of irony, he builds a world of fairies and spirits, with inhumanly large flowers that actually exude some kind of suspicious spicy aromas, Japanese-like trees and conventional rocks. Here is the world of the kind and clumsy Opera Ivanovna: the main character - the Empress, hunting for a shadow, wears a golden, a la Klimt, dress with a train in which it is difficult not to get confused, the protecting “huntress” Nurse is dressed in a chic pseudo-folklore costume from a fairy tale , and the Emperor is dressed in Chinese attire with a delightful dragon on his back. They only know how to stand and sing, at most raising their arms high.
In the earthly world, everything is real: the dyer Barak and his wife who live here are in a very authentic workshop with three hefty washing machines and a cheap car in which the hard worker delivers his orders. There is also a bedroom and a dining table for you. And people’s behavior in this environment is appropriate, most natural, just like you and I.
But experiments with the exchange of shadows for the luxurious blessings of life end in disaster, and the dyer’s house goes into theatrical oblivion, deep into the stage. Brown creates in the third act a space in which there is only membra disjecta - the disunited members of the destroyed universe: hanging from above are the roots of a tree torn out of the ground from the world of fairies and the carcass of a dyer's car taken lengthwise. And an emphatically theatrical icy-white block on the ground, designed to embody the unfortunate Emperor, who froze through the fault of his not catching the shadow of his wife.
Brown sometimes gets wonderful help from video designers Sven Oertel and Nina Dunn. They have a lot of routine, pass-through solutions, but when a virtual bird flies and flies towards us and suddenly covers the whole world with its shadow, or when the furious waves of the sea suddenly become terribly real and you are truly afraid of them, the figurative force pulled out from a technique that is fashionable today works. to the fullest.
Director Jonathan Kent's production is solid, but largely inconsistent. In the fairy scenes and especially in the third act, he does not find his own language and uses someone else’s, worn and matted. But the scenes in the dyehouse, the actions of Barack and his wife, are developed in detail and clearly.
Five great singers are needed for the main roles in "Woman Without a Shadow", without them there is nowhere. And the minor games are more difficult than the difficult ones. Among the vocalists, it was the performer of the secondary part - the Messenger of Spirits - who emerged as the leader: Nikolai Putilin made us believe that the highest authorities really speak through him. The trio of Barak brothers (Andrei Popov, Andrei Spekhov and Vyacheslav Lukhanin) worked with great efficiency. Among the protagonists, only Elena Vitman - the Nurse - deserves reproach: those places where she should have taken the lead were drowned in figurative inarticulation, primarily due to extremely careless singing.
August Amonov, of course, should have been glad that the director did not give him absolutely any acting tasks: stand there and sing. Making his debut in the complex role of the Emperor, Amonov showed himself to be a capable professional: the beautiful and significant music of the fragments given to him did not fade, and lived a full life. Edem Umerov in the role of Barak turned out to be more than in place: he carried the inner dignity of his hero both in his unstrained, freely flowing voice and in his stage presence - no T-shirt with all its everyday earthiness prevented him from doing this.
The struggle for leadership, as expected in this opera, unfolded between two dramatic sopranos - Young Khudoley in the role of the Empress and Olga Sergeeva in the role of Barack's wife. I don’t know who to give the palm to: both sang the premiere unevenly, and each had their own major achievements. Sergeeva sounded uncertain in the slow parts that required careful singing. But she simply tore off the second half of the second act: during this time we were able to look into the very core of her internal conflict. For a long time, Khudoley did not live up to the role of the main character; she looked both vocally and stage-wise too small. But in the third act she took revenge, and in the scene at the Golden Spring (the artist did not hide his caustic irony here either and arranged for the “golden rain” to fall from the grate) we felt the lyrical essence, the inner scale of the heroine, the animal endurance, and the attractiveness of the vocal singer's techniques.
For Valery Gergiev and his orchestra it was a big evening, one might say, a breakthrough evening. And in powerful tutti on fortissimo, and in soft solo episodes of instrumentalists, and in reflections, and in nervous breakdowns of characters, and in accompaniment, and in stimulating the singing will - Gergiev’s orchestra always retained its inner dignity, beauty of sound and figurative power. I remember the wonderful performances in Hamburg, Salzburg and Frankfurt and feel no less intense excitement in St. Petersburg. Gergiev and his orchestra made everyone believe in the high significance of Richard Strauss's difficult opera. There is great ambition hidden in the approach to “Woman Without a Shadow,” but the high result turns it into the highest responsibility to oneself, to one’s colleagues and to the public.