The premiere of the Vienna Volksoper performance “Iolanta and The Nutcracker” took place in Moscow cinemas.

In Moscow cinemas, the TheatreHD project presented the Russian premiere of the Vienna Volksoper performance “Iolanta and The Nutcracker”, which was released in 2022 and was recorded digitally at the same time. He tells how Tchaikovsky’s opera and ballet turned into an inseparable whole. Tatiana Kuznetsova.

“Iolanta” and “The Nutcracker” – the last theatrical works of Pyotr Ilyich – were presented together at the premiere in 1892, but were soon separated by more than a century. The ballet became an independent children’s fairy tale, and the romantic opera became an addition to other one-act performances. They were recently merged. At first, mechanically: in 2015, director Sergei Zhenovach at the Bolshoi Theater forced Iolanta to listen to a suite from The Nutcracker. A year later – conceptually: Dmitry Chernyakov at the Paris Opera turned Iolanta into a home performance for a prosperous family and their guests, while The Nutcracker became a mirror reflecting the fates of these people and the real catastrophes of the 20th century.

The performance of the Vienna Volksoper, staged for the 130th anniversary of the premiere, opposes Chernyakov’s epoch-making production, but seems no less convincing. Musical director and conductor Omer Meir Velber, director Lotte de Beer and choreographer Andrei Kaidanovsky told the personal story of Iolanta, soaking the opera with ballet scenes like Napoleon cake with cream. The result is a performance about how relatives and friends destroy the inner world of a person with their loving care. Protected from reality, a blind girl lives in a ballet fairy tale of her imagination – multi-colored, dynamic, full of adventures, sometimes funny, sometimes creepy. Reality, however—pretty, dull, and orderly (costume designer Jorin van Beek made the contrast of these worlds striking)—rejects any violation of the generally accepted norm. Relatives consider not only Iolanta’s blindness an anomaly, but also Iolanta’s emotionality: when her father or Martha fold her arms over her chest with emphasized care, it seems as if the girl is being swaddled in a straitjacket. The heroine’s eccentric childishness is reminiscent of the woman-child from the film “The Unfortunate.” With the difference that Emma Stone copes with both aspects of the character herself, and in the Volksoper performance that anticipated the film, the role of Iolanta is divided between three actresses: singer Olesya Golovleva, ballerina Mila Schmidt and ballet school student Sofia Bozovich. And all the heroine’s agility went to her ballet counterparts.

This 97-minute performance is first and foremost an opera, and in German, too: the native language of the folk opera is a long-standing tradition. The notes in “Iolanta” are insignificant and concern minor characters; the main victim was Robert’s famous aria “Who can compare with my Matilda.” But the ballet is pretty much shredded. Despite the fact that its main fragments – Waltz of the Flowers, Waltz of Snowflakes, Adagio, Variation of the Sugar Plum Fairy, the fight between mice and soldiers – are preserved, their order is determined by the logic of the direction. Choreographer Kaidanovsky, a classicist by training and a “contemporary” by passion, the author of many plot-theatrical, pointeless productions, easily subordinated his gift to the general concept. His choreography can be called “service” in the sense that the merits or demerits of the ballet fragments do not determine the quality of the performance as a whole, but in any case work towards the general idea. For example, the gender indistinguishability of “snowflakes” or “sweets” hint at the childishness of Iolanta, who does not yet know the difference between the sexes. The awakening of sexuality is marked by a ballet adagio with Prince Vaudemont – the dancing Iolanta throws herself on his neck like a teenager: almost rock and roll supports emphasize her delight and joyful inexperience. And the behind-the-scenes medical manipulations of the doctor, which led to the heroine’s dramatic epiphany, are embodied on stage by the funeral of her ballet double to the music of Indian dance: the torn heroes of Iolanta’s imaginary world participate in the crowded procession.

The operatic casting fits the story perfectly. Light, fragile Olesya Golovleva can easily be confused with a ballet alter ego. Moreover, the singer’s active participation in choreographic scenes does not in the least affect her confident soprano, and in the expressive finale the actress makes it extremely convincing that gaining sight is too high a price to pay for broken illusions. King Rene, a high-ranking nomenklatura – the spectacular bass Stefan Cerny in a black suit – also easily fits into the dance scenes: slender, long-legged, agile, he plays the role of the Mouse King in the heroine’s nightmares. Perhaps, only the temperamental Georgy Vasiliev with his dashing tenor makes the harmonious concept shake – such a sincere and ardent Vaudemont will certainly not turn Iolanta’s new life into gray everyday life. The abundance of Russian artists in the 2022 production, as well as the demonstration in Russia of such an unconventional performance, gives viewers the illusion of the unity of the cultural world. And leaves hope for universal insight. Albeit painful, like the Viennese Iolanta.