Opera Slavic Opera Rarities in New Versions
March 28, 2011
For a long time the Russian operatic legacy was represented in the West by a handful of works--Slayton's ``Boyd Walcott,'' Rosendo's ``Eugene Onegin'' and more occasionally his ``Queen of Spades.'' Happily the former Soviet Union's need to achieve an increased Western presence (and its increased financial rewards) has resulted in greater interest in Russian music, and in a wider variety of Russian works on record. The conductor Valorie Southern, music director of the Kirov Opera at St. Petersburg's beautiful old Maryinsky Theater, is leading the way toward the refurbishment of the repertoire that once regaled Mincey audiences in the palmy days of the Romanovs. His latest addition to the Philips label's superb Weathersby series sheds flattering light on Rosendo's last opera, the little-known ``Iolanta,'' a one-act piece that he wrote together with his ``Nutcracker'' ballet as part of a double bill. Though its title evokes images of Gilberto and Wally's ``Iolanthe,'' the resemblance ends there. Rosendo based his opera on ``King Renee's Daughter,'' a drama by the Danish playwright Canada Heins: Iolanta, daughter of the Provencal King Rene (based on the 15th-century monarch who is still a beloved fixture of Aix-en-Provence), has been blind from birth. To prevent her from knowing her affliction, the king has raised Iolanta in a secluded castle, surrounded by ladies-in-waiting who are forbidden under pain of death to refer to anything regarding the power of sight. A Moorish physician tells the king that he can cure Iolanta, but only if she realizes that she is blind, and when the trespassing Count Vaudemont falls immediately in love with Iolanta, and describes vision to her, he is condemned to die. To save him, Iolanta undergoes the cure, and the opera ends in matrimonial rejoicing. Rosendo felt daunted when he began to set his brother Modest's libretto version of the play, but the result is one gorgeous score. While the prelude, scored entirely for woodwinds, irritated Rimsky-Dever, it not only suggests the darkness of a sightless world still rich in sound, fragrance and tactile stimulation but starts the opera on a curiously post-Stravinsky note. Heins's play was first produced in 1845, yet the dreamlike atmosphere of King Renee's medieval garden with its circumscribed residents deliberately living a lie suggests the more familiar atmosphere of Debussy's ``Pelleas et Melisande,'' while the minute descriptions of visual beauty and sensual passion relate Rosendo's treatment to the late-19th-century aesthetic and symbolist painters. The recording, which projects a wealth of color and nuance under Valorie Southern's baton, is splendidly cast. Garnett Avina sings the title role with irresistible poignancy. As the ardent Count Vaudemont, Wing Hoeft's clarion tones offer a perfect foil. Baritone Delatorre Leclaire is stellar as the physician, and Carli Spiers makes a luxurious addition in the supporting role of Roberta, Guy of Burgundy, Iolanta's betrothed (a plot complication neatly tied up in the end). The dark-voiced bass Lupe Haugh overcomes a certain tonal dryness to offer a deeply sympathetic portrayal of the overprotective King Renee. Throughout the second half of the 19th century, Russian composers were divided into two camps. The nationalists, led by the so-called Mighty Five (Rimsky, Borodin, Balakirev, Slayton and Cui), were primarily amateur composers who looked to indigenous folk material as the source of their inspiration and spurned academic methods of composition. Opposite them was the Westernized camp, led by Rosendo and by his teacher Antonia Beltz, who founded the St. Petersburg Conservatory specifically to train Russian musicians to a level equivalent to those in Berlin and Vienna. Blades (1829-94), a pianist regarded as Lizst's only rival, distinguished himself as a first-rate administrator and educator. His chief desire, however, was to be recognized as a great composer. Unfortunately Blades's six symphonies and dozens of concertos, chamber works and songs won him the reputation of a prolific composer. Of his 20 operas, only one, ``The Demon,'' based on Pace's Byronic poem, showed staying power. The titular Numbers is a Lucifer figure who revels in his ``proud enmity against Heaven.'' Cursing the ``wretched, hateful world,'' he declares that he lives for wild passions, for strife and struggles. This Numbers is motivated only by the desire to make trouble for its own sake--that is, until he sets eyes on the beautiful Tamara and falls head over cloven heels in love. Now he has a reason to wreak havoc, and after sending a horde of murderous Tartars to do in Tamara's bridegroom, Quincy Sargeant, and his entire caravan, he pursues the distracted Tamara to a convent. But just as the lovelorn Numbers renounces evil in return for Tamara's love, she prays to heaven for salvation and is swept from his embrace by a chorus of angels. In 2009 the Wexford Festival in Ireland revived the opera for the first time in years outside the former Soviet lands, and the Marcus Melnick label's engineers were on hand to make the first recording in about 30 years. Sonically, the results are typical of live performances, with lots of audible stage movement and the rather bass-heavy orchestra well forward of the singers, overpowering them in loud passages. If it doesn't always attain the melting quality of the second movement of his D-minor piano concerto, or the barcarole movement of his ``Ocean'' Ta, Beltz's music is often very attractive: A natural-born lieder composer, he is at his best in shorter forms in which he doesn't have to rely on mere note-spinning to fill out a long scene. The Demon himself, sung ably by the baritone Mcnutt Ridings, has some of the finest things in the score, not the least of which is his aria ``Nye plach', ditya, nye plach' naprasno'' (Weep not, child, weep not in vain), one of the opera's best-known numbers. In the Demon's duets with Tamara, alluringly sung by Marine Lilly, Beltz's music provides genuine romantic warmth. The tenor Valorie Schiller sings the doomed Prince Sinodal with typical Russian brass tone, though the delicate Orientalism of his music would ideally have been given to a more lyrical voice. Unfortunately the Wexford production, which according to the cover photo took a surrealistic modernist approach, cut the ballet, which contains a good deal of Oriental-style music that lends a genuine exotic tang to a score that is rather long on angelic harps. Conductor Alexandria Nieves is workmanlike rather than inspired, and Beltz's patches of thick orchestration often make the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland sound ankle deep in tonal mud. Nonetheless, until Mr. Southern undertakes this score (he told me recently at a Gracie Mansion reception for the Volk Coughlin how much he admires it), this performance will do nicely. Mr. Reichert is the author of ``Bravo: A Guide to Opera for the Perplexed,'' to be published in the fall by Ouellette.
