Neil McGowan offers
a run-down on Moscow’s multi-facetted opera scene.
Moscow has always had a lot to offer
culturally. It was, of course, the capital of the USSR, a country which
placed huge importance on the mind-improving benefits of high art. Whilst
many might smirk at the eccentricity of building an opera-house in the
middle of the South-American jungle at Manaus, the solemn purposefulness
with which the USSR erected even grander temples of the operatic art
for the yurt-dwelling nomads of Siberian Buryatia seems no less quirky.
Soviet munificence was equally generous to the populations of Tashkent
and Almaty, and workers in the smelting-plants of Novosibirsk could
be sure of a cracking performance of Les Sylphides to relax after work.
The soviet border was no bar to cultural generosity either, and the
steppes of Outer Mongolia were soon graced with benefits of soviet culture,
in the form of Ulaanbaater Grand Opera House. Wherever there’s a Lenin
Square, it’s a safe bet that the adjoining building adorned with a bas-relief
of wheat-sheaves and hammer-and-sickles will be the Opera House (in
honour, of course, of Lenin). Certainly the oddest production of La
Traviata I ever saw was in 1981 in Tbilisi – Violetta sang in Russian,
Alfredo sang in Italian, Germont Pere turned-in a noble performance
in Bulgarian, whilst the revellers at Violetta’s tables did their revelling
in their native Georgian. The public, being Georgians, occupied themselves
with showing-off their finery, smoking furiously in the intervals and
trying to change money with the English bloke in the specs.
But nowhere did the USSR do itself prouder
in the field of cultural endeavour than in the capital itself. Russians
are inordinately fond of international culture, and dazzlingly eclectic
in their tastes. Moscow’s drama theatres this week (and every week)
are packing-out houses with Pirandello, Stoppard, Gozzi, Tennessee Williams
(four different productions), Campanile, Anouille, Wilde, Erdmann, de
Filippo, Flaubert, Strindberg, Scribe, de Rostand, Calderon, Neil Simon,
Goldoni, Schiller, Ginsburg, Shaw, Ibsen, Maupassant, at least twelve
Shakespeare plays and much else besides – alongside a broadside of classic,
obscure and avant-garde Russian work. And very much in the vanguard
are no less than five venues presenting full-scale orchestral
opera productions, quite separately from the Operetta and four venues
showing musicals. (The musicals are all home-grown; although Chicago
opens here soon starring Russia’s version of Lulu, Alla Pugacheva, her
successful daughter Kristina Orkabaite, and her talentless husband Filipp
Kirkorov. Kirkorov was born to sing "Mr Cellophane shoulda been
my name", although I fear he’s going to be playing the lawyer).
The Bolshoi Theatre, is of course,
the name that first springs to mind when we mention opera in Moscow
– although for the rest of the world, it’s primarily known as a ballet
venue. The Byzantine back-stage back-stabbing battles at the Bolshoi
recently made A Masked Ball seem like Orville’s Christmas
Show by comparison. Artistic Directors have come and gone quicker
than the smoked salmon sandwiches at the interval. Much of this storm
in a Russian tea-cup has in fact been focussed upon the standards (or
alleged lack of them) of the ballet output – for when push comes to
shove, it is the ballet claque who pull the Bolshoi’s strings. However,
new Musical Director Alexander Vedernikov has come-up with a face-saving
formula to buy himself enough time to concentrate on rebuilding the
opera company and orchestra to the standards properly fitting a national
"centre of excellence" - after half a decade of neglect in
which they have been innocent pawns in the empire-building battles going
on above their heads. The formula may not be innovative, but the critical
press no longer barks for the Head of the Artistic Director after each
disastrous premier. The ballet claque have been placated with appearances
of their beloved stars (many of whom had been fired by the previous
management and were dying to come back anyhow) in easy-listening repertoire.
The opera repertoire has been pruned of Shostakovich and Prokofiev,
and a more crowd-pleasing selection of Verdi, Tchaikovsky and Puccini
is now on offer. Even if they’re all revivals (or borrowed La Scala
productions like Adriana Lecouvreur) the audience is,
at least, not baying for blood afterwards. For a company that’s going
to have to go cap in hand to National Government and commercial sponsors
for the price of a wholly rebuilt theatre within the next two years,
critical acclaim and public support count for a lot right now. There
are still many problems remaining, however. The present building is
literally falling-down, the "pit" is simply a curtained-off
area of the stalls partly lowered in the 1930’s, and the financial position
is officially classified as a State Secret – which rarely signals anything
to be proud of in Russia. The theatre is also cursed with the dubious
accolade of being a National Institution – on the Federal Budget. This
means that whilst other Moscow theatres benefit handsomely from the
comfy local budgets of Mayor Luzhkov’s Moscow City Administration, the
poor old Bolshoi gets back-burnered by every flood, earthquake, explosion
or epidemic to hit any square kilometre of the world’s largest country
– and who can ethically argue for more scarlet velvet and gold leaf,
when pensioners are dying of hypothermia in Vladivostok? A rebuild has
been talked about for over a decade – and it seems that until the Bolshoi
actually falls down around the ears of the performers in a Gõtterdãmerung
more realistic than Wagner might ever have supposed, the present building
and make-do-or-mend approach will prevail. Getting seats for
the Bolshoi is rarely easy, mainly because over half of them are disposed
of through unofficial channels in the first place. Since the theatre
can’t afford to pay the artists the going rate, an old soviet practice
remains in place whereby they get part-paid in theatre tickets "for
their friends and relations". These are on-sold to the very active
touts who can be found hanging-around the theatre’s noble portico up
to curtain time, with opera tickets going for around $25 for top-tier
seats to $100-150 in the stalls. The Bolshoi is an old-fashioned design,
and apart from the Stalls and Amphitheatre, the rest of the seating
is in terraced boxes (called "yarus" in Russian). Both sound
and vision deteriorate rapidly as you go upwards – there are no bargains
in the balcony here. The touts who hang-around the official Box Office
(by the exit from Teatral’naya Metro Station adjacent) are slightly
more honest, if not more ethical, than those operating in the portico.
If you want to try your luck at getting a non-scalped seat, the ticket-window
which is in the portico (to the right of the main doors) sells tickets
at face prices, and – a handy tip – if you go along after 7pm when the
touts have laughed their way home with the takings, this window is open
until 8pm and often has tickets for shows later the same week. Here
you will pay around half the tout-price, but only if the show is unpopular
– an older revival, the second cast, or anything left by Shostakovich.
The Bolshoi these days even has a shop – round the back, down Petrovka
St, but apart from some dopey "best of Verdi" CDs featuring
"no-name" foreign ensembles and some dubiously-tasteful folksy
souvenirs, it is only of interest to those who want to buy dance footwear
and leotards at astronomic prices.
It’s worth mentioning how the Russian
Repertoire System works, since this differs considerably to what
you may be used to elsewhere. Most Russian theatres (both musical and
dramatic) keep between 12-20 productions permanently in their repertoire
all year round, rotating them so that in any week there is the chance
of seeing 3-4 different shows at the same theatre. For visitors to Moscow,
this presents a mind-boggling array of choice, although for those of
us that live here, it means that revivals are showing most of the time,
and some of the sadder old productions only eventually shuffle-off when
funds become available for something new to fill its shoes. Also, most
houses do not have "first" and "second" casts. Instead,
there might be four or five house principals who know any given role,
and all their names will appear in the program. Each night the house-attendants
have to go through all the programs with a pencil, ticking against the
artists who are appearing that evening, and very often it will be a
mix-and-match cast. (Hint – if the program is dual Russian-English,
as always at the Bolshoi and more sporadically elsewhere, it’s the Russian-language
version of the cast which gets pencil-ticked - but the order of artists
should be the same in the translation, so you can while-away the interval
working-out whom you’ve heard). Tonight’s Lensky might be next week’s
Monsieur Triquet. In fact, trying to find-out who will be performing
in advance is next to impossible – and where it is announced, it will
usually be wrong anyhow. Things have advanced a little since the soviet
era, however, and the chances of buying a ticket for The Nose and then
being presented with Madam Butterfly on the night ("good job! We
all hate that bloody Shostakovich!" confessed one house-attendant
when it last happened to me in St Petersburg) in Moscow are now quite
slim. However, in St Petersburg things are still done the soviet way,
with the repertoire announced only 2-3 weeks before performance, and
still subject to change without notice. Moscow’s houses vary, but many
now publish a schedule at least 2-3 months beforehand, and some even
print their annual season diary in advance these days. By the way, it
always starts at 7pm in Russia – unless your ticket says otherwise.
The opera season opens in late September or early October, and finishes
in June – over the months of July and August the companies are on holiday,
usually trying to make some money on a foreign tour somewhere.
If the Bolshoi Theatre broadly corresponds
to London’s Royal Opera House, then Moscow’s "English National
Opera" is the Stanislavsky-Muzykal’ny, to give the conversational
form of their name. The great theatre-director Stanislavsky has close-to-godlike
status in Russia (unlike Pushkin, who is widely-known to BE a god and
about whom no ill word may be spoken) and no fewer than three Moscow
theatres bear his name. The suffix "-Muzykal’ny" will save
you from seeing a brilliant but incomprehensible dramatic performance
of "The Cherry Orchard" when buying your tickets. There are
more than passing similarities – like ENO, the Stanislavsky-Muzykal’ny
is also based in a former variety theatre, whose unlovely interior is
nevertheless very functional, has decent acoustics even in the cheap
seats, has a better pit than the Bolshoi, and has a more accessible
ticket pricing policy. And like the ROH and the Coliseum, the two theatres
are a ten minute stroll apart from each other. In fact the S-M is Moscow’s
best operatic bargain, with prices running from US$10 for the best seats
to less than $2 if you sit in the balcony. But this is no cheapo alternative,
and the S-M has recently given the Bolshoi an artistic run for its money,
scooping the Golden Mask (Russia’s equivalent of the BAFTA’s) awards
in multiple categories. Their current run of success is relatively new-found
– if you had come to Moscow five years ago, you would have seen a depressing
cycle of standard favourites performed in productions calculated to
cure insomnia, and many of them still going from when Comrade Brezhnev
was a lad. However, a new artistic team is now in place. Musical Director
is the multi-talented Wolf Gorelich, previously MD at in the city of
Perm (to which the Bolshoi Ballet was evacuated in WW2), and he seems
to bring a golden touch to everything with which he’s involved. Moreover,
the long-term discipline of working with one principal conductor over
several years produces an assured orchestral sound here which outclasses
the ensemble at the other end of Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street rather too
often, considering they are supposed to be "the best in the country".
Productions at the S-M are now in the capable hands of young producer
Alexander Titel, whose output has yet to include a dud. Especially worth
catching here are a stunning Boheme (yes, I know you’ve
seen Boheme too often, but this is extra-special), a handsome Ernani
with some of the finest Verdian singing you’ll hear anywhere, performed
on a gargantuan set, and a riotous Die Fledermaus. However,
head and shoulders above those excellent shows is their spanking-new
Faust (Gounod), which is probably the hottest ticket in
Moscow this season. It’s a post-modernist view of the work that succeeds
on all counts – when Marguerite is stoned by the crowd after Valentin’s
death, the level-headed companion I’d gone with had to look away, with
tears in her eyes. Stepanovich’s Mephistopheles is a portrayal on an
international level – "coming to an opera house near you soon",
as they say, so watch out for him. Except for Faust (for which you need
to book a week or more in advance) you can usually get seats on the
day at the Box Office. If not, there are touts near the door from 6pm
onwards, and even if you have to pay 50% on top, it’s still a bargain
here. Be warned, they still have some of their tatty old productions
in repertoire until such time as they can afford to lose them – The
Queen Of Spades is a relic which is strictly for devoted fans,
and you might do better to keep your money than spend it on their horrid
old Ruslan & Ludmila, no matter how much you
wanted to see Russian opera in Russia. There is also a ballet company
at the theatre, whose productions share stage-time approximately 50-50
with opera – usually in blocks of about a week of each.
Only ten minutes walk further from the
Stanislavsky-Muzykal’ny brings you to Moscow’s spiffiest new purpose-built
opera-house, aptly named Novaya Opera, the New Opera. This is
the brainchild of St Petersburg maestro Evgeny Kolobov, and has both
the advantages and pitfalls of an opera house effectively run by a conductor
alone. Kolobov projects a "wunderkind" reputation, but I am
not convinced that he is really on the level he claims for himself.
However, it must be said that the musical side is definitely the strongest
suit at the Novaya. The dramatic level, however, is much more uncertain.
With no permanent house director, Kolobov seems to invite a strange
mixture of producers – from those with established international reputations
like Ralf Langbaka, through to ballet choreographer Alla Sigalova, whose
appalling Traviata was her first stab at opera-directing
and is one of the worst shows currently on Moscow stages. The repertoire
of the Novaya is also somewhat strange. There is a core of Verdi and
Tchaikovsky (Eugene Onegin, of course), of which their
Rigoletto is not bad in a dull and uneventful kind of
way – the kind of production that "Friends" organisations
often like, with a real jester who has an inflatable bladder on a stick.
It does, however, have Mikhail Gubsky as the Count, and he is undoubtedly
the best Verdian tenor in the country, so this alone is worth the ticket
price (which is averagely US$10-20). They also have a few rarities by
Russian standards, including the only staged Purcell in Moscow, Dido
& Aeneas. They seem to have fallen into some kind of loose
arrangement with Savonlinna to exchange productions, and many are tried-out
in Moscow first. Far less successful in my view are their "operatic
entertainments", which are really just "greatest hits"
evenings dedicated to a specific theme or composer. "Oh Mozart,
Mozart!" are Salieri’s words in the Rimsky-Korsakov two-hander
"Mozart & Salieri", but are also the title for a saccharine
entertainment about Mozart’s life, and more especially his death. I
would far rather have had the complete Rimsky, personally. "Bravissimo!"
is an even worse entertainment about Rossini, but if you have your old
mum with you and you want to keep her out of trouble, the listening
doesn’t get much easier than this. The public at the Novaya Opera are
mostly rather pretentious New Russians who don’t want anything too tricky,
and the whole experience is aimed at them. The building is new, plush
and elegant, you are welcomed by specially employed "greeters"
on arrival, who also say goodnight to you when you leave. The Box Office,
however, is run in a highly soviet manner, just to bring you back to
real life, with lots of pushing and shoving, and since you can’t buy
your tickets anywhere else (Bolshoi and Stanislavsky-Muzykal’ny can
be bought at Theatre Ticket Kiosks in the centre of town) there is no
way around this. There are two different box offices, one at either
entrance to the Hermitage Gardens where the theatre is located. Try
both – I was assured that a performance was "absolutely sold out"
at one, when tickets were easily available at the other. The Novaya
Opera theatre is often found in use for touring troupes since it is
such a nice venue – you might find ballet, rock concerts or variety
shows here sometimes, although none is based in the theatre.
It’s hard to disguise a personal enthusiasm
for Moscow’s most experimental opera venue, The Helikon Opera
– but their international reputation does perhaps excuse me in advance
a little here? The Helikon is the complete antithesis of the Novaya
Opera. If music comes first at the Novaya, then drama comes first at
Helikon. The venue is a completely inadequate hall which many would
consider a bit small for string quartet recitals, yet somehow artistic
director and impresario Dmitry Bertman squashes a full-sized orchestra
in. The stage is a little larger than your lounge at home, and all Helikon
productions somehow feature a colonnade of marble columns which are
non-removable feature of their listed-building home. The public here
is Moscow’s intelligentsia, plus a spattering of culturally aware ex-pats,
who come for the show, rather than to be seen in glamorous surroundings.
In this entirely unsuitable location the Helikon company give the most
carefully-considered, psychologically-accurate, and thought-provoking
productions you will see in Moscow. This is pure Stanislavsky method-acting,
the only place you are guaranteed to see credible acting from opera
performers who appear realistically the correct age and appearance for
their roles. The repertoire is mostly mainstream C19th, with Verdi and
Tchaikovsky prominent. However, the Helikon do Tchaikovsky incredibly
well and are the only house in Moscow to have actually staged the complete
cycle of his works - most of which are still in repertory. Their Onegin
is a disturbing contemporary drama of a man who cannot commit to love
– yet accurately and convincingly set in small-village Russia of the
C19th. Mazeppa – a piece which often conjures unconventional
reactions from producers in any case – is a masterpiece, combining dual
anachronistic period settings (C17th Russia with 1960’s Soviet Union)
in a drama which takes the issue of under-age love present in the original
story as its basis. They do an excellent production of Verdi’s Macbeth.
They also have a Lady Macbeth of Mtensk (Shostakovich)
which pulls no punches at all, and is a gritty story of sex and violence,
with practically no "good" characters at all, and a delightful
early Mozart rarity, Apollon et Hyacinthe. Slightly less
interesting are a couple of dramatic performances of Bach Cantatas –
the Coffee Cantata (during which, yes, coffee is served), and the Peasant
Cantata (which includes free beer). Bertman is not afraid to take risks,
and not everything is equally successful. Aida somehow
fails to get started (although it has some excellent detail), and there
is a curiously unemotional Carmen with a plot twist that’s
interesting if not completely convincing. Tickets are sold-out weeks
in advance, but try anyhow – from US$8-18, although the venue is so
small that it barely matters which you get. Worth knowing that the very
cheapest are not proper seats but little fold-out-flap efforts, which
you can tolerate for the Coffee Cantata, but which would make Aida an
uncomfortable evening. House principals worth following include the
remarkable tenor Nikolai Dorozhkin and the equally-good Alexei Kosarev
(a remarkable performance in the Shostakovich); baritones Mikhail Guzhov
and Andrei Vylegzhagin (a must-see Mazeppa); Svetlana Rossiyskaya as
Carmen; and a notable number of outstanding sopranos, of whom Marina
Kalinina, Svetlana Sozdateleva, Elena Voznesenskaya and Natalya Zagorinskaya
are just a few. Bolshoi Opera star Elena Morozova is a former Helikon
star.
Another small-scale house presenting
outstanding work is the tiny Pokrovsky Chamber Opera (once again,
it’s fuller name is too much of a mouthful). Professor Boris Pokrovsky
was the leading producer at the Bolshoi in the 60’s and 70’s, but at
the age of 85 he is still working, with his own tiny company in a small
theatre a stone’s throw from Red Square. The company certainly has the
most innovative repertoire in Moscow – they are not afraid to take on
even the larger romantic works (although not always successfully – it’s
hard to do Puccinni with only two desks of first violins and one desk
of seconds), but where they really excel is in smaller-scale pieces.
They have a super Paisiello Barber Of Seville which is
a fast-paced belly-laugh slapstick hit that still delivers accurate
and carefully-crafted musical lines. They have several Mozart standards
(Cosi fan tutte, Marriage of Figaro), and a don’t-miss
Monteverdi, The Coronation of Poppea, done as a "best-seller
political/sex intrigue" fast-moving thriller. The theatre itself
is brand new (if only the Helikon could get something like this?) and
remarkable for being convertible into multiple staging formats – in
the round, proscenium, traverse etc. Tickets are a steal, from US$4
to US$10 – treat yourself and buy the best ones. Specially worth catching
here is comic baritone Alexei Yatsenko in a variety of roles, Irina
Alekseenko as an outstanding comedienne with an awe-inspiring lyrico-spinto
soprano, Sergei Ostroumov whose incredible versatility covers both comic
servants and the Emperor Nero, and the exceptional young bass German
Yukavsky.
We should also mention the Moscow
Operetta. This organisation is currently going through a period
of considerable change. Their main repertoire has traditionally been
rather self-indulgent productions (some might say extremely self-indulgent)
of the "high end" of operetta – lots of Lehar, Strauss, Kalman
etc. However, in recent years they have also begun doing musicals, and
indeed they commissioned the first home-grown musical in Moscow, "Metro"
– a sort of "Miss Saigon in Russia" piece which is just as
sentimental as the rest of their repertoire. However, if you like this
sort of thing (and most of the audience here seem to know the repertoire
at least as well as the performers do) you may find something to your
liking here. But not for long… there is a current plan to demolish the
theatre (it is, we should say, in a very poor state indeed). According
to the plan, at least, they will construct a fast-track building here
which would become a temporary home for the Bolshoi Theatre whilst their
own theatre is rebuilt. Then the Bolshoi will reopen and the Operetta
Company can have their theatre back. The plan seems to work on the basis
that the audience of the Operetta are mostly old ladies who aren’t a
serious voice in politics and will not cause any trouble – and that
the Operetta can be safely moved to any other theatre in the meantime,
or sent on never-ending tours of Siberian cities pro-tem. Other views
are that this is simply a way to close-down the Operetta by stealth
– a view chiefly held by music-lovers. The absence of a Federal Budget
for any of the above, however, means that the arguments can carry-on
with increasing spitefulness between the aggrieved parties, without
the actual danger than anything will really happen.
There are also some piano-accompanied
opera performances given by Arbat Opera and Amadei. Although they are
meant for children, the productions of the Sats Childrens Music Theatre
can be very good ("starter" operas like The Magic Flute)
and are the launching pad for many younger singers. The Vishnevksaya
Opera School (still being built) is likely to be offering concerts,
staged scenes and complete works by its students once it opens, although
this will not be until late 2003.
Concert Halls, Recital Venues, Ensembles and other
groups will be covered in a later article.
LISTINGS: (tel no is the Box Office in all cases)
Bolshoi Theatre, Teatral’naya Ploschad’ #1, metro
Teatral’naya, 292 9986
Stanislavsky-Muzykal’ny Theatre, Bolshaya Dmitrovka
#17, metro Pushkinskaya, 229 2835
Novaya Opera, Karetny Ryad #3, metro Pushkinskaya,
200 0868
Helikon Opera, Bolshaya Nikitskaya #19, metro
Tverskaya or Biblioteka im. Lenina, 290 9071
Pokrovsky Chamber Opera, Nikolskaya #17, metro
Lyubyanka, 929 1390
Moscow Operetta, Bolshaya Dmitrovka #6, metro
Teatral’naya, 292 1237
[Arbat Opera usually perform weekly at Dom Aktera (recital
room, top floor), Arbat St #35 – side entrance]
neil@beetroot.org
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