Win by eyes – Kommersant

The operatic diptych, composed of one popular and one rare piece – Iolanta by Tchaikovsky and The Dwarf by Zemlinsky – was released on the stage of the Novaya Opera Theater in the version of director Denis Azarov and conductor Karen Durgaryan. The unifying idea of ​​the performance was the theme of blindness and insight. What turned out to be more in the production, I found out Yulia Bederova.

Like any one-act opera, Tchaikovsky’s Iolanthe, written shortly before the composer’s death and unlike any of his scores, regularly tests other one-act compositions by various authors, as if looking for the perfect company. Tchaikovsky himself considered various options, including Rachmaninov’s Aleko, but the world premiere of Iolanthe took place on the same evening as The Nutcracker. It was this construction with its internal coherence that director Dmitry Chernyakov took to work in 2016 for his Parisian performance, it was he, it seems, who for the first time consciously endowed the symbolist fairy tale with toy-sarcastic intonations on the verge of parody, which, however, only strengthened its piercing tone and meaning .

Director Denis Azarov emphasized the intercellular connections between the two operas of different, albeit close to each other, eras, styles and artistic geography, as if delimiting the time of modernity from the surrounding times. In the pair Iolanthe-Dwarf, the first opera opens modernity, while the second, in essence, closes it. And, like much of the music of Alexander von Zemlinsky — Bruckner’s student, Schoenberg’s teacher, Wagner’s heir, and Berg’s inspiration — does it with passionate elegance: modernism has long been replaced by modernism in 1922, and Zemlinsky’s music, like an extremely aestheticized substratum of Wagnerian musical substances and ideas , everything prolongs it and prolongs.

Plot connections were found – in both operas there is the theme of blindness (physical or situational: Iolanthe is blind and therefore flawed, the Dwarf is ugly, but has never seen himself in the mirror) and the possibility of interpreting blindness as a metaphor for infantilism. There was also a substantive rhyme: in both fairy tales (based on Georg Hertz and Oscar Wilde, respectively) white roses appear. The unity of the stage plot turned out to be simple to elementary. With flowers in her hands, the seeing Iolanthe watches the movement of events and flowers in that terrible world where the Infanta and the Dwarf live, as she could watch any events in any opera.

At the same time, the parody of the toy collisions of “Iolanta” in Azarov’s direction, as it is sung in this opera, evokes sleep, then wakes up and entertains, but hardly allows you to discern and hear new meanings, nuances or emotions in the score. The time of action is our days. The place is a private sanatorium-resort-type clinic, familiar from many other directorial decisions, the characters are the staff, the patient, her father (he is a sad oligarch), his bodyguards, a natural Moorish doctor (really, why not) and lost skier knights. With skis. The conductor’s interpretation emphasizes the logicality and absurdity of what is happening – it is difficult to say how consciously Karen Durgaryan reminds us that the next year after the premiere, Iolanthe was on the same evening as Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, but the opera acquires a veristic intensity and moves from beginning to end in the rhythm of an elegant march, in dynamics from forte to fortissimo, tinted by the massive sound of the choir from the balconies and the thick voices of the soloists. Marina Nerabeeva (Iolanta), with her dark timbre and majestic phrasing, is almost the only one who manages to dominate the orchestra without forcing the sound. Khachatur Badalyan (Vaudemont), Vladislav Ladyuk (Robert) and the rest have a harder time, but everyone manages. And, having survived the merry culminating parade-alle, they give way to the heroes of the “Dwarf”.

Having tactfully turned Wilde’s fairy tale “The Infanta’s Birthday” into a libretto for Zemlinsky, the playwright and screenwriter Georg Claren left intact her exquisite tragedy: as a gift for the 18th birthday, Infanta is sent not a toy, but a living person. His ugliness and naivety arouse curiosity, and the sincerity and strength of the feeling for the princess that flared up in him – a whole gamut of musical feelings from amazement to dumbfoundment. In the final annoyance, the Infanta shows the heroic tenor a mirror, and he dies from a broken heart – and at the same time from the collapse of ideas about himself, about people and love. “The toy has just been presented, and it’s already broken,” Infanta imprints, in the image of which Zemlinsky is believed to portray the beauty Alma Schindler, the future Alma Mahler, who refused him.

There is no place for a march here, although again there is a reason to demonstrate the full sound power of the theatrical choir (Zemlinsky’s score is woven so thinly and tightly that it withstands the choral pressure, perhaps better than the transparent toy “Iolanta”). And the swiftness and dynamic fearlessness of the conductor’s hand give the “Karlik” an attractive elasticity and evenness in its own way, giving the public the opportunity to appreciate and fall in love with the unfamiliar Zemlinsky, although, of course, the flexible and refined pages partly deprive him of Tristan’s fluctuation in the original. The time of action is our days. The place is again like a familiar fashionable mansion with a luxurious party, but in this case it is not so important – the scenography (Alexey Tregubov) is not only technologically slender, but also metaphorical. And the playful absurdity with the participation of the inescapable heroes of Velasquez’s Menin in the form of moving life-size puppets (authored by Artem Chetverikov) somehow works for the tragedy. The fabric of the performance becomes stronger and more organic, and the soloists, with all the tightness and complexity of the post-Wagner style, find it easier and more natural to live in it. Another thing is that such a performance can work only if it has a main character who is strong vocally and acting. The premiere was really lucky, and Mikhail Gubsky, with his nuanced artistic warmth and multidimensional vocal sacrifice, framed by the correct coldly expressive parts of Donna Clara (Anastasia Belukova) and Gita (Anna Sinitsyna), turned out to be the same excellent gift for the public as his Dwarf was a surprise for an infantile princess.