Named the iconic musical events of the past season

The 2022–2023 musical and theater season was eventful, eventful, and not boring. Take-offs gave way to embarrassment, sincere manifestos alternated with “figs in your pocket”, bold decisions were accompanied by cowardly raids by anonymous telegram channels. The modern historical context has largely colored the perception of artistic phenomena – even when their creators pretended not to notice what was happening in the world. But the audience, including critics and journalists, noticed.

Ordinary miracle

So you can call Alexei Frandetti, who exactly a year ago became the head director of Lenkom and managed to put on a record number of performances in different theaters in a season. Including “An Ordinary Miracle” based on a play by Evgeny Schwartz with music by Gennady Gladkov, which has already become a classic. And although this performance is not Moscow, but St. Petersburg (the premiere took place at the Bryantsev Youth Theatre), the event turned out to be quite metropolitan: Muscovites, as you know, attend St. Petersburg premieres as easily as Moscow ones. Frandetti made the performance as far from the cult film of Mark Zakharov as close to the dramatic source, and the performer of the role of the Magician, the star of the Russian musical Ivan Ozhogin, gave The Ordinary Miracle a significant degree of unusualness.

Among the most successful productions of the record-breaking director is Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the Obraztsov Puppet Theatre. A magical performance filled with miracles, tricks, good music, kindness and the moral sense necessary for our children, and adults too. And there are also magnificent, as usual in this theater, puppets, combined with talented acting. At the head of the ensemble is Uncle Scrooge, played by the outstanding master Efim Shifrin.

It is worth noting the production of Krechinsky’s Wedding by Alexander Kolker at the Maly Theater – the first Soviet “official musical”, which also managed to become a classic. A completely new product was also interesting – “Peter and the Folk” by the young composer Andrey Zubets on the Taganka stage.

And this is not the whole list of performances released by Alexei Frandetti in the past season. It is not easy to keep the bar of quality with such a quantity – this is exactly what I would like to wish a prolific director.

opera summit

The best opera performance was reserved for the season finale: Rural Honor by Pietro Mascagni staged by director Dmitry Bertman and conductor Yevgeny Brazhnik closed the Helikon Opera season, becoming its culmination. For 33 years of work in the “Helikon” he created (it was such a beautiful date that the theater celebrated this year), Dmitry Bertman had different performances and controversial decisions. In Rural Honor, he presents a certain operatic ideal – a harmonious combination of modern vision and tradition, bright external techniques and deep meanings, originality and classicism. Of course, all this turned out to be possible precisely with this troupe, with these soloists, with this orchestra and this choir, who from the day of their foundation lived as one family – adding, developing and passing on the experience and way of their theater-house to new generations. 33 is a significant age. At this moment, the creative organism runs the risk of dying, but it can also enter a new round. “Rural Honor”, following last year’s “Aida”, demonstrates that “Helikon” is confidently stepping on a new peak, full of inspiration and strength.

opera failure

Sadly, but this season the biggest failure has befallen the staging of the country’s main opera stage – the Bolshoi Theatre. And this is “Luisa Miller” by Giuseppe Verdi directed by Georgy Isahakyan. The director’s decision puzzled with its superficiality and immaturity, surprising for such a recognized master of opera directing. One got the impression that the master created a manual for neophytes called “What should never be allowed in modern opera directing”, collecting opera clichés that set the teeth on edge into a single set.

The competition for “Louise” in this nomination was almost made up by the “Norma” of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko MAMT in the interpretation of Adolf Shapiro. However, Khibla Gerzmava, who performed the title role, was so good that all the costs of the director’s incomprehension and scenographic expansion turned out to be not so important. Moreover, the work of conductor Christian Knapp and the orchestra’s performance also deserved the highest praise. So “Louise Miller” laurels in the “failure” nomination will not have to be shared with anyone.

Manifestation

Today manifestos are in vogue. And this is not bad – for too long our theatrical world was unipolar, where the Golden Mask Award set the tone with its very aggressive ideology, which sowed by no means good, not reasonable and, as life has shown, not eternal. The time has come for ideas not so much new, but as if forgotten and shamefully pushed to the backyard: about patriotism and loyalty to ideals, about love for one’s history and strength of personality, about morality and responsibility to the next generation. Last season, at least two projects in the musical genre managed to speak out on these topics clearly, resonantly and with talent.

In St. Petersburg, such an event was the musical “Peter the Great”, written by one of the most famous and successful Broadway composers, Frank Wildhorn. The life story of the first Russian emperor, whose role is brilliantly played by Ivan Ozhogin, is presented in sharp contradictions that do not detract from his greatness.

In the meantime, the premiere of Alexei Rybnikov’s musical “Prince Andrei” based on Leo Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” was played in Moscow. Both of these performances are not just cool musicals that have all the virtues of this most democratic theatrical genre, full of effects, entertainment, songs and dances. They assumed the function of serious artistic expressions, containing not false and pseudo-pathetic propaganda, but sincere patriotic ideas.

Opening

For the first time in Russia, the Austrian composer Alexander von Zemlinsky’s opera “King Kandavl” was performed. The initiators and performers were the Evgeny Svetlanov State Symphony Orchestra and conductor Dmitry Yurovsky. Zemlinsky’s work, created almost 90 years ago, not known for many years not only in Russia, but throughout the world, was performed in the Tchaikovsky Hall in a concert performance and with significant reductions.

There are many “blank spots” in musical literature. For various reasons, some scores do not reach the performers. The interest in them is understandable – there is a human story behind each. In the case of Zemlinsky, it is tragic: having emigrated to America in the late 1930s, in order to avoid the fate of the Jews under the Nazi regime, the composer did not receive recognition. He stopped creating and died in obscurity. But the revival of “Kandavl” is valuable not only by the very fact of the discovery of a previously unknown text – it is a true masterpiece, which must necessarily reach the listeners in full.

rebirth

The novel “The Young Guard”, withdrawn from the school curriculum during the triumph of the new Russian democracy, returned to readers in a musical incarnation. A resonant premiere took place in the Moscow Concert Hall: the rock oratorio Black January. Forgiveness Sunday, written by Lugansk authors (composer Yuri Dersky, poet Vladimir Zaitsev), was performed by artists and musicians from the LPR. People’s Artist of Russia Larisa Dolina joined them. At the end of the multi-genre composition dedicated to the feat of the heroes of the “Young Guard”, the audience of four thousand, consisting mainly of teenagers, stood up.