More Opera Oddities

Mikhailovsky Theatre, St. Petersburg

Since this was the last weekend before work starts to get very intense here, I devoted the bulk of it to seeing as many performances as possible. St Petersburg is offering no shortage of opportunities to see unusual operas.

At the Conservatory on Saturday night, my colleague Victoria Evtodieva participated in another concert in the Festival devoted to works about the Tsars. This one featured excerpts from two French operas nearly a hundred years apart, Grétry’s Pierre le Grand, based on the life of Peter the Great, and Bizet’s Ivan IV, about Ivan the Terrible.

Grétry, whose name would be a perfect answer for a crossword puzzle in a musicology journal, was a French contemporary of Haydn who wrote about 75 operas(!). Bizet, of course, is famous for Carmen and the Pearl Fishers, not to mention that scintillating fluffy omelet of an opera called Dr. Miracle that I directed at Northwestern University and Western Michigan University. Ivan IV does include the aria “Ouvre ton coeur” which Bizet later reused in another opera and is often performed independently with piano.

Victoria, a specialist in 18^th century vocal music, sang an aria and a duet in the Grétry. A number of student, alumni, and faculty performers brought the Bizet to life. Preceding the concert the Director of the School told the stories of the operas, much to the amusement of the audience, since they bear little relationship with the actual historical events.

The performances were delightful, especially a wonderful up and coming soprano named Nadezhda Kucher. She is a student at the Conservatory but thrillingly knocked out a couple of spectacular arias from the Bizet. She sounds like kind of a cross between Judith Blegen and Edita Gruberova. Another casting sensation was the last minute substitution of the director of the opera program for an indisposed student. His performance was vocally and dramatically commanding.

On Sunday I saw two professional opera productions. The first was a version of the Cinderella story by Soviet composer Boris Asafiev. The music was very pleasant, neo-classic stuff, almost a musical, and was intended for kids. It could easily be put on in a college opera workshop production.  This staging was presented at the Mikhailovsky Opera House, which is a beautiful quasi-rococo theatre in the heart of Saint Petersburg just off of Nevsky Prospect. The Mikhailovsky Opera and Ballet company is also known as the Mussorgsky Opera Company, apparently due to a production of Boris Godunov which was a surprise hit.

In the evening I saw two acts of Glinka’s Russlan and Lyudmila at the Mariinsky Theatre. This is really one of the seminal works of Russian opera. Following his Life of the Tsar this work solidified the notion of the viability of Russian national opera, including folk elements and popular stories—this one involving good and evil magicians and lots of magic tricks, including singers flying through the air. This performance was well sung and the sets and costumes were stunning. Surprisingly it was a co-production with the San Francisco Opera, originally directed by my old boss there, Lotfi Mansouri.

Despite the many virtues of the production, including a lyric soprano with a ravishing timbre and a big and funny comic bass playing a part once recorded by Chaliapin, after a couple of acts my capacity to sit and watch exotic operas had finally been reached. I bet you never thought that could happen, did you?