"Don Juan" at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theater

Opera premiere

The plastic flexibility of movements and mise-en-scène of “Don Juan” literally corresponds to the plasticity of musical dramaturgy and seems to show it spatially

Photo: Kommersant / Yuri Martyanov / buy photo

The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theater released the last opera premiere of the current season - Mozart's Don Giovanni, the list of directors of which includes the name of the English conductor, Cambridge graduate William Lacy. He had already staged Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the theater, and this performance was impossible not to remember. But that’s not the only reason people were waiting for Don Juan. Other new productions this year were made for the music theater by guest directors - first Andrejs Žagars ("Tannhäuser"), then Peter Stein ("Aida"). Now, finally, the artistic director of the theater himself presented his work. YULIA BEDEROVA watched it.

Before its appearance, “Don Juan” was not really shown in modern Moscow. Although in recent years there have been two important European productions here: one of them - a hasty Moscow version of the French festival production by Dmitry Chernyakov (brilliant in Aix-en-Provence and awkward at the Bolshoi Theater) - the audience was disappointed. Another, a play by Robert Carsen, with which the La Scala theater opened after reconstruction, received ironic criticism and a good-natured reaction from the public on tour in Moscow. Now Mozart's main drama will be staged in a full-length local production, catering to a wide range of tastes.

The New Mozart in Moscow is a director's performance, but not enough to tease connoisseurs of operatic conservatism. Conceptually a compromise, not breaking existing ideas, but supplementing them with various bold fantasies, it is musically refined, simple and beautiful, which, in turn, neutralizes supporters of the theatrical avant-garde.

Moreover, Alexander Titel is really not limited to the layout of characters. He puts on a play with a theme. Like any self-respecting director, he stages an opera about opera, an opera about theater, an opera about culture, and in this case, an opera about the score. She is presented here as the main character, as Adomas Jacovskis’s set design directly tells the viewer from the first minute.

In the vast darkness of the empty space of the stage there is an equally bulky and ironic structure: a solid wall of old black pianos stacked on top of each other, here and there with a candlestick. The performance begins with a wave of the hands of the main characters - now they will play an opera for us on these pianos. This is roughly how it ends: after the piano wall (the clavier as a metaphor and as a physical form) literally absorbs its hero: the little man-Commander comically and gloomily drags Don Juan straight into the hammer mechanism - the characters joyfully turn into clavier players again . Of course, this is not hell, although it is unpleasant. Our hero can jump out of the columbarium of musical literature at any second when someone again comes up with the idea of reviving the musical notation in the clavier or in the orchestral score. Don Juan is dead only as long as the music remains a dead weight.

It must be said that this concept, completely literary in spirit, is depicted in the performance not only with conventional clavier graphics, but also with noticeable correctness in relation to real music. The plastic flexibility of movements and mise-en-scène literally corresponds to the plasticity of musical dramaturgy and seems to show it spatially. Titel makes a lot of use of curtains, openings, and sparse props in order not so much to unravel the confusion of the plot as to visualize the ensemble subtlety of Mozart, and it works. And where he slightly overextends with visualization - when in a dizzyingly complex aria the heroine has to put the next chair next to her on the floor for each subsequent coloratura, or when the underside of the Apollonian wall of musical culture turns out to be the plastic massif of a Dionysian vineyard - you should just listen. Moreover, there is something.

William Lacy's new work is again epoch-making for Moscow. It is completely devoid of avant-garde, authenticism, pomp and deafening effects. Everything is done at a very restrained pace and discreet dynamics, but this does not make the music lose any drama or beauty. Exactly the opposite. Lacy paints with subtle colors - at first they seem watery, but they become clearer and clearer with every turn of the drama. His colors and phrasing are particularly flexible and at the same time subject to a very strict movement and plan. In this elegant frame of simple restraint there is a sea of details, subtleties, amazing details, but not a single one claims to be valuable in itself. This melodious style, not so much gallant as correct, allowing one to hear all the lightest and saddest in the music, was probably Lacey's individual conducting style, and Britten sounded exactly the same. But he suits Mozart like few others.

And again, as was the case in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the orchestra and soloists are revealed in a completely new way, in which Mozart's abilities are happily revealed and surrounded by the conductor's care so that not a single vocal work in the performance looks raw or lightweight. And if you know what to expect from Khibla Gerzmava in the role of Donna Anna, or, say, Anton Zaraev - Leporello (here the character is also a composer and librettist: while the heroes are performing a comedy, he carefully writes down everything, so it’s clear that the future clavier is his hands case) already, it seems, will be good in any role, then, say, Maria Makeeva - another Donna Anna - becomes the opening of the performance. And the whole ensemble is so gloriously and beautifully constructed as rarely happens. However, no, this almost never happened before a good Mozart in Moscow. Now the Bolshoi is performing the musically beautiful performance “Cosi fan tutte”, and the music theater is performing “Don Juan”. You can now listen to Mozart here without pain. And this is the merit of both troupes, where there are many young voices, and guest conductors, who are also interesting not so much because of their age and merits, but because of their keen ear, education and fresh look.

From the clavier with love