Speranza
World premiere incomplete
6/16/1929
Malyi Opera Theatre,
Leningrad
Company: Malyi Opera
World stage
premiere
1/18/1930
Academy of Arts, Leningrad
Nikolai Smolich,
director
Conductor: Samuil Samosud
Company: Small Opera Theatre of the
Academy of Arts, Leningrad
Roles
PLATON KUZMICH
KOAVALYOV Baritone
IVAN YAKOVLEVICH, a barber Bass-Baritone
POLICE
INSPECTOR Very high Tenor
IVAN, Kovalyov's valet Tenor
THE
NOSE Tenor
PELAGIA GRIGORIEVNA PODTOCHINA Mezzo-Soprano
HER
DAUGHTER Soprano
THE OLD COUNTESS Contralto
PRASKOVYA OSSIPOVNA, wife of
Ivan Yakovlevich Soprano
A Bread-Seller Soprano
A Clerk in a Newspaper
Office Bass-Baritone
IAZIZHKIN, a friend of Kovalyov's Tenor
Eight footmen,
Ten Policemen, Nine Gentlemen, Four Eunuchs, Passers-By, People at Coach Station
etc.Chorus
Time and Place
St Petersburg, the
1830s
Kovalyov, a government official in St Petersburg,
is being shaved by his foul-smelling barber, in preparation for a good time with
the girls.
The next morning the barber wakes up and, to his wife’s annoyance,
finds a severed nose in her fresh-baked morning loaf.
The barber tries to dispose of it
in the river but gets stopped by a constable.
Kovalyov wakes and finds his nose
is missing.
Setting off in search, he sees it entering Kazan Cathedral.
It is
now dressed as an official of superior rank and refuses his polite request to
return to his face.
Unable to get help from police and lawyers, Kovalyov goes
into a crowded newspaper office and attempts to place an advertisement offering
a reward for his nose’s return.
The clerk refuses to take the advertisement and
offers him snuff instead.
In despair Kovalyov returns home where he finds his
manservant playing the balalaika and spitting at the ceiling.
A stage-coach is
leaving town and all sorts of colourful travellers are boarding, watched
secretly by the police after a tip-off.
When the nose appears under cover of
darkness, the police arrest it and return it to Kovalyov who finds he cannot get
it to stick to his face.
He calls a doctor who is no help.
Prompted by his
friend Yarizhkin, he writes a letter to Madame Podtochina accusing her of
bewitching him.
She understands this as an amorous advance to her daughter and
writes back accepting Kovalyov’s proposal of marriage.
The whole town has heard
about the Nose and noisy crowds collect in the streets and parks.
Kovalyov, who
has mysteriously managed to stick his nose back on again, gets himself shaved
once more by his barber and sets out for a good time with the girls.
On the way,
he satisfactorily snubs Madame Podtochina and her daughter and finds a pretty
young street-seller who he invites back to his rooms.
A satirical opera in three acts. Libretto by Yevgeni Zamyatin, Georgi
Ionin, Aleksandr Preis, and the composer, based on the short story ‘The Nose’ by
Nikolai Gogol.
‘The Nose’ is one of Shostakovich’s greatest
masterpieces, an electrifying tour de force of vocal acrobatics, wild
instrumental colours and theatrical absurdity, all shot through with a
blistering mixture of laughter and rage.
In his first dramatic work the composer
immediately showed himself to be a master of musical drama, as well as a born
avant-garde experimenter, equally at home with the theatrical modernism of his
mentor, the great theatre-director Vsevolod Meyerhold, and the musical modernism
of Alban Berg (Berg’s ‘Wozzeck’ had made a tremendous impression on Shostakovich
when it was staged in Leningrad).
The plot is based on the one of the most
famous stories in Russian literature.
A pompous government official, Kovalyov,
wakes up one day to find that his nose has taken on a life of its own and gone
for a walk around the city of St.Petersburg.
In a sequence of scenes that follow
one another with cinematic swiftness, we follow Kovalyov’s increasingly
ridiculous attempts to chase after his nose, recapture it and stick it back on
his face.
On the way we encounter singing policemen, a drunken barber, an early
19th century newspaper office, a cathedral choir and the Persian Ambassador.
The
result, in Shostakovich’s ruthlessly irreverent hands, is like an operatic
version of Charlie Chaplin or Monty Python.
Although ‘The Nose’ has been
revived with enormous success from time to time, its performances have never
been as frequent as this brilliant work deserves.
This is a pity, for despite
its magnificently absurd subject and virtuosic music, ‘The Nose’ is a perfectly
practical work and provides a hugely entertaining evening in the
theatre.
Moods
Comic
Subjects
Ethics,
Magic/Mystery, Politics, Society, Literary
Recommended
Recording
Edvard Akimov, Valery Belykh, Nina Sasulova, Boris Tarkhov, Boris
Druzhinin, Aleksandr Lomonosov, Igor Paramonov, Valery Solovyanov, Lyudmila
Sokolenko, Ashot Sarkisov, Alexander Braim, Lyudmila Sapegina, Lyudmila Ukolova,
Moscow Chamber Theatre Chorus, Moscow Chamber Theatre Orchestra, Gennadi
Rozhdestvensky
Melodiya 74321603192
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