A Marathon for a Hundred

Every year with an eight at the end – the so-called “osmičkový year” – is a time of important anniversaries for the Czechs. Mostly bleak anniversaries. In May 1618 two imperial envoys and their secretary were thrown out of a window of the Hradcany Castle. The victims of the second Defenestration of Prague (or, in fact, the third, because the second one, of 1483, is hardly mentioned by Western historians) did not suffer much, but the incident led to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War. In March 1948 the body of the then Foreign Minister, Jan Masaryk, was found next to the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – a month earlier the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia had seized power in the country, following a coup d’état. An official investigation delivered the verdict of suicide, but the Czechs knew better and, as it turned out, they were right. The accident during which Masaryk “jumped out of the top floor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, closing the window behind him”, was regarded as a political murder and became known as the third defenestration. August 1968 was marked by the beginning of Operation Danube, a fraternal invasion of the Warsaw Pact forces, which put an end to the Prague Spring.  In August 1928 Janáček went on a trip to Štramberk with Kamila Stösslová and her son, caught a cold, then went down with pneumonia and died – in Doctor Klein’s sanatorium in Ostrava. Ten years later Czechoslovakia was forced to accept the terms of the Munich Diktat, as a result of which Germany seized the Sudetenland and northern Moravia, while Poland took Zaolzie.

It might seem that it is difficult for the Czechs to celebrate even the centenary of their independence, as the state proclaimed on 28 October 1918 has long ceased to exist. Fortunately, our southern neighbours have both a sense of humour and distance from their own history. When Ostrava was preparing for a parade of historic vehicles and was building a replica of a city district from the 1920s, the city was decorated with posters advertising the Leoš Janáček Music Marathon featuring a long-distance runner with the composer’s head, headphones in his ears and starting number 100 on his tank top. The programme of the four-day festival, launched by the local Philharmonic, featured sixteen concerts (including three outside Ostrava) and one opera performance – in total, forty works by the patron of the festival performed exclusively by the natives. For our southern neighbours have another pleasant character trait – they are authentically proud of their musical heritage, have magnificent performing traditions and no complexes whatsoever. In other words, when an important jubilee approaches, they do not have to inaugurate it with a concert featuring foreign stars. They will play and sing their Janáček themselves – and will usually do it better than many imported musicians of international renown.

Photo: janacek2018.cz

This is all the more remarkable given the fact that the Ostrava Philharmonic Orchestra does not even have a decent concert hall. It will have to wait for it until at least until 2023, after a competition, whose entrants include the Katowice-based architectural Konior Studio, has been decided. In the meantime the orchestra works and performs in the local Culture Centre (DKMO) – a gloomy relic of a bygone era, erected in the late 1950s after a socialist realist design by Jaroslav Fragner, an otherwise excellent architect, who parted with the aesthetics of functionalism for good after the war. Chairs in the auditorium are placed as needed, the organ case is installed diagonally by one of the walls, sound travels as it wishes – and yet the six concerts at the DKMO played to a nearly full house, while the performers and organisers worked miracles to curb the capricious acoustics of the interior.

I came to Ostrava to attend the whole marathon and listen to as much Janáček as I could. The regrettable absence of this composer from Polish opera houses and concert halls is something I write about whenever I can (let the Czechs not be misled by the guest appearance of Poznań’s Teatr Wielki at this year’s Janáček Brno Festival: Jenůfa was added to the repertoire of the Poznań company primarily because of Alvis Hermanis’ famous staging). The situation is much better in other countries, but no one has come up with the idea of organising a separate festival devoted to Janáček with a programme featuring compositions rarely performed even in the Czech Republic (e.g. juvenile pieces for string orchestra and Žárlivost, still “Dvořákian” in spirit, which was initially intended as an overture to Jenůfa). Even the best staged and musically perfect operas will not seduce the listeners with the unique melody of the Czech language, which can be conveyed only by Janáček’s compatriots. The same applies to songs, choral works and oratorios. Less obviously, the Czechs do not give in to the temptation to “prettify” his instrumental oeuvre, which in most foreign interpretations sounds too smooth, too rounded, without properly highlighted colour effects and textural contrasts.

Tomáš Kořínek (right) and the Czech Philharmonic Chorus from Brno. Photo: Martin Kusýn

I will long remember the performance by the Pavel Haas Quartet, especially their interpretation of String Quartet No. 1 “Kreutzer Sonata” – aggressive, sometimes violent, using broad bow strokes to paint a musical picture of a conflict between corporeality and need for true affection. The mastery of the four Prague musicians found an excellent acoustic setting in this case: the concert was held in one of the buildings of the former Hlubina coal mine in Dolní Vítkovice, a huge industrial site  included in the UNESCO World Heritage list. Once again I was able to see that the best conductors are recruited from among truly versatile musicians – Ondřej Vrabec, who conducted the Ostrava Youth Orchestra and the wind Marathon Ensemble during two concerts at the DKMO, is also an eminent French horn player, a soloist with many orchestras, including the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as a member of the PhilHarmonia Octet and Brahms Trio Prague. I was able to admire the enthusiasm and youthful virtuosity of Jan Mráček, who two days after his dazzling performance in Dvořák’s Violin Concerto led the Janáček String Orchestra from the pulpit in Idyll and Suite, the patron’s youthful works; I also admired the profound emotionality and architectural mastery in the playing of Jan Bartoš, a brilliant interpreter of Janáček’s piano legacy. What brought me the greatest joy, however, was Czech singing. At a concert at the Church of St. Wenceslaus the tenor Tomáš Kořínek and the Czech Philharmonic Chorus from Brno, conducted by Petr Fiala,  treated me to a very interesting polonicum: five-part Otčenáš inspired by a painting cycle by Józef Męcina-Krzesz, who was so mercilessly mocked by Boy-Żeleński in his A Word or Two (“Whole Poland on this day rejoices afresh / While singing loud praises to Kręcina Mesz”). After his slightly underwhelming performance in The Eternal Gospel at the opening evening, Ľudovít Ludha, an experienced tenor, bowled me over completely in Zápisník zmizelého with a performance that was spot-on when it came to Janáček’s vocal idiom. Kateřina Kněžíková, a singer with a bright, beautifully open soprano, and Roman Hoza, who added to it his velvety, very lyrical baritone, gave a magnificent concert of Moravian and Hukvaldy poetry in songs – I was consumed with envy, because, listening to two Czechs, I could understand more than when listening to Karłowicz’s songs interpreted by many Polish singers.

Osud at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre. Photo: Martin Popelář

There was also a moving trip to the nearby village of Hukvaldy, where the composer was born. We were accompanied by Jiří Zahrádka, the curator of the Janáček collection at the Moravian Museum in Brno and author of many critical editions of his works, including Osud. I saw this three-act opera for the first time last year at Opera North. Despite an excellent cast and fine orchestral playing I was inclined to agree with most musicologists that it is one of weak items in Janáček’s oeuvre. In Ostrava I began to appreciate the unique dramaturgy of the piece – more thanks to the music than the conventional and not quite polished staging by Jiři Nekvasil at the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre. After less than ten days from the premiere the soloists had not yet eased into their roles (especially Josef Moravec singing the fiendishly difficult part of Živný) and the orchestra, conducted by Jakub Klecker, did occasionally stumble – but it was a genuine Janáček, without unnecessary alterations, swinging between drama and grotesque, with a plethora of brilliantly drawn characters and excellent dialogues. I have long been saying that Polish directors do not tackle Janáček, because none of his operas can be dismissed as a silly story.

The marathon ended on the centenary of the proclamation of Czechoslovakia’s independence. The Philharmonic Orchestra was conducted by Jiří Rožeň, a young and promising conductor. There was the national anthem, there were the official speeches – short, to the point and not read out – there was Taras Bulba (not played in Poland also for patriotic reasons) and at the end a truly rousing rendition of Sinfonietta, one of the greatest masterpieces of musical modernism.  I really envy the Czechs: they can celebrate their jubilee with a piece known to any cultured citizen of the world, if only from reading Haruki Murakami.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

Teatr ludzi umarłych

Dzisiaj nad ranem, w wieku zaledwie 66 lat, zmarł Eimuntas Nekrošius, jeden z najwybitniejszych reżyserów naszej epoki i – jak kiedyś o nim pisałam – jeden z ostatnich pogan współczesnego teatru. W Polsce zaczęło być o nim głośno dzięki Krystynie Meissner, założycielce Festiwalu Kontakt w Toruniu, który na przełomie stuleci regularnie gościł spektakle wielkiego Litwina i jego trupy Meno Fortas. W stołecznym Teatrze Narodowym Nekrošius wyreżyserował ostatnio Mickiewiczowskie Dziady i Ślub Gombrowicza. Wkrótce miał przystąpić do pracy nad Królem Learem. Od 2002 roku inscenizował także opery – m.in. Makbeta w Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino i Teatro Massimo di Palermo, Walkirię w Litewskim Narodowym Teatrze Opery i Baletu, Fausta Gounoda w La Scali i prapremierę Qudsji Zaher Szymańskiego w TW-ON. O tej ostatniej pisałam pięć lat temu na łamach „Teatru”, biorąc w obronę zlekceważonego wówczas Nekrošiusa, bez którego spektakl poniósłby moim zdaniem sromotną porażkę. Przypomnę ten tekst – z tym większym żalem, że od dawna czekałam na pełny Pierścień Nibelunga w ujęciu litewskiego wizjonera. Już się nie doczekam: chyba że na drugim końcu żmudzkiej grobli kūlgrinda.

https://e-teatr.pl/teatr-ludzi-umarlych-a196351

Proč Hukvaldy?

Pewnie dlatego, że jesteśmy trochę przesądni i wierzymy, że nad miejscami unosi się duch nieobecnych. Do wsi gminnej Hukvaldy, gdzie w 1854 roku urodził się Leosz Janacek, zajrzeliśmy w towarzystwie wybitnego „janaczkologa” Jiříego Zahrádki, z wycieczką w ramach tegorocznego Maratonu w Ostrawie. Po spotkaniu połączonym z wykładem w gmachu Centrum Turystycznego, wzniesionym na fundamentach dawnej szkoły, w której kompozytor przyszedł na świat, ruszyliśmy na jesienny spacer szlakiem pamiątek i inspiracji. Poznaliśmy obejścia sąsiadów starszego pana Jerzego Janaczka, ojca Leosza, który był dyrektorem wspomnianej szkoły, dyrygentem chóru parafialnego, założycielem hukwaldzkiego towarzystwa śpiewaczo-czytelniczego i biblioteki publicznej oraz zapalonym pszczelarzem. Wstąpiliśmy do barokowego kościoła św. Maksymiliana, gdzie Janaczek grywał na organach. Przeszliśmy się po zamkowej „oborze”, czyli zwierzyńcu, po którym hasają muflony, daniele oraz ludzcy zbieracze kasztanów, żołędzi i orzeszków bukowych. Pogłaskaliśmy ogon odlanej z brązu Lisiczki Chytruski – podobno przynosi szczęście. Spędziliśmy dłuższą chwilę w Muzeum Janaczka, urządzonym w niewielkim domku na obrzeżach wsi, gdzie kompozytor spędził ostatnie lata życia:

Pod tym lustrem Janaczek odkładał laskę po porannym spacerze…

…przy tym biurku zabierał się do pracy…

…za tym stołem siadał do popołudniowych rozmyślań…

…przy tym piecu wygrzewał się w mroźne wieczory…

…a wreszcie zasypiał w tym łóżku. Dobranoc, Mistrzu.
(Wszystkie zdjęcia: Dorota Kozińska)

Maraton na setkę

Każdy rok z ósemką na końcu – tak zwany „osmičkový rok” – to dla Czechów pora istotnych rocznic. W większości ponurych. W maju 1618 z okna zamku na Hradczanach wyrzucono dwóch cesarskich namiestników wraz z ich sekretarzem. Ofiarom drugiej defenestracji praskiej (a właściwie trzeciej, bo tę drugą, z roku 1483, historycy zachodni zbywają milczeniem) nic się wprawdzie nie stało, ale incydent doprowadził do wybuchu wojny trzydziestoletniej. W marcu 1948 pod gmachem Ministerstwa Spraw Zagranicznych znaleziono zwłoki szefa resortu, Jana Masaryka – miesiąc wcześniej nastąpił praski zamach stanu i władzę w kraju przejęła Komunistyczna Partia Czechosłowacji. Po oficjalnym śledztwie orzeczono samobójstwo, Czesi wiedzieli swoje, i jak się później okazało, mieli rację. Wypadek, w którym Masaryk „skoczył z ostatniego piętra MSZ, zamykając za sobą okno”, został uznany za mord polityczny i zyskał nazwę trzeciej defenestracji. W sierpniu 1968 rozpoczęła się operacja Dunaj, czyli bratnia inwazja sił Układu Warszawskiego, która położyła kres Praskiej Wiośnie. W sierpniu 1928 roku Janaczek wybrał się z Kamila Stösslovą i jej synkiem na wycieczkę do Sztrambergu, przeziębił się, złapał zapalenie płuc i umarł – w sanatorium doktora Kleina w Ostrawie. Dziesięć lat później Czechosłowację zmuszono do przyjęcia warunków dyktatu monachijskiego, skutkiem czego Niemcy zajęły Sudety i północne Morawy, a Polska wzięła sobie Zaolzie.

Wydawać by się mogło, że Czechom trudno świętować nawet stulecie niepodległości, skoro państwo proklamowane 28 października 1918 roku dawno już nie istnieje. Na szczęście nasi południowi sąsiedzi mają zarówno poczucie humoru, jak dystans do własnej historii. Kiedy Ostrawa szykowała się do parady zabytkowych pojazdów i budowała replikę dzielnicy z lat dwudziestych, na mieście zawisły plakaty Maratonu Muzycznego im. Leosza Janaczka, a na nich długodystansowiec z głową kompozytora, ze słuchawkami w uszach i z setnym numerem startowym na koszulce. W programie czterodniowego festiwalu, zainicjowanego przez tutejszą Filharmonię, znalazło się szesnaście koncertów (w tym trzy poza Ostrawą) i jedno przedstawienie operowe – w sumie czterdzieści utworów patrona, i to wyłącznie w rodzimych wykonaniach. Bo nasi południowi sąsiedzi odznaczają się jeszcze jedną miłą cechą – są autentycznie dumni ze swojej spuścizny muzycznej, mają wspaniałe tradycje interpretacyjne i żadnych kompleksów. Innymi słowy, kiedy zbliża się ważny jubileusz, nie muszą inaugurować go koncertem z udziałem zagranicznych gwiazd. Sami sobie zagrają i zaśpiewają Janaczka – i przeważnie zrobią to lepiej niż niejeden utytułowany muzyk z importu.

Za: Jarmila Procházková, Janáčkovy záznamy hudebního a tanečního folkloru

Rzecz tym bardziej godna podziwu, że Filharmonia w Ostrawie nie ma nawet przyzwoitej sali koncertowej. Tej doczeka się najwcześniej w 2023 roku, po rozstrzygnięciu konkursu, do którego przystąpiło też katowickie biuro architektoniczne Konior Studio. Tymczasem filharmonicy pracują i występują w miejscowym Domu Kultury  – ponurym relikcie poprzedniej epoki, wzniesionym w końcu lat pięćdziesiątych według socrealistycznego projektu Jaroslava Fragnera, znakomitego skądinąd architekta, który po wojnie pożegnał się na dobre z estetyką funkcjonalizmu. Krzesła w sali widowiskowej ustawia się ad hoc, prospekt organowy zamontowano po skosie przy jednej ze ścian audytorium, dźwięk tchnie, kędy chce – a mimo to sześć koncertów w DKMO ściągnęło niemal komplet publiczności, a wykonawcy i organizatorzy dokonywali cudów, żeby uporać się z kapryśną akustyką wnętrza.

Przyjechałam do Ostrawy na cały maraton, żeby nasłuchać się Janaczka na zapas. O wołającej o pomstę do nieba nieobecności tego kompozytora na polskich scenach i estradach piszę przy każdej nadarzającej się okazji (niech Czechów nie zmyli gościnny występ Teatru Wielkiego w Poznaniu na tegorocznym festiwalu Janáček Brno: Jenufa pojawiła się w repertuarze poznańskiej opery przede wszystkim ze względu na głośną inscenizację Alvisa Hermanisa). Za granicą jest z tym znacznie lepiej, ale nikt nie wpadnie na pomysł, żeby poświęcić Janaczkowi osobny festiwal, a w programie uwzględnić kompozycje wykonywane sporadycznie nawet w Czechach (m.in. juwenilia na orkiestrę smyczkową i „dworzakową” jeszcze z ducha Žárlivost, która w pierwotnym zamyśle miała być uwerturą do Jenufy). Nawet najlepiej wystawione i dopieszczone muzycznie opery nie uwiodą słuchacza specyficzną melodią języka czeskiego, którą potrafią oddać wyłącznie rodacy Janaczka. To samo dotyczy pieśni, utworów chóralnych i oratoryjnych. Co już mniej oczywiste, Czesi nie ulegają pokusie „uładniania” jego twórczości instrumentalnej, która w większości obcych wykonań brzmi zbyt gładko, zbyt okrągło, bez należycie wyeksponowanych efektów barwowych i kontrastów fakturalnych.

Ondřej Vrabec dyryguje koncertem Mladí ladí Janáčka w DKMO. Fot. Martin Kusýn

Na długo zapadnie mi w pamięć występ Pavel Haas Quartet, zwłaszcza ich interpretacja I Kwartetu „Sonata Kreutzerowska” – drapieżna, chwilami gwałtowna, szerokimi pociągnięciami smyczka malująca muzyczny obraz konfliktu cielesności z potrzebą prawdziwego uczucia. Mistrzostwo czworga praskich muzyków znalazło w tym przypadku świetną oprawę akustyczną: koncert odbył się w dawnych zabudowaniach kopalni Hlubina, na terenie gigantycznego kompleksu przemysłowego Dolní Vítkovice, wpisanego na listę światowego dziedzictwa UNESCO. Po raz kolejny się przekonałam, że najlepsi dyrygenci rekrutują się spośród muzyków naprawdę wszechstronnych – Ondřej Vrabec, który poprowadził Ostrawską Orkiestrę Młodzieżową i dęty Maraton Ensemble na dwóch koncertach w DKMO, jest także wybitnym waltornistą, solistą wielu orkiestr, na czele z Filharmonią Praską, członkiem PhilHarmonia Octet i Brahms Trio Prague. Mogłam podziwiać entuzjazm i młodzieńczą wirtuozerię Jana Mráčka, który dwa dni po błyskotliwym występie w Koncercie skrzypcowym Dworzaka poprowadził od pulpitu Orkiestrę Smyczkową im. Janaczka w Idylli Suicie, młodzieńczych utworach patrona; z drugiej strony zachwyciłam się głęboką emocjonalnością i mistrzostwem kształtowania architektoniki w grze Jana Bartoša, rewelacyjnego interpretatora spuścizny fortepianowej Janaczka. Najwięcej radości przyniosło mi jednak obcowanie z czeską wokalistyką. Tenor Tomáš Kořínek i Chór Filharmonii Czeskiej z Brna pod kierunkiem Petra Fiali zafundowali mi na koncercie u św. Wacława bardzo ciekawe polonicum: pięcioczęściowe Otčenáš, inspirowane cyklem malarskim Józefa Męciny-Krzesza, tego samego, z którego bezlitośnie naigrawał się Boy-Żeleński w Słówkach („I dziś Polsce całej głosi wzdłuż i wszerz / Że nagrodę dostał: pan Kręcina Mesz”). Doświadczony Ľudovít Ludha, po nieco słabszym występie w tenorowej partii Wiecznej Ewangelii na wieczorze inauguracyjnym, porwał mnie bez reszty w Zápisníku zmizelého – wykonaniem idealnie trafionym w idiom wokalny Janaczka. Obdarzona jasnym, pięknie otwartym sopranem Kateřina Kněžíková i wtórujący jej aksamitnym, wybitnie lirycznym barytonem Roman Hoza dali wspaniały koncert morawskiej i hukwaldzkiej poezji w pieśniach – zazdrość człowieka bierze, kiedy ze śpiewu dwojga Czechów rozumie się więcej niż z pieśni Karłowicza w interpretacji niejednego Polaka.

Osud w Narodowym Teatrze Morawsko-Śląskim. Fot. Martin Popelář

Osobnych wzruszeń dostarczyła wycieczka do pobliskich Hukvaldów, rodzinnej wsi kompozytora, w towarzystwie Jiříego Zahrádki, kuratora zbiorów Janaczka w Muzeum Ziemi Morawskiej w Brnie i autora wielu edycji krytycznych jego dzieł – między innymi opery Osud. Widziałam tę trzyaktówkę po raz pierwszy rok temu, w Opera North; mimo znakomitej obsady i świetnej gry orkiestrowej byłam wówczas skłonna przychylić się do opinii większości muzykologów, że to jedna ze słabszych pozycji w dorobku Janaczka. W Ostrawie zaczęłam doceniać osobliwą dramaturgię tego utworu – raczej za sprawą samej muzyki niż konwencjonalnej i nie w pełni dopracowanej inscenizacji Jiřego Nekvasila w Narodowym Teatrze Morawsko-Śląskim. Po niespełna dziesięciu dniach od premiery soliści jeszcze nie okrzepli (zwłaszcza Josef Moravec w arcytrudnej partii Živnego), orkiestrze pod batutą Jakuba Kleckera zdarzały się kiksy – a przecież był to Janaczek najprawdziwszy, bez zbędnych retuszy, lawirujący między dramatem a groteską, z mnóstwem doskonale zarysowanych postaci i świetnie poprowadzonymi dialogami. Od dawna powtarzam, że polscy reżyserzy nie biorą się za Janaczka, bo żadnej z jego oper nie da się się nazwać idiotyczną historyjką.

Maraton skończył się w dniu stulecia proklamowania Czechosłowacji. Przed Filharmonikami stanął tyleż młody, ile obiecujący dyrygent Jiří Rožeň. Był hymn, były przemowy oficjeli – krótkie, treściwe i bez kartki – był Taras Bulba (niegrywany w Polsce także ze względów patriotycznych) i na koniec porywająca Sinfonietta, jedno z największych arcydzieł muzycznego modernizmu. Naprawdę zazdroszczę Czechom: mogą święcić swój jubileusz utworem, który zna każdy kulturalny obywatel świata, choćby tylko z lektury Harukiego Murakamiego.

The Need for any Kind of Festivity

On Saturday, 24 November, a four-part chamber cycle Life Without Christmas by Gia Kancheli will be performed on one long day, at times corresponding to the names of the individual „prayers” – as part of the Nostalgia Festival in Poznań. Below, you can read my essay, reposted by kind permission of the Festival (http://www.nostalgiafestival.pl/en/news/o-potrzebie-jakichkolwiek-swiatbrdorota-kozinska-2).

***

What would life without Christmas be like? According to Christian theologians, it would be a gloomy existence, stripped of the hope for the coming of the Saviour who would wipe away the tears of sinners and show them the way to the Kingdom of Heaven. It would be a life in the constant turmoil of war, for if Christ would not be born, there would be no death on the cross, and thus no exoneration of humanity through faith and reconciliation with God. The darkness of a life without Christmas would not be brightened by any good news: neither the joyful news of sins being forgiven, nor even the consolation that someone would help us bear them beforehand.

What would such a world be from the point of view of children or the less attentive adults of simple faith? A world without gifts? Perhaps there would be another opportunity to give them. But what would the attraction be if our homes would never smell of Christmas trees, and in our kitchens, there would be no aroma of ripe gingerbread browned in the oven. Without Christmas, we would not be able to dream, even in our adult years, to at least once see the mechanical nativity scene at the Franciscan Fathers’ Church at Bernardyński Square in Poznań. There would be no point in hanging mistletoe over the Christmas table. We would not call our forgotten relatives and friends once a year. We would not leave an additional place setting for the stray wanderer. We would forget that people should never be alone.

Photo: Isabelle Francaix

Giya Kancheli grew up in a country where real Christmas no longer existed. Contrary to popular opinion, the Soviet authorities did not introduce an official ban on the winter festivities but made every effort to appropriate the earlier tradition. In the 1920s, still with the best-intended desire to fight superstition in mind, outstanding avant-garde artists joined the campaign. A few years before the onset of the great terror, members of the League of the Militant Godless went into action as one of the most effective Bolshevik instruments for fighting religion and religious organisations. Special patrols followed fellow citizens and reported on discovered instances of holding home-based sochelniks (Christmas Eve suppers). The activists demanded that the guilty be punished for these ‘embarrassing situations.’ Churches, both Orthodox and of other denominations, were closed down and used to accommodate the infamous museums of atheism. Objects of worship were destroyed. True repressions began after the liquidation of the New Economic Policy and the replacement of this hybrid doctrine with a command-and-distribution system. Combating the Church’s influence was supposed to facilitate the fight against peasants. The celebrators went underground.

The one to bring them back to the surface was Stalin, who commanded the celebration of a secular New Year. In 1935, the same year in which Giya Kancheli was born, he surrounded Moscow’s Manezhnaya Square and the Kremlin courtyard with Christmas trees. The victims of the propaganda machine were mainly children, showered with cheap gifts delivered to the most remote places in the USSR by the same activists as before, and fed with stories of kolkhoz farmers, brave heroes of the civil war and udarniks (shock workers). The victims of the coercive apparatus were mainly adults, among them prisoners of Stalinist gulags, who had to celebrate this terrible Non-Christmas to a strictly defined scenario under the knout of the communist party propaganda department.

Kancheli remembers that his mother and grandmother secretly took him to church primarily to drag the boy away from his passion for playing football. It helped in so far as little Giya never became a real militant atheist. Since then, he has been entering the space of the sacrum: in churches, mosques and synagogues, to enjoy the absence of worshipers, the faith-charged silence, and the emptiness, which, in his opinion, hold more prayers than a temple filled to the brim during a service.

New Year’s Eve in the Kashchenko Psychiatric Hospital in Moscow. Photo by Pavel Krivtsov (1988)

It was not until the glasnost policy and Gorbachev’s reforms that Western musicologists started to seek hidden meanings in the works of Soviet composers, to track signs of writing between the lines, giving a voice to others or hiding in the shadow of suppressed religion. The time arrived for a redefinition of the legacy of Shostakovich, whose brassy overtones turned out to be only the tip of an iceberg of emotions and never externalised yearnings immersed in the depths of an icy ocean. The time arrived to decipher the painful symbols contained in the music of Arvo Pärt, Sofia Gubaidulina and Vyacheslav Artiomov. People and their tragedies began to emerge from the mysterious clusters of sounds. A cry arose from the depths of Kancheli’s symphonies and operas, from his theatre and film music, voicing mourning, fear and solitude, a regret for what had been lost, his nonacceptance of violence and a simple childlike innocence.

Kancheli emigrated from Georgia in 1991, shortly after the election of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, overthrown on 22 December by the coup of the paramilitary organisation Mkhedrioni, most likely linked to the Russian secret service. He moved to Berlin as a beneficiary of a grant from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), the German Centre for Academic Exchange, financed mainly from public funds of the Federal Republic of Germany. Four years later, he became a composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic in Antwerp and settled permanently in Belgium. During the transitional period, even before leaving his homeland, he began composing the cycle Life without Christmas, consisting of four ‘prayers’ for the subsequent times of day: morning, daytime, evening and night-time. If these are prayers, they are so in a very broad, extra-liturgical sense. Within them, Kancheli does not refer directly to any religion, but calls for a spirituality that searches, does not submit to any creed, and wakes up at night with a scream, ‘Where is God (if He exists at all)?’ It is music echoing with the voices of angels that had never been heard. It is a song of innocence in an uneven struggle against aggression, violence and evil.

One can laugh at the repetitive structures, their shameless tonality and allegedly banal melodic phrases, until the listener realises that these are all prayers for a lost Georgia and, in a less obvious way, for a lost Soviet Union: for friends and colleagues escorted to the other bank of the Styx, for Avet Terterian, who is still unappreciated in the West, and for Alfred Schnittke, who is still not fully understood in Europe. For a multitude of composers who were banished, killed, stripped of their identity and condemned to a silence from which they can only be brought to the light by the cry: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ It is the musical prayer of the righteous person who is suffering. The listener must now decide individually whether suffering is a punishment for sins and proof of the superior being’s disfavour, or proof that someone, without really knowing who it is, is always next to us, even when hope has died.

What would life be without any festivities? What purpose do festivals actually serve? To celebrate something or, perhaps, to partake in some fine entertainment? Where does the need to hold cultural festivities come from? Is it just about strengthening our sense of community, and if so, what kind of community? An aesthetic or national one or, possibly, one that is rooted in a wider geographical context? One that is connected by the same model of sensitivity, a similar worldview, blood ties or a collective subconsciousness?

New Year celebration in the Tbilisi Palace of Sports. Photo: ITAR-TASS

Regardless of the reasons, festivals are associated with a kind of religious experience, even by agnostics and atheists. They have their own rite and order. They recur at the same times, like the first snow, the vernal equinox or the moment when the leaves on trees start turning yellow, as if they were marking a symbolic turning point, a time when a cycle concludes to be reborn soon afterwards. During a harvest of festivals, a sacrifice must be made to the deities: those of theatre, music or literature. And then we must dive into a whirlpool of intense experiences, to listen, watch and read up a stock to last until the time before the next harvest, to help survive the time of sowing and give us strength to gather fertile crops, for which we will give thanks again the following year. In the same temple, guided by equally dignified priests, together with an ever-increasing number of artistic followers.

It all sounds anachronistic, because the world is developing. A loud street party took place a few hundred meters from my home. I tried to separate myself from it in the comfort of my studio with windows facing the courtyard, but it attacked me unexpectedly with posts on one of the social media sites. The noise coming from the neighbourhood created a jarring sonic background for dozens of images on Instagram, photos taken using selfie sticks and videos shot with mobile phones. This made me all too aware that even if I cut myself off from the community, it will still sweep me into the arms of virtual friends. Could it be that the new technologies, and the subsequent growing pace of life, as well as the need for increasingly more powerful experiences, will soon transform our existence into a continuous, all-embracing festival where there is no longer any room for reflection or giving thanks?

The actual word ‘festival’ has a relatively short history and appeared in English only in the late 16th century, borrowed from Old French where the adjective ‘festival’ referred to something joyous, closely related to the atmosphere of a major church holiday. But the predecessor of this form of art worship can be traced back to ancient Greece. In Delphi, a tribute was paid to Apollo during the Panhellenic Pythian Games, held since 582 BC in late August and early September, in the middle of the Olympic cycle, namely in the third year of the Olympiad. The tradition, however, goes even deeper to the rituals in honour of Apollo, organised every eight years and accompanied by the famous musical agons: competitions for the most accurate interpretation of a paean with the accompaniment of the kithara. Unlike the Olympic Games, the Pythian Games were, first and foremost, an arena for musicians and actors. With time, the set of competitions was extended with aulete contests, singing tournaments, and solo performances of kitharodes, as well drama, poetry and painting contests, to which the chariot races and wrestler battles provided only a picturesque backdrop. The winners were rewarded with wreaths of bay laurel branches, the holy tree of Apollo gathered in the Thessalian Tempe Valley.

Echoes of the ancient agons resounded later in medieval singing tournaments and were brought back to life in the collective European imagination by works such as Wagner’s Tannhäuser. From knightly manors, the contests gradually moved down the social ladder, turning into specific ‘tests of bravery’ for musicians belonging to specific communities. These were competitions where the participants could hope not only for the evaluation of their skills, but also for advice from the true masters of their respective professions and the spontaneous applause of the listeners gathered at the tournaments. The competitive element became secondary to the exuberant need to participate in a joyful musical celebration that fulfilled the role of some kind of catharsis and was also an integrative and educational event.

Are we taking part in joyous or, perhaps, a painful festivity? After all, the Nostalgia Festival is a celebration of musical memory: a thin albeit strong thread connecting us with what comes back to us, even though sometimes we would prefer to forget it. But we should not forget. I have just remembered that in the 1970s, my father was a guest at the Georgian Rustaveli National Theatre in Tbilisi, where Giya Kancheli was the music director. The guests from Poland were given a truly Georgian reception. Toasts were raised until dawn. The wives went to bed earlier. In the morning, my mother entered the bathroom to find the bathtub full of red roses. An apology for the drunkenness of the night before. An apology for a world where the lack of Christmas had to be offset with an attempt to provide some other festivity. A festivity which found its musical equivalent only after the death of the Soviet Union. The hated, enforced homeland of many great composers whose oeuvre we must – and should – discover many years after the fall of the ominous empire.

Translated by: Marta Walkowiak

O potrzebie jakichkolwiek świąt

Program tegorocznej poznańskiej Nostalgii jest mi wyjątkowo bliski: gościem Festiwalu będzie Gia Kanczeli, jeden z wielu kompozytorów, których ojczyznę zawłaszczył Związek Radziecki. Reprezentant straconego pokolenia, traktowanego przez polskie środowisko muzyczne – usadowione niegdyś w bezpiecznej szczelinie żelaznej kurtyny i wyglądające przez nią w szeroki świat – w najlepszym razie protekcjonalnie, w najgorszym lekceważąco. Przedstawiciel rzeszy wydziedziczonych Gruzinów, Azerów, Bałtów, nadwołżańskich Niemców, Ukraińców i Uzbeków, wplatających swój żal, tęsknotę i wołanie o pomoc między wiersze pozornie eklektycznych i rzekomo niezbyt wyrafinowanych partytur. Żeby docenić ich piękno i zrozumieć ich przekaz, trzeba oddać głos nie tylko muzyce, ale i samym twórcom. W Poznaniu będzie po temu okazja. W drugi dzień Festiwalu Życie bez Bożego Narodzenia Kanczelego zabrzmi w czterech odsłonach – od Morning Prayers o ósmej rano aż po Night Prayers, które skończą się tuż przed północą. Organizatorzy Nostalgii mają nadzieję, że cały ten dzień spędzimy razem: przy wspólnym stole, na wspólnym czytaniu Biblii, śledząc rozmowę jezuity Wacława Oszajcy z dominikaninem Tomaszem Dostatnim, na spotkaniu z samym Gią Kanczelim. To ostatnie poprowadzę osobiście i już dziś zapraszam moich Czytelników do Galerii u Jezuitów. O pozostałych wydarzeniach Nostalgii na stronie internetowej Festiwalu (www.nostalgiafestival.pl). Tymczasem proponuję lekturę mojego eseju, w którym próbuję osadzić hasło imprezy w szerszym kontekście historycznym.

O potrzebie jakichkolwiek świąt

Who Goes There? The Huguenots!

At the age of 25 Louis-Désiré Véron became a doctor of medicine and went on to work in Paris hospitals for a few years. But he did not enjoy a great career as a doctor. One’s position in the medical world at the time was determined not only by knowledge and skills (Véron wasn’t lacking in this department; he even published a monograph on the treatment of oral thrush in infants), but primarily by wealth. Véron did not come from a rich family, nor did he have an endearing appearance. But he did have a flair for business. After the death of an apothecary, he took over the patent for making cough candies and made quite a fortune.  In 1829 he founded the literary magazine Revue de Paris, whose collaborators included Eugène Scribe, a master of pièce bien faite, one of the most talented, influential and prolific librettists in the history of opera. Two years later Véron acquired a franchise for the Paris Opera, privatised by the government of the July Monarchy. He admitted openly that he knew next to nothing about music. But he knew whom to ask for advice and, above all, he had an excellent sense of public feeling. The five years of Véron’s directorship is regarded as the beginning of the golden era of grand opéra – a time when the Parisians’ collective imagination was moved by the compositions of Auber, Meyerbeer and Halévy, the dazzling set designs of Henri Duponchel and the phenomenal voices of Adolphe Nourrit and Cornélie Falcon. It began with the premiere of Robert le diable, after which Chopin announced the birth of a masterpiece of a new school, while Słowacki enthused in a letter to his mother, “never in my life have I seen such a big church like the one created by the theatrical illusion”. Encouraged by this success, Véron commissioned Meyerbeer to write another opera, Les Huguenots, loosely based on Prosper Mérimée’s Chronique du règne de Charles IX.

Work on the piece lasted nearly five years. At that time Meyerbeer was well-established as a composer and had amassed a considerable wealth, so he could afford the luxury of unprecedented source studies (he began with in-depth studies of 16th-century musical manuscripts), hiring two librettists, Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps, and consultations with Gaetano Rossi, with whom he had earlier worked on his Il crociato in Egitto (1824). The premiere took place after Véron’s resignation as director of the Paris Opera, on 29 February 1836. It was an even bigger triumph than that of Robert le diable: even envious fellow composers not always well-disposed towards Meyerbeer proclaimed Les Huguenots to be the crowning achievement of the genre, although Berlioz could not resist a snide remark that the score resembled a “musical encyclopaedia” and that there was enough material for ten separate operas. Three years later the work was presented on the other side of the Atlantic. It was staged all over the world, sometimes with different titles to avoid religious conflicts. After several productions in the Soviet Union a suggestion was made to adapt the libretto and turn Les Huguenots into an opera about the Decembrists, but the idea was never put into practice. In the 1890s the opera was presented at the Metropolitan Opera as a “night of the seven stars”, with the cast including the likes of Lilian Nordica, Sofia Scalchi, Reszke brothers and Pol Plançon. The thousandth performance at the Paris Opera took place in May 1906; over the next three decades the opera was performed 118 more times and then it disappeared from the capital for over eighty years.

Les Huguenots at the Opera Bastille. Photo: Agathe Poupeney

Why? It is commonly believed that staging this monster requires an incredible amount of effort, while finding a decent Raoul borders on the impossible. Indeed, we are well past the glory days of grand opéra, a time when the principal tenor earned twenty-five thousand francs a year, the principal conductor three times less, and the minor members of the corps de ballet had to resort to prostitution in order not to starve. Indeed, the last tenor capable of singing all the high notes in the main role of Les Huguenots cleanly, freely and in full voice may have been the late lamented Franco Corelli. Yet this does not change the fact among all the composers of the genre Meyerbeer has suffered the most at the hands of history, and his operas began to return to the stage only in this century. It seems that this was caused not only by musical factors – but also by a systematic rise of anti-Semitism in France, from the Dreyfus Affair to the establishment of Vichy France.  After the war grand opéra declined rapidly and is only now recuperating. Meyerbeer’s turn came last – it is good that his famous Les Huguenots opened the 350th anniversary season at the Paris Opera, organically linked as it is to the very term of grand opéra.

The staging was entrusted to Andreas Kriegenburg, the famous self-taught German director (a carpenter by profession and former member of the technical staff in Magdeburg), who acquired most of his directing experience in drama theatre. He got into opera more or less ten years ago, but has been quite active in the field, recently mainly in Dresden and Munich. Kriegenburg regards himself not as a deconstructionist but as a storyteller, although – as he confessed in a conversation with Iwona Uberman – “I don’t want to be just a servant to the author, I prefer to decode the spirit of the play and present it on stage, looking at it from my perspective and through myself as a person. In fact, I always try to get closer to a work, even when I seemingly go further and further away from it.” It sounds a bit non-committal – as does, in a way, the Paris production of Les Huguenots. Apparently played out in a not too distant future (at least as that is what is suggested by the director’s prologue before the curtain rises), but, in fact, it happens everywhere and nowhere, in Harald B. Thor’s minimalist decorations and Tanja Hofmann’s historicising costumes. There would be nothing wrong with this, if Kriegenburg had not overdone the Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt and instead had gone a little deeper into the meaning of the work.

Yosep Kang (Raoul), Lisette Oropesa (Marguerite de Valois), Ermonela Jaho (Valentine), Paul Gay (Saint-Bris), and Florian Sempey (Nevers). Photo: Agathe Poupeney

The result? The director’s cold, calculated vision clashed painfully with the powerful emotions of the score. Kriegenburg likes to work with the bodies of the actors and re-enact certain situations ad nauseam with the persistence and tenacity worthy of Marthaler – so he has turned Les Huguenots into a nearly four-hour abstract ballet, pushing into the background not only credible psychological portraits of the protagonists but also the narrative itself. Before I sussed out who was who at the great feast at Count of Nevers’, I was half an hour into Act I. Act III began quite coherently, but ended grotesquely: the Catholics and the Protestants whacking each other looked more like school girls from good families fighting with their dainty umbrellas. The idea of turning cold steel in the famous Blessing of the Daggers scene  (“Gloire, gloire au grand Dieu vengeur!”) into a phallic symbol and making the oath resemble an act of collective masturbation would not perhaps be so stupid, if it were not for one tiny detail – the scene lasts for more than a quarter of an hour. We know Kriegenburg’s penchant for slapstick and convention breaking, but the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in the finale was too suggestive of Peter Sellers and his immortal portrayal of Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther.  However, there were some gems as well: for example, the horribly dynamic death of one of the victims of the massacre, who, after being struck with a sword, begins to spin on the upper platform like a balloon, broken free and suddenly pricked. Alas, concepts that work well in postdramatic theatre fall flat in opera – I’m afraid that the spinning girl may have been missed by many spectators.

I have to admit, however, that Kriegenburg’s staging proved fairly innocuous and did not spoil the musical side of the performance. And there were things to worry about, because the production seemed to have been cursed. In August Diana Damrau cancelled her appearance as Marguerite de Valois and less than two weeks before the premiere Bryan Hymel withdrew from the fiendishly difficult role of Raoul. My suspicion is that both replacements were a blessing for the Paris Huguenots, though the results are difficult to compare. With her crystal clear, technically immaculate and very agile soprano Lisette Oropesa brought the entire house down. The audience was less enthusiastic about Yosep Kang, brought at the last moment from Deutsche Oper Berlin – unjustly, in my opinion, because he coped with the role of Raoul well, both when it came to singing and acting, with his ringing tenor heroic in colour and beautifully rounded in the middle register. True, he played it safe with the high notes and they were not always clean, but this stemmed primarily from nerves and overuse of his vocal resources during rehearsals and successive performances. That Kang is well aware of his shortcomings and knows how to mask them cleverly was evidenced by how he phenomenally paced himself in the lovers’ duet from Act IV (“O ciel, ou courrez-vous?”). As Valentine, Ermonela Jaho was less impressive – she was excellent acting-wise, but has a voice that is too light and too lyrical for the role, written for a soprano falcon  (incidentally, Raoul’s beloved was first sung by Cornélie Falcon). Karine Deshayes was a magnificent Urbain. The French singer, who started out in Baroque music, has a lovely, even mezzo-soprano that deserves far more appreciation from international opera companies. It was more difficult to find real stars among the men: those deserving an honourable mention were certainly the bass-baritone Nicolas Testé, who despite some deficiencies in the lower register was convincing as Marcel; the velvety-voiced baritone Florian Sempey as Nevers and the bass Paul Gay as Saint-Bris, perhaps not expressive enough but with a very elegant sound. Worthy of note is also Cyrille Dubois, a singer at the beginning of his career: a fine actor and typical “French” tenor, who appeared in the episodic roles of Tavannes and First Monk.

Nicolas Testé (Marcel) and Ermonela Jaho. Photo: Agathe Poupeney

The man in charge of the last performance was Łukasz Borowicz – his appearance at the conductor’s podium at the Bastille should be remembered as historic for at least two reasons. Firstly, no other Polish conductor had led the orchestra of the Paris Opera before. Secondly and, in my opinion, more importantly – Borowicz, despite participating in the seven-week rehearsals before the premiere, working diligently with the soloists, conducted the performance having had not a single orchestral rehearsal. Michele Mariotti, the music director of the production, must have trusted him immensely – irrespective of Diana Damrau’s earlier recommendation. I cannot really compare the conducting of the two gentlemen, but after what I heard during my one-day visit to Paris, I am convinced that Borowicz has an excellent feel for Meyerbeer’s idiom. He led the soloists and the Opera’s fine chorus and orchestra with a firm hand, not for a moment losing the inner pulse and brilliantly highlighting the constant play of contrasts in the work as well as its sometimes not very obvious innovations (for example in the Blessing of the Daggers scene, in which the voices of six soloists alternately come together and emerge in smaller ensembles, cutting through the orchestral fabric with a cappella fragments only to push through the orchestral tutti with a powerful chorus in the reprise. I hope this was not Borowicz’s only appearance at the temple of grand opéra.  Waiting for the next ones, I will happily watch him in other productions of Meyerbeer’s masterpieces, especially my favourite Robert le diable.

One thing worries me, though: that I will have to leave Poland to do that. I like travelling. But I’m fed up with having to escape from the daily mediocrity of our domestic opera companies.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

Kto idzie? Hugenoci!

Louis-Désiré Véron w wieku dwudziestu pięciu lat został doktorem medycyny i przepracował kilka lat w paryskich szpitalach. Nie zrobił jednak wielkiej kariery w zawodzie. O pozycji w ówczesnym świecie lekarskim świadczyły nie tylko wiedza i umiejętności (tych Véronowi nie brakowało, opublikował nawet monografię o leczeniu pleśniawki u niemowląt), lecz przede wszystkim majątek. Véron nie był bogaty z domu, nie ujmował też powierzchownością. Miał za to smykałkę do interesów. Po śmierci pewnego aptekarza przejął patent na produkcję karmelków od kaszlu i zbił na tym niezłą fortunę. W 1829 roku założył magazyn literacki „Revue de Paris”, z którym współpracował między innymi Eugène Scribe, mistrz pièce bien faite, jeden z najbardziej utalentowanych i wpływowych, a zarazem najpłodniejszych librecistów w dziejach opery. Dwa lata później Véron wziął we franczyzę Operę Paryską, sprywatyzowaną przez rząd monarchii lipcowej. Przyznał otwarcie, że na muzyce zna się jak kura na pieprzu. Wiedział jednak, kogo poprosić o radę, a przede wszystkim doskonale wyczuł nastroje społeczne. Pięć lat dyrekcji Vérona uchodzi za początek złotej epoki grand opéra – czas, kiedy zbiorową wyobraźnią paryżan rządziły kompozycje Aubera, Meyerbeera i Halévy’ego, olśniewające projekty sceniczne Henri Duponchela oraz fenomenalne głosy Adolphe’a Nourrit i Cornélie Falcon. Zaczęło się od premiery Roberta Diabła, po której Chopin obwieścił narodziny arcydzieła nowej szkoły, a Słowacki zachwycał się w liście do matki, że „w życiu moim nie widziałem tak wielkiego kościoła, jak tu przez złudzenie na teatrze”. Zachęcony sukcesem Véron podpisał z Meyerbeerem kontrakt na kolejną operę Hugenoci, luźno opartą na Kronice z czasów Karola IX Prospera Mérimée.

Praca nad utworem trwała blisko pięć lat. Meyerbeer miał już ugruntowaną pozycję w środowisku kompozytorskim i był człowiekiem niezwykle majętnym, mógł więc sobie pozwolić na bezprecedensowe badania źródłowe (zaczął od dogłębnych studiów nad XVI-wiecznymi rękopisami muzycznymi), zatrudnienie dwóch librecistów, Eugène Scribe’a i Émile’a Deschamps, oraz późniejsze konsultacje z Gaetano Rossim, z którym współpracował między innymi przy swojej Krucjacie w Egipcie (1824). Premiera odbyła się już po rezygnacji Vérona z funkcji dyrektora Opery Paryskiej, 29 lutego 1836 roku. Skończyła się jeszcze większym triumfem niż w przypadku Roberta Diabła: nawet zawistni i nie zawsze chętni Meyerbeerowi koledzy po fachu uznali Hugenotów za szczytowe osiągnięcie gatunku, choć Berlioz nie powstrzymał się od kąśliwej uwagi, że partytura przypomina „muzyczną encyklopedię”, a materiału starczyłoby na dziesięć osobnych oper. Trzy lata później dzieło trafiło za Ocean. Wystawiano je na całym świecie, czasem pod innymi tytułami, żeby uniknąć spięć religijnych. Po kilku inscenizacjach w Związku Radzieckim padła propozycja, żeby dokonać adaptacji libretta i zmienić Hugenotów w operę o dekabrystach, pomysłu jednak nigdy nie zrealizowano. W latach dziewięćdziesiątych XIX wieku Hugenoci szli w Metropolitan Opera jako „wieczór siedmiu gwiazd”: w obsadach przewijały się między innymi nazwiska Lilian Nordiki, Sofii Scalchi, braci Reszke i Pola Plançona. Tysięczne przedstawienie w Operze Paryskiej odbyło się w maju 1906 roku, przez kolejne trzy dekady zagrano Hugenotów jeszcze sto osiemnaście razy, po czym dzieło znikło ze stołecznej sceny na przeszło osiemdziesiąt lat.

Scena z II aktu. Po lewej Karine Deshayes (Urbaine), w środku Lisette Oropesa (Marguerite de Valois). Fot. Agathe Poupeney

Dlaczego? Zgodnie z obiegową opinią inscenizacja tego olbrzyma wymaga niewyobrażalnego nakładu sił i środków, a znalezienie godnego odtwórcy partii Raoula graniczy z niepodobieństwem. Istotnie, minęły czasy świetności grand opéra, kiedy pierwszy tenor dostawał dwadzieścia pięć tysięcy franków rocznie, pierwszy dyrygent trzy razy mniej, a pomniejsze członkinie corps de ballet musiały dorabiać prostytucją, żeby nie umrzeć z głodu. Istotnie, bodaj ostatnim tenorem, który zdołał wyśpiewać wszystkie góry w głównej partii Hugenotów czysto, swobodnie i pełnym głosem, był nieodżałowany Franco Corelli. Co nie zmienia faktu, że spośród wszystkich twórców gatunku z Meyerbeerem historia obeszła się najgorzej, a jego dzieła zaczęły wracać na scenę dopiero w bieżącym stuleciu. Wygląda, że zadecydowały o tym czynniki nie tylko muzyczne – przede wszystkim systematyczny wzrost nastrojów antysemickich we Francji, od sprawy Dreyfusa aż po utworzenie państwa Vichy. Po wojnie grand opéra przeżyła gwałtowny upadek, z którego z wolna się podnosi. Czas na Meyerbeera przyszedł w ostatniej kolejności – dobrze, że jego słynni Hugenoci otworzyli rocznicowy, 350. sezon Opery Paryskiej, zrośniętej organicznie z samym terminem grand opéra.

Inscenizację powierzono pieczy Andreasa Kriegenburga, głośnego niemieckiego reżysera-autodydakty (z fachu stolarza, dawnego pracownika technicznego teatru w Magdeburgu), który większość doświadczeń nabył w teatrze dramatycznym. W operze działa od mniej więcej dziesięciu lat, za to dość intensywnie, ostatnio głównie w Dreźnie i Monachium. Kriegenburg nie uważa się za dekonstruktora, raczej za opowiadacza historii, choć – jak wyznał w rozmowie z Iwoną Uberman – „nie chcę być jedynie sługą autora, wolę odszyfrowywać duszę sztuki i prezentować ją na scenie, patrząc na nią z mojej perspektywy i przez pryzmat mojej osoby. Właściwie zawsze staram się przybliżyć do utworu, nawet wtedy, kiedy pozornie się od niego oddalam”. Brzmi to trochę asekurancko – i podobne wrażenie robi paryski spektakl Hugenotów. Niby rozegrany w niedalekiej przyszłości (tak przynajmniej sugeruje reżyserski prolog przed podniesieniem kurtyny), w gruncie rzeczy jednak dziejący się wszędzie i nigdzie, w minimalistycznych dekoracjach Haralda B. Thora i historyzujących kostiumach Tanji Hofmann. Nie byłoby w tym nic złego, gdyby Kriegenburg nie przesadził z brechtowskim Verfremdungseffekt i nieco głębiej wniknął w sens dzieła.

Karine Deshayes, Yosep Kang (Raoul), Florian Sempey (Nivers) i Cyrille Dubois (Tavannes). Fot. Agathe Poupeney

Skutek? Chłodna, wykalkulowana wizja reżysera zderzyła się boleśnie z potężnym ładunkiem emocji zawartych w partyturze. Kriegenburg lubi pracować z ciałem aktorów, „ogrywać” pewne sytuacje z uporem i nieustępliwością godną Marthalera – przemienił więc Hugenotów w prawie czterogodzinny abstrakcyjny balet, odsuwając na plan dalszy nie tylko wiarygodne portrety psychologiczne bohaterów, ale i samą narrację. Zanim się połapałam, kto jest kim na wielkiej uczcie u hrabiego de Nevers, minęło pół godziny I aktu. W miarę składnie zaczął się akt trzeci, skończył za to więcej niż groteskowo: wzajemna łomotanina katolików z protestantami przypominała raczej walkę na parasolki w pensji dla dziewcząt z dobrych domów. Pomysł, żeby w słynnej scenie błogosławieństwa sztyletów („Gloire, gloire au grand Dieu vengeur!”) uczynić z białej broni symbol falliczny i upodobnić przysięgę do aktu zbiorowej masturbacji, nie byłby może taki głupi, gdyby nie jeden szczegół – ta scena trwa przeszło kwadrans. Znamy skłonność Kriegenburga do slapsticku i łamania konwencji, ale finałowa noc św. Bartłomieja nasuwała zbyt mocne skojarzenia z Peterem Sellersem i jego nieśmiertelną kreacją inspektora Clouseau w Różowej panterze. Zdarzały się jednak perełki: między innymi upiornie dynamiczna śmierć jednej z ofiar masakry, która po ciosie mieczem zaczyna wirować na górnym podeście sceny jak zerwany z nitki i raptownie przekłuty balon. Niestety, koncepcje, które sprawdzają się bez zarzutu w teatrze postdramatycznym, w operze zawodzą na całej linii – obawiam się, że scena z wirującą dziewczyną umknęła uwagi wielu widzów.

Muszę jednak przyznać, że inscenizacja Kriegenburga okazała się w miarę nieszkodliwa i nie zaburzyła strony muzycznej wykonania. A było się czego obawiać, bo nad spektaklem jakby klątwa zawisła. W sierpniu z roli Marguerite de Valois wycofała się Diana Damrau, niespełna dwa tygodnie przed premierą podał tyły Bryan Hymel, obsadzony w morderczej partii Raoula. Mam podejrzenie, że obydwa zastępstwa wyszły paryskim Hugenotom na dobre, choć z trudnym do porównania skutkiem. Obdarzona krystalicznie czystym,  nieskazitelnym technicznie i bardzo ruchliwym sopranem Lisette Oropesa rzuciła na kolana wszystkich. Mniejszym aplauzem przyjęto Yosepa Kanga, ściągniętego w ostatniej chwili z Deutsche Oper Berlin – moim zdaniem niesłusznie, bo udźwignął rolę Raoula zarówno pod względem muzycznym, jak i postaciowym, śpiewając tenorem dźwięcznym, heroicznym w barwie, pięknie zaokrąglonym w średnicy. Owszem, góry brał asekuracyjnie i nie zawsze czysto, wynikało to jednak przede wszystkim z napięcia i nadmiernego wyeksploatowania aparatu wokalnego podczas prób i kolejnych przedstawień. O tym, że Kang zdaje sobie sprawę z własnych niedostatków i potrafi je mądrze zamarkować, świadczył choćby fenomenalnie rozplanowany duet kochanków z IV aktu („O ciel, ou courrez-vous?”). W partii Valentine nieco gorzej sprawiła się Ermonela Jaho – znakomita postaciowo, dysponująca jednak głosem zbyt lekkim i zanadto lirycznym do tej partii, przeznaczonej na soprano falcon (skądinąd postać ukochanej Raoula wykreowała właśnie Cornélie Falcon). Wspaniałym Urbainem okazała się Karine Deshayes, francuska śpiewaczka, która pierwsze szlify zdobywała w muzyce barokowej: jej urodziwy, wyrównany w rejestrach mezzosopran zasługuje na znacznie większe zainteresowanie międzynarodowych scen operowych. W męskiej obsadzie trudniej było o prawdziwe gwiazdy: na wyróżnienie z pewnością zasłużyli bas-baryton Nicolas Testé, który mimo niepełnego brzmienia w dole skali przekonująco zbudował rolę Marcela; aksamitnogłosy baryton Florian Sempey jako Nevers i nie dość może wyrazisty, ale bardzo kulturalny w brzmieniu Paul Gay w basowej partii Saint-Brisa. Warto też zwrócić uwagę na rozpoczynającego karierę Cyrille’a Dubois: sprawnego aktorsko, typowo „francuskiego” tenora, który wystąpił w epizodycznych partiach Tavannesa i Pierwszego Mnicha.

Noc św. Bartłomieja. Fot. Agathe Poupeney

Na ostatnim przedstawieniu całość ogarnął Łukasz Borowicz – jego występ za pulpitem w Bastille powinien przejść do annałów co najmniej z dwóch powodów. Po pierwsze, żaden polski dyrygent nie stanął wcześniej przed orkiestrą Opery Paryskiej. Po drugie i moim zdaniem istotniejsze – Borowicz, mimo że uczestniczył w siedmiotygodniowych przygotowaniach do premiery, pracując sumiennie z solistami, poprowadził Hugenotów bez choćby jednej próby z orkiestrą. Michele Mariotti, kierownik muzyczny spektaklu, musiał mieć do niego ogromne zaufanie – niezależnie od rekomendacji udzielonej mu wcześniej przez Dianę Damrau. Trudno mi porównywać rzemiosło dyrygenckie obu panów: po tym, co usłyszałam w czasie jednodniowej wizyty w Paryżu, zyskałam jednak pewność, że Borowicz doskonale czuje idiom Meyerbeera. Solistów i znakomite zespoły Opery powiódł przez meandry tej partytury pewną ręką, ani przez chwilę nie tracąc wewnętrznego pulsu, po mistrzowsku wydobywając nieustanną w tym utworze grę kontrastów i jego nieoczywiste czasem nowatorstwo (choćby we wspomnianej już scenie błogosławieństwa sztyletów, gdzie głosy sześciu solistów na przemian się schodzą i wyłaniają w mniejszych ansamblach, przerywają tkankę orkiestrową fragmentami a cappella, by w repryzie wybić się potężnym chórem nad orkiestrowe tutti). Mam nadzieję, że nie skończy się na pojedynczym występie Borowicza w świątyni grand opéra a w oczekiwaniu na następne chętnie poobserwuję jego rzemiosło w innych inscenizacjach Meyerbeerowskich arcydzieł, na czele z moim ukochanym Robertem Diabłem.

Jedno mnie tylko martwi: że będę musiała w tym celu wyjechać z Polski. Lubię podróżować. Ale mam już dość ucieczki od miałkiej operowej codzienności w naszych rodzimych teatrach.

An Operatic Treasure Trove

Whenever high art ceases to be associated with high style and begins to be associated with high-handedness, it stumbles, tumbles down several storeys and becomes an object of ridicule. A few years ago a certain musical institution in Poland – an institution with otherwise beautiful traditions – decided to outsalzburg Salzburg and announced that “casual elegant” would be a mandatory dress code within its walls. Garments to be banned from that moment on included jeans and sweaters. The initiative was rightly mocked and the organisers quickly abandoned the “rules” they had so hastily formulated. The festival remained a democratic event, where we are more likely to meet true music lovers in freshly laundered jeans and tasteful sweaters than bored officials in suits smelling of mothballs.

This is not surprising: philharmonic halls and other concert venues have long been reaching out to their audiences with increasingly broad and varied repertoires – from medieval music to contemporary works, played and sung by various ensembles and artists cultivating very different performance styles. Listeners have a lot to choose from and can without any major difficulty expand their knowledge thanks to analyses of works in programme booklets, radio programmes, broadcasts and internet streams, meetings with musicians as well as comparisons of interpretations presented live with the rich and easily accessible discography.

Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice at the Wrocław Opera. Photo: Krzysztof Bieliński

Potential opera goers are in a far less comfortable situation. Putting on a full staging brings with it huge costs, incomparable to the costs of organising an “ordinary” concert. This is also why it is difficult to access complete opera recordings, not to mention video recordings of performances. Ordinary music lovers prefer to save up for a ticket to a concert hall rather than risk going to the theatre, where they will see their beloved Tosca in costumes and sets that have nothing to do with the musical concept. Ordinary theatre lovers prefer to see a performance of a play in which they will understand every word spoken on stage and will not have to wonder why the gentleman on stage is still singing a quarter of hour after he was mortally stabbed in the heart. Ordinary snobs will be bored for a much shorter time in a concert hall, from which they can escape between movements of a work, for example.

Opera as a theatre genre is in crisis all over the world, but there are very few countries where the crisis is as worrying as it is in Poland. Successive rumours about the death of opera, spread by philosophers and culture scholars for at least one hundred years, have turned out to be as exaggerated as the news of the death of Queen Bona from Tuwim and Słonimski’s unrivalled satire. The convulsions of the alleged agony only signalled a need for a through revamping of the convention. The process is painful everywhere, but is beginning to produce results: most “revitalisation” work is done in the purely theatrical layer, the approach to which increasingly varies, beginning with attempts at historical reconstruction of old productions, through references to the classics of modernist theatre and ending with progressive and often invasive practices of Regietheater. All over the world there are disputes– often fierce – over the validity of staging concepts, but no one mocks the theatrical nature of operas themselves. No one mocks librettos, in the logic of which “no one in their right mind will believe”, as one Polish director put it. No one remains indifferent to the practice of making cuts, changing the order of the various “numbers” in the score and introducing additional sound effects not provided for by the composer – some sing loud praises of such interventions, others protest until their last breath. No one thinks, as another Polish artist put it, that they are watching “a silly story”, no one feels “blackmailed by the very respectability of the operatic art”.

Despite various experiments and sheer iniquities committed by directors today against the living and lively body of this form, despite the demise of true stars and decline of the old art of singing – opera per se is doing better and better in the postmodern reality. It satisfies people’s longing for fairy tales, it allows them to escape into the land of magical thinking, provides a release for emotions unavailable in the dark, popcorn-smelling cinema room. For ordinary consumers of Western culture going to the opera is as important as element of spiritual nourishment as reading books and watching various shows on Netflix. Well-behaved Europeans will admit to not knowing Oscar-winning films rather than admit to not being familiar with the intrigue of Carmen or Un ballo in maschera.

Verdi’s Nabucco, the open-air superproduction at the Wrocław Opera. Photo: Maciej Suchorabski

In Poland, on the other hand, opera goers are getting increasingly polarised. On one extreme we have fans of opera stars and the commotion which usually accompanies their performances, and on the other – enthusiasts of spectacular, Hollywood-style productions by fashionable directors. Interestingly, representatives of both extremes care little about the phenomenon of operatic music as such. The former are quite satisfied with the celebrities showing up and singing, while the latter treat the musical layer of a production as a kind of soundtrack to a non-existent film. Between these two extremes wanders an increasingly small, increasingly lonely and often ridiculed group of fans who really cry over the fate of the wretched Halka, really know Nabucco inside out and really can appreciate the quality of a performance – sometimes in comparison with many forgotten archive recordings and in the context of changing interpretation practices.

What has brought this on? After all, the parents of my mates from primary school – even if they did not want to or were ashamed to go to the opera – knew who Callas, Chaliapin and Caruso were. After all, we all laughed in front of our television sets when the “famous Siamese tenor” sang Jontek’s aria in Stanisław Bareja’s comedy series and we heard a translation back into Polish (“My life, though young, is sad, for there is a grudge in my heart, I don’t accuse anyone in particular except for my girl…” etc.).  After all, the post-war premiere of Lohengrin at the Warsaw Opera must have also been a great social event, if Jeremi Przybora alluded to it in Kabaret Starszych Panów (Elderly Gentlemen’s Cabaret).

I will not repeat the clichés about long term effects of the decline of music education in schools. But I will weigh in with my opinion about the unreasonable policy of the directors of many opera companies in Poland, who during the transformation period looked up to the West, without taking into account the distinct determinants of our culture. Having concluded that we could not afford the German-Austrian repertoire model, in which productions – created by soloists, chorus members and orchestra musicians working well together on a daily basis – were added to the repertoire for many seasons, they opted for the Italian stagione system. Yet putting on an expensive production featuring singers contracted especially for the purpose and then presenting just three or four performances has little in common with a genuine stagione, in which a production is presented even a dozen or so times, is preceded by months of intense rehearsals and after a while is revived at home or moves to another opera house.

Beethoven’s Fidelio at the Wrocław Opera. Photo: Krzysztof Zatycki

The Wrocław Opera is one of the last companies in Poland still trying to stick to the repertoire system – which is beneficial to both connoisseurs and novices taking their first steps in the magical world of opera. Over the last two seasons things have sped up: the company has added Italian bel canto works, neglected in Poland, to its repertoire; there have also been more contemporary works; young directors previously not allowed on the big stage have been given a chance; works which cannot yet hope to attract crowds have been given meticulously prepared concert performances. The Wrocław Opera is building its repertoire wisely, respecting the audience’s varied tastes: it alternates “traditional” productions with examples of well thought out although sometimes controversial Regietheater. It invests in the education of children and adults. It invites the curious among them backstage and to various technical rooms. It goes out with music into the urban space.

In the upcoming season it will transfer to the opera house two of its open-air superproductions: Verdi’s Nabucco directed by Krystian Lada and Gounod’s Faust directed by Beata Redo-Dobber. It will present a new staging of Moniuszko’s Halka. It will tackle Phantoms in a production entrusted to Jarosław Fret, the founder of Teatr ZAR and director of the Grotowski Institute. It will present Mozart’s Don Giovanni after a concept by André Heller Lopes, one of the most interesting opera directors in Latin America, who for several years has been successfully presenting Janáček’s operas in Brazil. Bel canto enthusiasts will be served a concert performance of Donizetti’s La fille du régiment, fans of superproductions – a new production of Traviata, advocates of intergenerational education – Zygmunt Krauze’s family opera Yemaya, lovers of the Terpsichorean art – classical Giselle choreographed by Zofia Rudnicka and Ewa Głowacka as well as two modernist ballets by Stravinsky, Card Game and The Rite of Spring, to be presented by Jacek Przybyłowicz and the Swedish dancer Sigge Modigh.

There will be a lot to choose from, especially given the fact that the company’s repertoire will also feature productions premiered in its extremely busy last season, alternating with the best productions from previous seasons. Soon Wrocław opera lovers will start exchanging jokes like those of the Opera North patrons who regularly compile lists of New Year’s resolutions for the protagonists of operas presented in Leeds. Last season Fiordiligi and Dorabella made an appointment with an ophthalmologist, while Siegfried promised Brünnhilde he would spend more time with her at home. Opera can teach, entertain and move to tears – provided you are in touch with it on a daily basis.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

Do you know it? We do! So then listen…

It is possible not to be enthused by the directorial style of David Pountney (which Stefanos Lazaridis, his regular collaborator in the times of the English National Opera’s greatest post-war splendour, described as ‘distorted traditionalism’); however, one cannot deny that he is a true opera animal. His love for the queen of musical forms reportedly has a very long history. It all began on a vacation in Berkshire that the five-year-old David spent with his parents among the participants in a summer music camp. One evening, he was crouched down in the corner of an old barn and suddenly, in complete darkness, he heard a solitary voice. The singing of the invisible tenor made an electrifying impression on him, which is no surprise in that what he was hearing in the barn was Florestan’s aria from Act II of Fidelio. For several years, the young Pountney was a trumpeter in the National Youth Orchestra, sang in the choir at St John’s Chapel and, while studying at Cambridge, made friends with Mark Elder and decided to become an opera stage director – among other things, in order not to get in the way of his colleague who had significantly better prospects as a conductor. He entered the world of great fame thanks to a staging of Kát’a Kabanová at the Wexford Festival, and throughout his career, has effectively promoted Janáček’s œuvre. He has directed over a dozen world premières of contemporary operas. He has contributed to the greatness of the Bregenz Festival. He translates libretti from four languages and uses translations in his own productions. In 2011, he became executive and artistic director of the Welsh National Opera, to which he gave a very distinctive profile, often turning to works unknown, neglected or forgotten by the British audience. Last season, the WNO put on 115 performances, most of them on tour; its turnover amounted to over 17 million pounds, and the number of newcomers in the audience exceeded the number of old regular attenders. At the beginning of 2018, the Opera’s board decided not to extend Pountney’s contract. No official reason was given. Suggestions have appeared that the director was imposing too-ambitious repertoire on the theatre, thereby threatening it with bankruptcy in the difficult period after the Brexit referendum, not to mention growing competition from the country house operas and fringe theatres.

There are also opinions circulating to the effect that the formula proposed by Pountney has simply worn out. This year’s seasons were planned, as it were, more cautiously, without the usual watchwords, combining première performances with absolute sure bets that have been scoring triumphs on the world’s opera stages for years. It is difficult for anyone to assign blame for this: a house of this standing is not meant to present just rarities, and superb stagings of the classics should not be pulled from the stage after a few showings. Against the background of propositions from the Scottish Opera and Opera North, however, the WNO’s repertoire comes out quite bland – especially in comparison with several truly outstanding productions from previous years.

La Cenerentola. Tara Erraught (Angelina). Photo: Jane Hobson

Yet again, I was not able to get to Cardiff, instead traveling to Oxford for the autumn season. I will not deny that after months of contact with Regieoper in an unbearably pretentious rendition, I expected a bit of rest at tried-and-true stagings of La Traviata and Rossini’s La Cenerentola. I admit it was with impatience that I awaited Prokofiev’s War and Peace under the direction of Pountney, known for his predilection for operatic ‘Slavdom’. However, first in line was La Cenerentola, a WNO, Houston Grand Opera, Gran Teatre del Liceu and Grand Théatre de Genève co-production revived after 11 years. During that time, the production of two Catalonians – Joan Font and collaborating stage designer Joan Guillén – had managed to win the hearts of audiences at Brussels’ La Monnaie and several opera houses in the United States. And rightly so, for the directing concept of Font – founder of the collective Els Comediants, known to Polish audiences above all for his brilliant setting of the closing ceremony to the Olympic Games in Barcelona – gets to the heart of this masterpiece. Especially in combination with Guillén’s colourful, half-fairytale, half-surreal visual concept derived from commedia dell’arte and other folk theatre traditions, but filtered through the experiences of artists associated with the Ballets Russes, primarily Bakst, Picasso and Miró. Emotion went hand-in-hand with the grotesque; hearty laughter, with moments of reflection. If any charge can be leveled at this staging, it would only be the delightful ubiquity of six dancers dressed as mice who too often ‘stole the show’ from the singers. There were basically no weak points in the cast, starting with the warm and flexible mezzo-soprano of Tara Erraught (Angelina); the stylish, though sharp-timbred Matteo Macchioni (Don Ramiro), the vocally and theatrically phenomenal Giorgio Caoduro (Dandini); the superbly contrasting Aoife Miskelly and Heather Lowe in the roles of the two sisters; the technically superb Fabio Capitanucci (Don Magnifico); and finishing with the impressively cultured phrasing of Wojtek Gierlach (Alidoro). The entirety was conducted by Tomáš Hanus, presently music director of the WNO, who not only disciplined the orchestra and chorus in an ideal manner, but also gave the soloists plenty of room to display their artistry, especially in the gorgeously-blended ensemble numbers.

I took away similar impressions from La Traviata directed by David McVicar, revived 10 years after its première at the Scottish Opera. The production, equally visually tasteful (stage design by Tanya McCallin) and equally subtly led by the conductor (James Southall) as in the case of La Cenerentola, provided yet more evidence of the vitality of traditionally-conceived opera theatre. McVicar moved the action a few decades forward, into scenery taken – as it were – straight from the painting of fin-de-siècle portrait artists, sensual and dark, with a spectre of consumption and neurasthenia lurking in the corners of the salons. He populated this scenery with a crowd of ambiguous characters, internally broken, by turns ruthless and generous, cruel and tormented by guilt feelings, vulgar and angelically pure. This time, the cast was dominated by the gentlemen: the fantastic Roland Wood in the role of Giorgio Germont and the distinctive Kang Wang, with his dark, beautifully rounded tenor, as Alfredo. Anush Hovhannisyan had considerable difficulty getting into the role of Violetta, who from the beginning, in McVicar’s perspective, hides despair under a mask of provocative self-confidence. She revealed the full values of her expressive soprano, rich in dynamic shading, only in Act II, effectively building tension in the shocking dialogue with Alfredo’s father. The final tragedy – played out in a bedroom into which the sun will not shine even after the window curtains have been opened – would have squeezed tears out of a rock. The production team more than satisfied my embarrassing need for melodrama.

La traviata. Philip Lloyd Evans (Marquis d’Obigny), Rebecca Afonwy Jones (Flora), and WNO Chorus. Photo: Betina Skovbro

With regard to War and Peace, however, I had higher expectations, especially bearing in mind the circumstances in which the last of Prokofiev’s operatic masterpieces was written. The composer and his wife Mira Mendelson – co-author of the libretto – performed a true miracle. From Tolstoy’s magnum opus, which the author himself did not want to call a novel and which with each successive volume more and more resembles an expansive philosophical treatise rather than a work of literary fiction, they selected barely a few threads, leaving future audiences to speculate and draw their own conclusions.  The work took shape in stages. The first sketches for War and Peace were written at the beginning of the 1930s. The work as a whole went out into the world under the duress of the moment: first in a spontaneous impulse of patriotism evoked by Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union; and later, in the face of stronger and stronger pressure from the Council of Ministers’ Committee on the Arts. At the WNO, the opera was presented in English, but on the basis of a new critical edition of the score prepared by Rita McAllister and Katya Ermolaeva, taking into account most of Prokofiev’s original plans and, as a result, considerably shorter than the final version. Anyone who takes on the staging of War and Peace must realize that this is a non-uniform work, in many ways uneven – one in which references to the great Russian tradition, led by Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky, are woven into a whole with Prokofiev’s own idiom; sometimes, they fight for the better with national heroics and repulsive models of Stalinist propaganda.

Pountney’s staging – unlike the opera itself – is astoundingly coherent and consistent. And for precisely this reason, it gives the lie to the composer’s plans. Prokofiev tackled a holy book of Russian literature and forged it into something with a completely different quality. Pountney returned to the point of departure and showed the great stereotype of imperial Russia – drawing liberally upon his own productions and upon other people’s pictures that evoke appropriate associations in the mind of the average viewer. He organized the stage space exactly the same way (and with the help of the same stage designer, Robert Innes Hopkins), as in Iain Bell’s opera In Parenthesis of two years earlier. At the time, the half-circular wooden shape symbolized the trenches by the Somme – now it was equally effectively incorporated into the scenery of Russian aristocratic homes and of the battlefield at Borodino. Where the action was taking place, we figured out from projections displayed in the background: in Part II, these were extensive fragments of War and Peace directed by Sergey Bondarchuk. The stage was populated by characters from the pages of the novel, in the military episodes mixed with participants in the Great Patriotic War (in order to introduce the audience to the context in which the opera was written). Everyone was in costumes, as it were, from a historical reenactment show or from the recent BBC miniseries – if Natasha, then in a white dress of gauze; if Kuragin, then in an operetta uniform with gold braids; if Kutuzov, then in a forage cap with a brass telescope in hand.

War and Peace. Lauren Michelle (Natasha) and Jonathan Mc Govern (Andrey) Photo: Clive Barda

If we consider Prokofiev’s War and Peace to be an epic propaganda fresco, praising the unity of the Soviet people in conflict with the foreign invasion, then Pountney executed his task masterfully. If we go back to the sources of inspiration and follow how the composer drew the protagonists by purely musical means – then he suffered an ignominious defeat. The opera was presented with a choice cast; despite this, most of the singers were not able to breathe life into their paper characters. It is difficult to be surprised, given that several soloists had to perform in multiple roles:  Simon Bailey, with his light, completely ‘un-Russian’ bass, thrashed back and forth between Balaga, Marshal Davout and the grotesquely-constructed character of Kutuzov. The otherwise splendid David Stout changed costumes from Denisov into Napoleon, along the way portraying Dolokhov and General Rayevsky. American soprano Lauren Michelle in the role of Natasha did not go beyond a ditzy airhead stereotype. Jonathan McGovern was not able to fully show the transformation of his Bolkonsky (and a pity, because he is a sensitive musician with a high, well-handled lyric baritone). Paradoxically, the one who came out best was Mark Le Brocq in the role of Bezukhov – a powerful role written by Prokofiev for spinto tenor, requiring no small ability to reconcile singing with a convincing vision of a good-natured loser who undergoes an amazing metamorphosis over the course of the narrative.

We had to wait almost until the end of the opera for the one and only scene in which Pountney reminded us of his former greatness and, at the same time, got to the heart of the musical message. In the episode of Bolkonsky’s death, I had before my eyes his former productions with the English National Opera. The vertically hanging bed, the skewed lines, the completely disturbed perspective, and in the middle, the feverish Andrey, dying to the ghostly accompaniment of the chorus singing from the wings. And then suddenly it became as if in Tolstoy, whose delirious prose Prokofiev translated excellently into the language of sound: ‘But perhaps it is my shirt on the table,’ thought Prince Andrey, ‘and that’s my legs, and that’s the door, but why this straining and moving and piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti… Enough, cease, be still, please.’ Another matter that it was in this scene that the orchestra scaled the heights of interpretation under the baton of Tomáš Hanus – a compliment all the greater that the conductor took in the whole work with an admiration-worthy feel for style, at splendidly-chosen tempi and in strongly contrasting dynamics (separate words of praise for the WNO chorus).

Soon it will be spring; and with it, Pountney’s next, no doubt last staging at this theatre – Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. Will there again be gold braids, epaulets and bandoliers crossed over chests? Or maybe the director will surprise the audience with something else after all? Maybe he will leave behind an impression that he has not yet said it all?

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski