Intermezzo

Pen pushing in Petersburg

For a few brief weeks of summer, the sun doesn't set on St Petersburg. (So that's why Gergiev looks so shagged out....)

These 'White Nights' have given their name to a two-month music festival founded by Gergiev, which according to the Mariinsky's website "is one of the capital cities on the world´s music and theatre map and has emerged to be one of the most popular and grandiose music forums in terms of content and scale." Rite.

One of the highlights is a run out for the Mariinsky Opera's Ring cycle before they bring it to Covent Garden at the end of the month.

And last Friday, there was a gala concert featuring Gergiev, the ubiquitous Lang Lang, and two amazingly talented young Mariinsky singers who visited the Barbican last winter, Kristina Kapustinskaya and Alexei Markov. They both won young singers prizes sponsored by posh pen makers Montblanc, who brought over glamorous Eva Green (back to her natural auburn) for some belle et bête photo ops with Gergiev and others.

 

Comprehensive slide shows below, including bizarre pre-concert dinner with ballerinas pirouetting between the tables:

White Nights Festival Reception and Gala Dinner(June 25, 2009 in St. Petersburg)

White Nights Festival - Gala Concert (June 26, 2009 in St. Petersburg)

 

White Nights Festival Award Ceremony And Montblanc Press Conference (June 26, 2009 in St. Petersburg)

Mariinsky at the Barbican part 2 - The Demon

The Demon - Mariinsky Theatre / Gergiev - Barbican, 31 January 2009

The second concert in the Mariinsky Theatre's Barbican mini-series maintained the standards of the first.

Anton Rubinstein's The Demon is nothing like as well-known or as frequently performed as his pupil Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades. There are reasons for that. It's dramatic - but the story takes a while to get going. It's melodic - but the tunes are not 'quite' memorable. It has moments of startling innovation - but they're over all too soon don't add up to a truly inventive whole in the way that even the least of Tchaikovsky's operas do.

OK, these are pretty fundamental flaws. But Gergiev and the Mariinsky did their utmost to sweep them aside, in a performance of such glorious, sizzling vitality you could forget it was just a row of guys singing in front of an orchestra.

Major credit must go to Evgeny Nikitin in the title role, a truly diabolical demon.

Ladies and gentlemen, he has a tattoo on his *head*.

Yes, a tattooed head - suck on that, Rene Pape. Look!...

Not to mention tattoos on his knuckle-dustered hands and who knows how many more hidden up his long sleeves. A truly great actor, who 'is' rather than 'does', he made a fearsome and compelling stage presence, tinged with menace even in the sweetest of his serenades to Tamara, the beautiful human he has fallen for.

And the voice!  As if any further qualifications were necessary, he possesses a luxurious velvety bass-baritone that seems to emerge as nature intended, unfettered by the technical proficiency that shapes and colours every note.

Irma Gigolaty, trussed and bustled like an Victorian governess, and the sturdy tenor Evgeny Akimov played Tamara and her fiance. Neither were quite perfectly cast - she sounded as if she'd rather be singing Vissi d'arte, he Questa O Quella - but they did a decent enough job.

The deep, oily basses of Gennady Bezzubenkov and Grigory Karasev lent an unmistakeably Russian flavour, and Kristina Kapustinskaya was back for a second striking performance, this time as Tamara's guardian angel. Perched behind the orchestra, her voice floated over them like a ribbon of dark smoke.

But once again it was Gergiev's star that shone most brightly. The clangour of the battle scene, the subtlest of string pianissimi, the nod to Russian liturgical chant - those all-too-brief flashes of Rubinstein's genius that elevate this work above the merely pedestrian - these were shaped lovingly and with the utmost craftsmanship.

Another time, another place, another company and this would have been just another also-ran opera, a rightly-forgotten relic. But Gergiev and the Mariinsky proved the power of a great performance.

 

    

   

 

 

Mariinsky's Queen of Spades at the Barbican

Queen of Spades - Mariinsky Theatre / Gergiev - Barbican, 30 January 2009

The Mariinsky Theatre scored an undisputed away win with the first opera of their three-night Barbican residency. 

And a two-fingered salute to those who whine that Gergiev doesn't rehearse enough.

Maybe he didn't rehearse this at all - I don't know - with his non-stop schedule it's hard to see how he could fit much in. But 'enough' rehearsal is however much the ensemble in question need to achieve the required results. With a competent orchestra who know the work, are nurtured in the same traditions as the conductor, and appreciate that half the joy of music-making is those unexpected moments of inspiration, then maybe rehearsals can be shelved altogether. It helps of course that Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades is a Mariinsky staple. But this was no warhorse plod, it was a faultless and minutely-detailed performance, fresh and alive.

The Barbican has a notoriously lousy acoustic, but Gergiev's LSO job has taught him how to work it. You could believe it was the best concert hall in the world, so perfect was the balance between the lusciously warm Mariinsky strings, the dazzling brass and whispering winds. And with the singers lined up out of sight in front of him, there must have been some kind of ESP at play - no slips, no imbalances. No wallowing either. Gergiev's pace was brisk and his accents decisive, sugar-free romance that displayed the full palette of Tchaikovsky's remarkable orchestral colouring.

Last week most of the cast were performing the opera in the Mariinsky Theatre itself. They brought all the physical expressivity of their staged performance to this no-scores-required concert version, and the drama came alive in a way it rarely does in the concert hall. Not one performance was less than strong, and some were very good indeed.  

Larissa Diadkova simply *is* the Countess, grand but vulnerable, burdened by her terrible secret, conveying with the twist of a note the omnipresent fear of death lurking beneath the silver-spoon graciousness. With the nostalgic reverie of her Grétry aria she held the audience spellbound.

Vladimir Galusin is a sort of Russian Domingo with a dark, baritonal quality beneath his bright ringing tones, and he gave an intense and powerful performance as Herman. I didn't quite buy the transition from lovelorn innocent to manic gambler, but I think that's as much Tchaikovsky's fault as any singer's, and a problem that disappears in a good staging.

The noble baritone of Alexey Markov produced the most purely beautiful singing of the night in the short part of Yeletsky. And Kristina Kapustinskaya, doubling up as Polina and Milovzor, should be on everyone's watch list - an outstanding smoky-timbred mezzo with a haunting quality that stops you in your tracks.

The quality of the chorus was underlined when Viktor Antipenko stepped up out of the ranks to perform the small roles of Master of Ceremonies and Chaplitsky. Many opera houses would be happy to have a clear big voiced tenor like that singing their leads.

But all this would have been as nothing without Gergiev, who feels this music in his bones and transmitted it through his fluttering fingertips.