Review of Igor Mashukov’s opera “Tango with Cows” based on Vasily Kamensky, staged in Perm

Perm is preparing for the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the city not only with a large-scale repair of the streets, but also with a landmark production of an opera. Musical and theatrical forces of the city united for the world premiere: they played “Tango with Cows” by the composer Igor Mashukov, who turned the work of the great fellow countryman, the futurist poet Vasily Kamensky, into a modern discourse, which makes the editor-in-chief of the Kompozitor publishing house happy Peter Pospelov.

Vasily Kamensky (1884-1961) – a poet, artist and even an aviator, an ally of Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov and Burliuk – a genius of the place of Perm, like Sergei Diaghilev. He spent important years of his life here, which is easy to imagine, looking into the distance from the high bank of the Kama and imagining his flight. Kamensky lived a long life, but only in his youth was he a brave innovator. Later years broke him. One of his lines is included in the title of this article.

Opera by Igor Mashukov – both about Kamensky and based on his poems. The opera is not sad at all. There are eight singers and four musicians on stage, and they all work in such a way that you will suffocate from the rhythm.

If the work is classified, then the ears scatter. Opera cannot be reckoned with any of the traditional types, neither with the musical, nor with the avant-garde. The set of stylistic, vocal and instrumental techniques in it is so wide that for an hour or more there is running around the entire territory of the experimental genre. At the same time, one can feel the thoughtfulness and quality of the author’s selection: the composer takes and alternates only what is connected with the theme.

Kamensky was a poet of a poor but inspired proletarian era, when an airplane, a telephone and a gramophone rhymed, and the composer Mashukov added an armophone to them – and now an orchestra of four manages not only with a violin and keyboards, but also plays on cunning, simple instruments: scratching on saw and washboard, clicks on hand accounts, rinses his hands in water. The author of the opera passionately chose cow botala at the flea market, thinking that the poet-aviator, when he fell off the plane and tried to recover in a rural atmosphere, listened to cow music.

Kamensky was a buddlyanin – and here is the embodiment of his dream: computer sound, a technical combination of acoustics and electronics, live playing and soundtracks.

Kamensky was refined, but not elitist – the author of the opera Tango with Cows, Igor Mashukov, understands this: his music goes wall by wall from mass culture to high complexity. A well-chosen style is felt everywhere, but it builds differently from room to room. The composer deliberately changes the artistic optics within the work, he does not bring him into either pathos or irony. The sound of the propeller, which is emitted by all who can from where, carries the author’s point of view to a permissible height.

“Tango with Cows” – the opera is named after Kamensky’s verse and graphic collection, published on wallpaper. Four of the fourteen numbers in the opera are called “Musical Wallpaper”; probably, the ideologist of “furnishing music” Erik Satie would smile at such a genre.

Mashukov’s opera appeared as a result of a low-budget, but cleverly planned intra-Perm co-production.

The organizer was the Perm College of Music, whose graduate and now teacher is the creator of the opera. The venue was provided by the Perm Youth Theater (its new artistic director, Konstantin Yakovlev, also became the director of the play), located in the mansion of the Perm steamer Lyubimov, whose name is included in Kamensky’s text. Soloists and artists of the choir of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theater performed eight vocal parts under the impeccable direction of conductor Tatyana Ivanova.

This is the result of systematic creative work: Igor Mashukov is known not only by the city where he is a famous composer, versatile teacher and energetic organizer, but also by musical Russia. Mashukov promotes the music of young Ural composers in the capitals as well. In autumn 2023, their compositions will be performed in Moscow; the opera “Tango with Cows” will also come here.