Women composers were rehabilitated at the House of Music

The event is dedicated to composer Tatyana Chudova

The unique opera festival “Muffled Voices” opened at the House of Music. Its program included operas, most of which had never been performed before. All of them belong to the authorship of female composers, who, due to gender bias in the field of composing practice, found themselves in an undeserved shadow. Thanks to the festival organizers, their “muffled voices” sounded loud and bright. The festival is dedicated to the Russian composer Tatyana Chudova, an outstanding musician, teacher, professor at the Moscow Conservatory, who trained a galaxy of talented composers and left an extensive creative legacy, including operas. Two of them were performed at the opening of the festival.

The theater hall of the House of Music was filled to capacity. And this once again confirms: there is interest in modern academic music, which means that the work of modern composers is in demand. There were many professional musicians in the hall who were waiting for real discoveries. Two operas by Tatiana Chudova, “Tatiana’s Dream,” a mini-mono-opera based on A.S. Pushkin, and “Russian Women,” a composition dedicated to the feat of the wives of the Decembrists, were performed on the theater stage for the first time.

Tatyana Chudova is a truly Russian composer. A student of Tikhon Khrennikov, after several teacher “handshakes” she took the baton from the great N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov. Tatyana Alekseevna was the only female professor who taught composition at the Moscow Conservatory. And this fact quite obviously illustrates the status of the female part in the professional composing community.

One young female musician (it’s funny that in the Russian language there is not even a generally accepted feminine for the word “musician” or “composer” as opposed to “poet”, “artist” or “writer”), who is engaged in composition, asked me a question: why Among a considerable number of composers, only three women are known: Gubaidulina, Ustvolskaya and Pakhmutova? This is precisely the question that the Muffled Voices festival answers: no, there are not three of them. There are many more of them, they are talented, original, inventive, their music deserves attention, public performance and recognition.

Excellent performers took part in performances staged by director Elizaveta Korneeva, who, by the way, at one time became a laureate of the special Moskovsky Komsomolets award at the Nano-Opera competition for young directors. Mezzo-soprano Alexandra Kovalevich created a reverent, multifaceted image of Tatyana Larina in the tiny mini-opera “Tatiana’s Dream.” The choreographic framing of Victoria Mikhailets added completeness and theatricality to the composition. Contralto Olga Nadezhdina and soprano Yulia Petrachuk, who is also one of the initiators and organizers of this extraordinary festival, worked brilliantly in “Russian Women”.

And if Tatyana Chudova’s work is still more or less familiar to lovers of modern music, then the music performed in the second part turned out to be a complete discovery even for professionals. This discovery was the American composer Amy Mercy Beach and her opera “Cabildo”, written in the 30s of the twentieth century.

The chamber one-act opera is dedicated to an important page in American history, relating to the Battle of New Orleans in 1814, which hardly means anything to the Russian audience. However, it must be admitted that for Amy Beach the historical theme is nothing more than a costume context. The story in the opera is absolutely lyrical: the plot centers on the legendary pirate Pierre Lafitte, who under mysterious circumstances emerges from a terrible prison called the Cabildo. According to Amy Beach, the pirate was released by the ghost of his beautiful lover, who continues to love the handsome filibuster even after death. In form, the performance is something between a musical and an opera, which is not surprising – outstanding hits by Hammerstein and Gershwin were already playing on Broadway at this time. However, Amy Beach finds various colors of the academic operatic style: with a magnificent vocal cantilena, end-to-end development, beautiful harmonies and elegant instrumental solutions. The role of the orchestra is played by a piano trio: grand piano (Karina Pogosbekova), violin (Vasilisa Haddad) and cello (Galina Malyan), which is quite enough to create expressive textural effects.

Karina Pogosbekova should be especially highlighted – she not only performs the piano part in all three performances, but also acts as the musical director of the entire festival.

The vocal composition of “Cabildo” is an ensemble of the highest class. Stanislav Lee (Pierre), Olga Seliverstova (Valerie), Polina Sharovarova (Mary), Ilya Khardikov (Tom), David Sanikidze (Domenik). There is a remarkable presence in the style of the opera-musical Denis Sedov, who masterfully moves from spoken language to vocalization. It is impossible not to note the excellent English of all the performers: the opera, as expected, sounds in the original language.

The festival will last several months, performances will be held in different cities of Russia. During this time, viewers will be able to hear and see seven more interesting operas written by women composers at different times, in different countries and in different styles. And I would like to believe that these works will not be limited to festival screenings.