Review of the opera “The Huguenots” by Giacomo Meiebert staged by Konstantin Balakin at the Mariinsky Theater

The Mariinsky 2 showed the stage premiere of the opera “The Huguenots” by Giacomo Meyerbeer in a new production directed by Konstantin Balakin. He talks about a monumental (no joke, four and a half hours), important as a repertoire discovery, but empty and imperfect performance Vladimir Dudin.

What were Meyerbeer’s “Huguenots” for a cultured European in the second quarter of the 19th century? A series, a blockbuster movie and a musical in one bottle, called grand opera – the most fashionable genre at that time. Those who could afford it were willing to spend the entire long, dark evening watching the opera. It seems that it was from Meyerbeer that Wagner, who so cursed his super-successful predecessor, adopted the fashion for divine lengths in his operas about lying gods. Meyerbeer’s new and far from first work was staged in Paris in 1836 – the same year when Mikhail Glinka’s first opera “A Life for the Tsar” was released in St. Petersburg, which was also a great success, receiving the approval of Emperor Nicholas I himself, who rejoiced at the fact that a simple man is ready to die for the king’s father.

In “The Huguenots” there are also a lot of people of different classes busy on stage, but no one would agree to give this opera at that time in the Russian capital. The conflict in the “Huguenots”, which led to the St. Bartholomew’s massacre, was arranged from above, by the nobles. Who in Russia needed to show a conspiracy from the stage, and even on religious grounds, after the brutal suppression of the Decembrist uprising and the Polish uprising? After all, it’s one thing when the enemy is external, like Glinka’s Poles, but it’s much worse when he’s inside, among his own. “The Huguenots” was first presented in a concert in the Russian capital by an Italian troupe in 1850 under the title “The Guelphs and Ghibellines,” and only in 1862 did a Russian troupe perform in Russian in the first production of Meyerbeer’s opera.

Valery Gergiev’s whim to return Meyerbeer’s opus to the repertoire, almost at once, without having time to catch his breath after the vocally complex “Puritanas” of Bellini, alas, does not mean that the Mariinsky Opera Company has been sharply replenished with a squad of virtuoso tenors, basses and sopranos, who urgently needed to be employed in such an exotic repertoire . Light breathing and exquisite work in weaving French vocal lace will have to be provided here by the same people who only yesterday sang heavy Wagner, Puccini or Berlioz. Perhaps the maestro simply felt sick and wanted to at least somehow speak out about non-operatic modernity in the language of exquisitely draped operatic conventions.

“The Huguenots” was draped by Konstantin Balakin – a loyal director, who showed last season at the premiere of Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger” of Nuremberg how he meekly masters overwhelming scales, handles crowd scenes tolerably, and, in alliance with artists, “does it beautifully” in a picturesque and impressive manner, without touching the nerves contemporaries, using only careful hints. In “The Huguenots,” the only fattening hint could have seemed to be a gargoyle with satanic horns, increasing in size from beginning to end, mutely squinting into the audience like a character from a horror film. In the scene of Marcel’s blessing of Raoul and Valentina, this statue stood anti-clerically in the center, as if in an altar.

The director stated in the booklet that in his performance “there is no historical reproduction of events,” but he was clearly disingenuous: the number of different historical costumes was off the charts, giant late-Renaissance tapestries with various multi-figure plots claimed to be the “spirit of the era,” and in the program there were a list of historical figures. The evil infinity of the folds of the awning curtain as a symbol of behind-the-scenes intrigues in which one can suffocate looked like another meaningful visual idea. In the spirit of historicism, the characters also tried to exist on stage, scattering in gallant bows and courtly gesturing. Anastasia Kalagina succeeded here, whose interpretation of Queen Margarita became a performing masterpiece not only in the vocal part, but also in the plastic part (the singer, according to her admission, prepared the part not only from the score, but also by observing the manners of actresses in historical films).

Having gone through the school of Rossini in “Journey to Reims” many years ago, Kalagina easily mastered Meyerbeer’s coloraturas and the swings of his eclectic style from complex lyrical outpourings to almost operetta-like couplets about a coquette. Soprano Irina Churilova acted as Valentina as a dramatic contrast to Queen Margarita, who blithely fluttered through the skies of power. The wave of style was generally ridden (albeit not without extravagance) by mezzo-soprano Daria Rositskaya in the role of the page Urban, who shamelessly carried news between the male and female worlds. Sergei Skorokhodov, in the role of tenore di grazia as the Huguenot Raoul, had some difficulty at first with tuning his breathing and sky-high notes, but closer to the finale and especially in the duet with Valentina in Act IV, he sang and took his toll. It turned out to be difficult for bass Oleg Sychev in the role of Marcel, Raoul’s servant, to be “in the arena all evening”, whose voice betrayed fatigue from the number of rehearsals. But the most interesting and unpredictable things happened behind the conductor’s stand.

The maestro led the orchestra, freezing every now and then in duet scenes (especially where the singer’s voice merged with the solo instrument), as if admiring the timbre beauty. He was looking for a sound balance on the go, removing the orchestral density, trying to stylistically rebuild the architecture of the “Huguenots”. This fascination, unfortunately, often manifested itself in a loss of sense of form and time, in sprawling ensembles, which made the first show more like one of the dress rehearsals. During the second intermission, the public, who did not understand such delights, left the theater en masse. However, it seems that Gergiev’s interest in Meyerbeer’s great, thoroughly forgotten legacy will not be limited to this opera in any case.