Intermezzo

The Tsarina's Slippers at the Royal Opera House

Cherevichki / The Tsarina's Slippers - Royal Opera House, 20 November 2009

The Royal Opera House have chosen to bestow upon their new production of Tchaikovsky's Черевички (Cherevichki or Tcherevichki) an appropriately Royal title - The Tsarina's Slippers - in place of The Little Shoes, as it's usually known in English. Me I prefer the punchier and more accurate Little Boots, but sadly that one is already taken.

Francesca Zambello's folksy production with its mostly-Russian cast is intermittently entertaining but I spent much of its three hours looking at my watch and dreaming of crisps.

The opera's lack of momentum, which must play a part in the relative rarity of performances, can't be blamed entirely on the director though. Tchaikovsky doesn't seem to care much for his central story in which Vakula, a simple village smith, enlists the Devil's aid to procure a pair of the Tsarina's fancy boots, the only way he can win the heart of a vain village girl. He seems more interested in Vakula's witchy mother and her gruesome suitors, not to mention the numerous opportunities to slip in a quick ballet.

However enchanting some of these diversionary episodes are, they all fragment the story to the point where it's hard to care less about any of the characters. You could wander out for ten minutes and not really miss anything (a point to bear in mind when the BBC broadcast this over Xmas). The inevitable cuts don't help either. Why keep in all the royal minister's endless windbagging, but cut out the Cossacks' entrance to court, which explains how Vakula gets in to see the Tsarina?

For all the Royal Opera's attempts to sell this opera as Tchaikovsky's hidden comic side, it's telling that Vakula's longest and most effective scene is not some festive fairytale nonsense, but the one where he's contemplating suicide at the water's edge.

Two things hold this production together. The first is Alexander Polianichko's marvellous conducting. He doesn't just display the music, he conducts the whole opera with a splendid ear for drama and support for the singers. Inevitably some colour and detail is sacrificed for pace, but I think it's the right choice. The other is the design. Mikhail Mokrov's charmingly naive sets and Tatiana Noginova's traditionally-inspired costumes fill the stage with busy colour, though at the expense sometimes of any clear idea of location.

Apart from that, it's a collection of set pieces, some more successful than others, with the highlights coming from the Royal Ballet's contributions. Alastair Marriott went with a traditionally-styled pastiche that fits the production like a glove. His perfectly-judged idiomatic choreography includes an underwater nymph dance, a royal ball and a couple of delightful pas de deux, Gary Avis lofting tiny Mara Galeazzi with a grace and purity of line that made an affecting contrast to the riotous clamour of the village peasantry. A huge hairy dancing bear in pointe shoes (we guessed Bennet Gartside from the size) added more colour to the grand party finale.

The biggest applause of the night went deservedly to the team of spectacular high-kicking Cossack dancers who emerged from beneath the skirts of a giant golden Tsarina effigy  - their chapkas and p0rn 'taches cunningly concealing the fact they come from Nottingham.

The singing was Russian through and through, full of heart and gusto. Not a lot of finesse though. The likeable Vsevolod Grivnov had to work hard to be heard, but his lyrical tenor made Vakula the pick of the bunch. Olga Guryakova's powerful but wayward soprano made it only too clear that the part of the shoe-loving Oxana is not an easy sing. At least the petulant charm that enraptures Vakula came more easily than the notes.

Maxim Mikhailov was desperately underpowered as the Devil, as none of his tail-twirling antics could conceal - was his prosthetic piggy snout a problem perhaps?  Larissa Diadkova's mumsy witch Solokha would put the wind up no-one. At this stage in her long career she sounds more timeworn than her remarkably smooth brow might suggest, but that's no handicap in this part. The one unequivocally successful non-dancing scene ended in a quartet with her four lovers concealed in coal sacks - some splendid deep Russian voices especially from Vladimir Matorin as Chub.

The vocal shortcomings might have been less obvious if the singers had been better directed. But it appeared everyone had been choreographed into position and left to their own devices, leaving the task of entertaining the audience to the scenery. It almost worked.

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Mariinsky do Die Walkure

Die Walküre - Mariinsky Opera - Royal Opera House, 30 July 2009

Things are looking up. Part two of the Mariinsky's Ring Cycle was a definite improvement on the previous night. Like swine flu is better than TB, that is. Still tosh, but evidently planned and rehearsed a little more than Das Rheingold. Performers looked less lost, there were fewer obvious mishaps, and the action was generally a lot more credible.

Gergiev had a patchy night. He wasn't able to maintain the febrile energy he brought to the first act prelude, but the playing did occasionally catch fire later in spite of sluggish tempos and a generally underweight sound.  

Larissa Diadkova sang much more incisively than the previous night and made a commanding Fricka.  It was the only truly world-class performance of the evening. Olga Savova was a shrill (if largely accurate) Brünnhilde, Mikhail Kit's Wotan was expressive but worn, and skipped text, Mlada Khudoley's Sieglinde was hysterically overplayed and Avgust Amonov's wildly variable Siegmund missed more notes than he hit (and his tone narrowed to a costive bleat even then). When one of the Valkyries skipped an entire line, it was par for the course.

The monumental coprolites were again in place all night as the only scenery - so why we needed over two hours of intervals is beyond me. It made a long night even longer.

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Das Russian Rheingold

Das Rheingold - Mariinsky Opera - Royal Opera House, 29 July 2009

Infantile, cartoonish, theatrically inept - unfortunately it looks as if this Ring Cycle is going to tick all the boxes that its past critics claim for it, despite a supposed 'restaging' earlier this year.

Stark lighting exposes the shortcomings of the bare set, semaphore substitutes for acting, and the 'difficult' scenes - fights and physical transformations and so on -  are bereft of imagination or credibility. (The Tarnhelm is a big hankie, and it's kind of downhill from there.) The less said about the pewpie dolls hanging from the ceiling, the better. Oh, and the stagehands chatted - loudly - during the music. Can you believe it?

On the upside (yes there is one), while it may be risible, it's not irritating and it doesn't get in the way. I'd just like to have had some sort of intellect or perspective applied, that's all.

And the casting isn't bad. Evgeny Nikitin (Wotan), Evgeny Ulanov (Donner), Zhanna Dombrovskaya (Freia) and Vadim Kravets (Fasolt) can really sing, even if the (lack of) direction means they flounder physically. Larissa Diadkova brought her inimitably starry presence and a powerful set of lungs to Fricka, and Nikolai Putilin's tremendous range of expression made it easier to overlook the shoutiness of his Alberich. Andrei Popov (Mime) proved himself the only convincing actor of the bunch and Zhanna Dombrovskaya (Woglinde) was the best of the Rhinemaidens.

The Mariinsky Orchestra played well, though Gergiev didn't seem to have any particular goal in sight other than getting through it. Das Rheingold, with all its various 'effects', is the part of the Ring you'd expect him to excel at. But the anvil chorus slipped by, and Donner's thunderstorm lacked climactic impact. All rather monochromatic. Part of the problem was an understaffed and underequipped percussion section - it's the bit of the orchestra you don't tend to notice unless it's not quite right. Doesn't bode well for the rest of the cycle.

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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.