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Lady
Macbeth Gets Her Way At Last George
Loomis The Helikon Opera's production of Dmitry Shostakovich's "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" looked like a strong contender for a Golden Mask opera award this year, but few would have predicted the sweep of its victory Monday night. The production won four of the five awards in the opera division this week, including best opera, best director of an opera (Dmitry Bertman), best conductor of an opera (Vladimir Ponkin) and best female performer in an opera (Anna Kazakova). St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater, the most artistically powerful of Russia's opera companies, scored only for best male performer: Viktor Chernomortsev, who sang Alberich in Richard Wagner's "The Rhein Gold." In addition to "The Rhein Gold," the Mariinsky was nominated for Amadeus Mozart's "Don Giovanni." Nominations also went to two Pyotr Tchaikovsky stagings, "The Queen of Spades" from the St. Petersburg Opera and "Eugene Onegin" from the Saratov Theater of Opera and Ballet. The Bolshoi Theater, as in the past few years, was not nominated for any production in the opera category. Pitting Russia's other opera companies against the Mariinsky makes for an annual contest of Davids against Goliath, but the result, obviously, isn't guaranteed. Last year the Mariinsky prevailed with Sergei Prokofiev's rarity "Semyon Kotko" against strong competition from the Helikon's "The Golden Cockerel" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and now the Helikon has evened the score. If the judges preferred "Lady Macbeth" to "The Golden Cockerel," one reason might be that it's a stronger opera. And no one could overlook the historical importance of the production, for it was the first staging of the original version of "Lady Macbeth" by a Moscow theater since Josef Stalin silenced the opera in 1936. It was as if this sharp-edged story about an oppressed provincial wife finally triumphed over a repressive, paranoid regime. Compared with the revision Shostakovich made after Stalin's death, the original is more forthright in its eroticism, which suits the Helikon just fine. The best conductor award meant that well-deserved recognition went to Vladimir Ponkin, whose powerful reading inspired the Helikon orchestra — ordinarily not one of the theater's prime attractions — to give its best. Perhaps the judges indulged in a bit of handicapping, given that Valery Gergiev (a frequent Golden Mask winner) was in top form for "The Rhein Gold" and "Don Giovanni" in performances given at the Bolshoi Theater. Bertman turned Katerina into a bored socialite too eager to break out of her claustrophobic existence, as symbolized by the cage-like structures of her husband's industrial enterprise. The frisky Helikon chorus has an uproarious time at her wedding to her new lover, Sergei. But in the fourth act Bertman's apparently irrepressible urge to rewrite opera gets the better of him. Katerina, convicted of murder and abandoned by Sergei, here reaches under her dress for a doll and proceeds to dismember it, as if she didn't have enough problems. And instead of the opera's climactic murder/suicide of Katerina and Sergei's new girl, they merely fight in slow motion over a scarf, making for an inconclusive close. Yet, through it all, Kazakova sustained her compelling performance in the title role. Unlike the Academy Awards, which the Golden Mask so obviously resembles, individual nominations are made only to participants in nominated shows. This disqualified those involved with "War and Peace" at the Mariinsky, which, as an opera that bowed during the 1999-2000 season, was also eligible. Perhaps Andrei Konchalovsky's production was too complicated to meet the Golden Mask requirements, but neither of the Mariinsky's nominated productions rivals it. Ironically, both of these were staged by the German director Johannes Schaaf, who parted company with the theater last fall for unspecified reasons. The company's new production of Wagner's "Ring" cycle, of which "The Rhein Gold" is the first installment, will be completed by the Australian director David Freeman. "The Rhein Gold" production, steeped in the theatrical style of Wieland Wagner, the composer's grandson who set the standard for postwar Wagner stagings, is a sensible one for an audience experiencing its first "Ring" in decades. But the final scene is a dimly lit muddle, redeemed by the grandeur of Gergiev's musical performance. And it must be observed that Chernomortsev's portrayal of the villainous Alberich, while undeniably powerful, lacks clear German diction. Schaaf's grim "Don Giovanni" takes too sadistic a view of the protagonist to do justice to Mozart's music but offered a chance to hear some of the Mariinsky's best young singers, including Yevgeny Nikitin in the title role and Irina Matayeva as Zerlina. The Saratov and the St. Petersburg opera offerings strove for the outer limits of director theater. Dmitry Belov's staging of "Eugene Onegin," seen at the Noyaya Opera, seems to be set in an institution (a school? a hospital? an insane asylum?). Onegin, briefcase in hand, looks like a frazzled commuter just off the 7:12 who decides to pay the Larin family a quick visit en route home. Yet he also manages to appear in Tatyana's bedroom to receive her letter in person. The real surprise, though, is the innocuous Monsieur Triquet, who becomes a real troublemaker, even masterminding Onegin's duel with Lensky (well sung by Nikolai Bekmukhambetov). Quite dreadful. The St. Petersburg Opera is run by Yury Alexandrov, a longtime Mariinsky director who staged last year's winner, "Semyon Kotko." He seems to regard the smaller company as a forum for less-than-orthodox ideas. His "Queen of Spades," performed at the Children's Theater, was set at various times during the 20th-century — World War I, the 1930s, post-communism — an idea as intriguing as it is remote from the spirit of Tchaikovsky's opera. The compulsive gambler Hermann is variously popping drugs or suffering from some sort of fit, but he still wins the attention of the ladies — even, apparently, the elderly Countess (portrayed with striking youthfulness by Yelena Yeremeyeva). One had to be well versed in Russian life to understand what Alexandrov was alluding to, but the audience apparently had a grand time, especially with the dedication of a Soviet sculpture during the ceremonial second act. It so happens that Alexandrov is scheduled to stage "The Queen of Spades" in Grand Rapids, Michigan, next year. Presumably, he'll offer something rather different then.
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