"Theater is not a temperature of 36 and 6"

On April 19, the most anticipated premiere of the season with the innocent name Don Paskual will be held on the new scene of the Bolshoi Theater. The opera Gaetano Donitnitti puts the 31-year-old Novosibirsk director Timofei Kulyabin, who can not even be represented-his name after last year’s history with the Tangaiser became so well-known. Ekaterina Biryukova spoke about normal work in abnormal circumstances with Timothy Kulyabina.

- What is easier to put - a well -known plot or unfamiliar? After all, the viewer still needs to first explain what it is about, so that he later understands your interpretation.

- “Famous plot” - what is this?

-Well, after all, “Don Paskual” is not “three sisters” and not even “tangaiser” ...

- To be honest, even when you put the “three sisters” , after two premiere shows, you still find yourself in the hall for which this plot is absolutely unfamiliar. There is no such thing as “well -known material”. It disappears in the modern world. One way or another, you still have to re -explain this story. You cannot just argue with, let’s say, a traditional reading.

- Will it be funny at your Don Paskual?

- Hope. It should be funny there by definition. Because the material implies both irony and laughter. But for me this plot is unusual, frankly comic. I still had no experience in setting a comedy. And I myself am interested in dealing with this genre. I think that laughter in the theater is a situational thing. It cannot be calculated on paper. My very sense of humor is quite difficult. For example, I can not react to a joke, but to laugh at how a person is ridiculously holding a fork.

- Don Paskual yourself is funny or miserable? Or harmful, maybe?

- I would not want it to be determined by just one epithet. So that he was only miserable, or funny, or stupid for two and a half hours. No. I think that the material in this opera - both musical and dramatic - is enough for us to see it in several hypostles. The opera is called “Don Paskual”, and she, in general, is about this person. And the wider his palette, the better.

-Is there any modern type in it?

- I think yes. All this opera in its original version is such a large theatrical joke, played in rather abstract circumstances. She has the roots in the comedy del arte. A purely theatrical attraction. And my first task is that these people cease to be exclusively theatrical characters born on theatrical stage, and came to the stage from somewhere in life.

- How do you deal with opera convention?

- I am trying to play a certain realism, but there are a lot of conventions in music. The hero’s replica repeated 25 times, of course, convention. He, as it were, stops and begins to walk in a circle. Moreover, before that there was a rather intelligible dramatic recitative. Of course, you have to change this convention every time to change one time. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, there are purely theatrical problems. For example, Donitsetti states that the chorus of servants appears on the stage for only two measures. 25 people should have time to take the stage! So I should look like some piece of reality from my life, but the element of theatricality is still laid there from the very beginning.

- How easy is it to cope with the opera time, in which, unlike theatrical, you can not move anything, add and reduce? Everything is already prescribed in advance by the composer, and there is no getting away from this.

- Do not treat this as a problem. We must treat this as the conditions of the game. You need to understand why the composer needed this, and try to find this place and solution in a specific stage situation. Well, that is, do not fight music, with its logic.

-Nevertheless, in Tangaiser you still allowed yourself to stop Wagner's music several times-in the scene of the filming of the film about the grotto of Venus. Which is almost completely, not accepted in our opera world.

- Yes. There were these pauses. And there was a lot of disputes about this. But I don’t see anything criminal there. Because they were scenically very justified. And musically? Since there were no contradictions with the conductor and performers and all this was convincing for them, then this was no problem. Accepted, not accepted - a thin question. If something is not accepted, it does not mean that it is bad.

- Is it more difficult to work with opera artists than with dramatic?

- No, I can't say so. With those and others, I, in principle, do the same work. I try with them and with their help to tell human history. I still talk to them about the meanings, about situations, about human behavior. It is clear that the tools are slightly different, the method of the story is different, but the method of work, in general, does not change.

- In one of your previous interviews, you said that the 19th century was a century of playwright, XX - A century of director, and XXI - This is the age of the artist. It never occurred to you to do scenography?

- No, it never occurred to me to engage in scenography. First of all, I have no education. Without it, everything is quite difficult to competently and professionally organize on stage. This is a serious profession. I do not have it, so I hardly once climb this territory. But when I talked about the artist, I meant a little wider than just a scenography. I meant a way of thinking. Today, really in directing, a lot of people from the visual world come to the theater. These are not only scenaographers, but also video artists, and people involved in installation, actionism. This is not just a scenography on stage, this is a visual image as a substantial unit. The world has changed. Our psychology has changed. We live in a world where we read 95 percent of information visually. Therefore, this is rather not a question about the scenographer, but about a person thinking of a visual object, and not a text or an acting unit.

- Why does an old and conditional opera genre attract more and more people from the world of contemporary art?

- It is difficult for me to talk on this topic - there is too little opera experience. Maybe because the opera is the most conservative art and the most heavily swinging. In the mass of your. Although there are already quite a lot of examples of radical gestures, radical interpretations and radical forms. Probably, artists who are looking for some modern forms are interesting to take the opera, because they need to push the most there, there are more prohibitions, more than what-how is it? - "Not accepted." In the drama - everything has long been accepted there.

- Can I ask a popular philistine question? Why "modernize" the opera?

- I can only tell you convincingly about the reality that I know. I will not be able to put a performance in the style of the 19th century. I have never been in the 19th century. I did not live on planet Earth before 1984. I can’t explain how people go in the 19th century, how they talk, how they wear a costume. I can only imagine this to myself - by films, by books. And to explain their representation to the performers, who, in turn, with their representation will show us how it would probably be. That is, of course, you can set such a goal, but in this situation I take off the task of being reliable in advance.

Therefore, I do not see any move at all that I take “Don Paskual” and transfer it to our days. There is no particular courage in this. I put him in the environment in which I live, which is clear to me, in which I can navigate.

- The proposal to deliver Don Paskual from the Bolshoi Theater received long before everything that happened with Tangaiser. Weren't any adjustments and additional precautions to your work on the part of the theater?

- No, this did not happen. The proposal came from the General Director Vladimir Georgievich Urina even before the rehearsals of the opera Wagner. Then he looked at the record of the Tangiar, and, as, in general, everyone who saw him understands that there is nothing dangerous there.

- Well, in general, the atmosphere around you in the theater is? Does the air are in the air with pickets and horse police?

- In the theater itself, I think no. But around I feel some completely bad and wrong agitation. For some reason, the belief is hovering that I will break something, overthrow. This is a consequence of that dirty, dishonest local situation with the opera of Wagner, which is all of the lies from the very beginning. But there is such a philistine position on this score, such a Fleur. And I still live with the wording “Scandalous director”. This prefix now stuck to me for a very long time. Although I have never been a scandalous director. He never set the task for himself.

In principle, such a task can stand. I know the directors, and very good ones who really know how to meaningfully, correctly and deeply make a scandal. There is no need to relate to this word only negatively, when it comes to the theater. The theater is generally initially not a temperature of 36 and 6. If the theater is 36 and 6, then it becomes very fresh. If everything is smooth, smooth, calm, then this is rather leisure. And the theater is still an art that should cause more intense emotions.

I would call an alarming expectations about the production of Don Pasquale. Agree, it is quite strange from the opera-buff to make some kind of radical statement. No, of course, it can be made of anything, even from gamut to major. But if you set the task to tell the story that is in the opera, then, it seems to me, it is difficult to compose something shocking. These expectations are strange to me, but I understand their nature.

Rehearsals of the opera "Don Paskual"