Sounds are already heard, but Herman is still not there – Newspaper Kommersant No. 175 (7376) of 09/22/2022

The Nizhny Novgorod Opera and Ballet Theater named after Pushkin this year changed its artistic director – Alexei Trifonov, who for a long time was part of the Teodor Currentzis team, became it. The theater opened the new season with an ambitious premiere of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades. Tells Alexey Parin.

Formally, the new team released its first premiere at the end of last season, staging Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice, and it is clear why: Dmitry Sinkovsky, whom Moscow knows as an outstanding baroque violinist and a skilled countertenor, became the chief conductor in the theater. At some point, he performed below his capabilities, but after the pandemic he began to score points again.

It was all the more interesting what would happen with the Queen of Spades. Of course, the quasi-Mozartian undertakings in the ball scene should be close to Sinkovsky, but the composer’s main thoughts are rather outside this amusing game. In addition, in The Queen of Spades, as in Bizet’s Carmen, a set of large entertaining operas coexist with the golden tragic essence, but it is hardly necessary for contact with the latter, as evidenced by Yuri Lyubimov’s production with the score altered by Alfred Schnittke, and a performance by Peter Brook (with a version by Marius Constant), in which the catchy “amusement” is completely removed.

The Nizhny Novgorod theater took the 2007 production from the Bolshoi, which was made by Mikhail Pletnev, Valery Fokin and Alexander Borovsky. This is a formalistic performance, a masterpiece of Borovsky, a black-and-white installation, ingenious carved graphics, which very capaciously embodies the myth of St. Petersburg with its various components. In Moscow, Pletnev achieved something incredible from the orchestra in some places, but things were worse with the soloists: Elena Obraztsova, the Countess, for everything about everything, and Vasily Ladyuk, in the role of Yeletsky, sang his aria so beautifully that time stopped. In this postmodern performance by Fokine, each image must be filled from within by the artist himself, otherwise everything will appear as an empty black carving of silhouettes.

What’s in Nizhny Novgorod? Dmitry Sinkovsky, who has renewed the orchestra, is trying to achieve a very high-quality sound from it, a special sound has been found. But Sinkovsky is more familiar with baroque poetics, and Pyotr Ilyich’s wild passions, failures into the demonic, remain beyond his control. We enjoy the playing of individual instruments, we are jammed by mind-blowing tutti, we are satisfied with the tempos and rhythms, but behind all this there is not even a shadow of the figurative power of Tchaikovsky.

The production by Valery Fokin was brought to the stage in Nizhny by director Igor Ushakov, who is a master of all trades himself: his Count Ory in Yekaterinburg once shone among the favorites of the Golden Mask. As for today’s soloists, they sing well, sonorously, distinctly, catchy, but little is gained from this.

Herman in The Queen of Spades is not a party or even a role, but rather a diagnosis. In the Bolshoi in the performance of 2007, there was no real Herman: after Zurab Anjaparidze and Vladimir Atlantov, this place remains free there until now. Ivan Gyngazov, soloist of the Helikon Opera, sings in Nizhny Herman. This is a wonderful singer with a voice of rare power and sonority, a fine musician. At one time, he graced Sadko at the Bolshoi Theater directed by Dmitry Chernyakov with his reactivity, internal pressure, and freshness of behavior. In the Nizhny Novgorod “Queen of Spades” Gyngazov sings excellently, and the brindisi of the seventh film “What is our life” is made remarkably in sound, in vocal reception. But only from beginning to end in the performance there is no Herman as a character, as a center of mystical intrigue, as a seeker of truth. There is singing in the place of Herman, but the image does not arise.

Other singers have no images either, they have beautiful sounds. And two performers distinguished themselves largely because they did not get any symbolic load. Konstantin Suchkov endowed his Tomsky with a mass of impressive properties and sang all his recitatives, ballads and songs with grandeur and great mastery. Tatyana Garkushova, the Governess, flashed: in her short exit, everything played with theatrical colors – both irony, and chic vocals, and a piece of some kind of living life against the backdrop of general hypocrisy.

The work of lighting designer Andrey Abramov has not been completed yet – in this tight schedule, lighting plays a crucial role, and in many cases the faces of soloists and choristers are out of the light zone. The choir, by the way, deserves praise – Eduard Pastukhov has achieved the necessary accuracy and coherence.

The performance was an unprecedented success in Nizhny Novgorod, and this is understandable: such a quality of music presentation, if we mean the polished sound, was probably not known here. I would like to think that Sinkovsky and his vocalists still have a lot ahead in mastering the imagery of great classical operas – Russian and foreign. In March, the premiere of “Carmen” will take place, and in the summer they will play a rarity – Mieczysław Weinberg’s opera “Love d’Artagnan”. In the meantime, it is necessary to recognize an involuntary and unplanned fact: in Peak, the black constructions and black suits of Alexander Borovsky are now working with particular force. The eerie gloom that is being whipped up in the Summer Garden, and at the ball, and, of course, in the infernal gambling house, resonates with today’s disturbing perception in a completely different way than in 2007.