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Opera Review: Prokofiev’s War and Peace at The Met
(Photos by Ken Howard)
Last night, The Metropolitan Opera brought together Russians and Americans, horses and goats, all four seasons, and a polymorphic, rotating dome-shaped stage in an effort to realize Prokofiev’s truncated adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. (The production was originally produced at The Met in 2002). It was the largest number of performers The Met has ever had on its cavernous stage, with supernumeraries up the hoo-ha, flooding the stage as party guests, corps of soldiers, or mobs of angry Siberians. Navigating the evening’s program felt like an epic task; it alone is a small novella. But all grandeur aside, it was simply the quality of singing that gave breath–and life–to this work of unwieldy dimensions.
Taken on its own, the first half of the evening was the best opera I have seen this season (the steam beings to run out in the third hour). The score calls for over sixty sung roles. And the fact that every soloist, from the prosaic Field Marshal Kutuzov to the two-minute cameo of Napoleon’s flamboyant servant, should give us pause to consider why The Met has failed to cast well other operas this season that have had far less demanding proportions.
Baritone Alexej Markov, debuting at The Met as the noble heartthrob Andrei, immediately swept the first scene into vast, romantic territory. His attractive, confident stage presence supported a flawless technique that is gilded with a platinum ring. Not once did he produce anything other than a world-class sound. The Met would do well to borrow him more from the Marinsky.
Marina Poplavskaya, also giving a Met debut, followed suit as Natasha, the petulant teenager who falls in love with Andrei. Her lyric soprano voice is enormous, and she brought a believable, aggressive naivety to the role. Although, sometimes her floated notes felt on the under side of the pitch, but that may just be where her voice falls. Ekaterina Semenchuk, as Natasha’s devoted friend Sonya, also sang well.
As Natasha’s god-mother, Madame Akhrosimova, mezzo Larisa Shevchenko delivered a powerful performance, layered with equal amounts of consternation and pity. When she intercepts Natasha’s plans to flee with the bad-boy, Anatol (sung wonderfully by Oleg Balashov), after breaking her own engagement with Andrei who has been sent by his disapproving father to study abroad, a quarrelsome duet ensues, and the two women trade popping, combative outbursts that filled the opera house with ear-tingling chatter.
British tenor, Kim Bagley, was convincing as Pierre, the scholarly Freemason who is secretly in love with Natasha, but sets his feelings aside to act as her guardian in the absence of her parents. It is his task to carry most of the second half of the opera. And there wasn’t much more he could do. Part of the reason why the production may have flatlined is due to the writing of the opera, the focus of which switches from juicy romance to brutal war. It’s hard to make interesting five scenes in a row where the characters are debating military tactics, even if one of them is Napoleon Bonaparte.
Sam Ramey’s performance as Field Marshal Kutusov was a favorite of the crowd. I can certainly understand that, considering his illustrious career. But his vibrato is so wide that one of the little girls at the end of the opera could have jump roped through it. I’d prefer a tighter sound, but that’s just us, apparently.
Prokofiev’s music is both romantic and modern. It sounds partially in the vein of Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier but with a distinctly more vertical edge. There are moments that sound like they come from a film score, which makes sense, considering Prokofiev’s experience with that genre. Yes, there are moments of bombast, with brass pounding out barbaric yawps. But the most satisfying element of his style is when he treats dissonance with delicate subtlety; when perpendicularity seems to shift imperceptibly, bending straight lines into helixes, and pushing a curve upward into the once flat earth.
Valery Gergiev’s visceral presence gave the acidic orchestral colors freedom to glower, buzz, shimmer and clash. Anything lyrical seemed to happen against the grain of a darker, portentous undertone. I don’t know of any other conductor who is more present in the pit of the orchestra. He is deceptively focused–whiplash aside–to the point that you get the sense that he is tending a sprawling organism with his hands. He doesn’t let preconceptions cloud his mind, nor does he simply demand the players to simply follow his cue.
The sets, by George Tsypin, impress. During the first act, the stage looks as if Tsypin wrenched off the top of a Roman dome and plopped it into the stage; the downstage edge was literally crumbling into the pit. This created a warped perspective from the audience, and at times it did seem some of the singers were struggling to maneuver over the surface. Interior spaces were depicted simply with drop down door frames, windows, vanity mirrors and, at one point, a Persian rug.
But it was the exteriors that received the true grand opera treatment. A cycloramic screen behind the domed stage was used to cast the cosmic elements; a nebulous broach of stars; towering cloud-scapes; searing sunsets. The city of Moscow, itself a main character in this story, emerges behind the screen now and again, glistening with ephemeral austerity. Then, after Napoleon’s troops have raided the city and the locals, out of defiant pride, begin to burn it down, you see the onion crowns smoldering in dusty reds as ash rains down on the empty streets.
The rotating dome added to the helter-skelter dizziness of the ballroom waltz scene. And in the second act, platoons of both French and Russian soldiers streamed over the convex surface of the dome, disappearing over one side, and emerging anew as they came round again. When Napoleon’s army comes under attack, the dome rotates and cracks asunder, leaving the emperor perched atop a jutting crag.
Director, Andrei Konchalovsky had the daunting task of setting over four hundred performers into the space. The staging is impressive, if, at times a little redundant. By the end of the night, the amount of “falling down” reminds you of the tiresome final trek Frodo and Samwise Gamgy make to the pits of Mount Doom. It’s simply exhausting.
All that said, this production should satisfy the megalomaniacal taste for grandiosity that most opera fanatics seem to crave. But even for economists, like C.C., there is enough serious music–vocally and in the orchestra–to leave you satisfied, even if you decide to lean back and close your eyes from all the spectacle.
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