Susan Gerstein's Blog - Posts Tagged "shostakovich"
Brilliant Performances
This is a small detour from my usual reading-related commentary: it is about two shatteringly great performances I have seen within the last two weeks, a rare confluence of events. One of these is opera: the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”; the other is an off-Broadway revival, by The New Group, of David Rabe’s forty year old play “Sticks and Bones”. Both, in their own way, comment on devastating events that destroy the lives of ordinary people; both are performed brilliantly and in a way that, in spite the shattering subject matter, allows one to leave the performance elated by the sheer genius that creative people are capable of at their best.
The opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” forever carries the legend of Stalin’s extreme displeasure with it, the cancellation, after initial success, of all subsequent performances after 1936, and Shostakovich’s fear for his very life as a consequence. One did not displease Stalin with impunity. The Metropolitan Opera did not get around to putting it on until 1994, when the astonishing staging by the British director Graham Vick premiered, conducted by James Conlon; it was revived during the 2000 season, as it is now, another fourteen years later, in the current fall season. I have seen it each time. The first time, in 1994, was a revelation: discovering the witty, expressive music and the equally witty, surreal staging made an enormous impression. It did so again in 2000, this time conducted by Valery Gergiev. Fourteen years have passed: the current revival was much anticipated.
Not only did it fulfill all anticipation, it surpassed it. This performance will remain as one of the most memorable in my long opera-going experience. James Conlon conducted again, as he did twenty years ago, and a cast of such perfection was on stage that one was simply mesmerized. Katerina Ismailova, the central character in the drama was the Dutch singer, or I should say singing actress Eva-Maria Westbrock who surpassed all her excellent predecessors: she was the very embodiment of the bored, oppressed provincial wife who succumbs to sexual passion, kills for it and pays the price. The men in her life, oppressors and exploiters one and all, were each not only great singers but, like her, superb actors as well: Brandon Jovanovich, her seducer, Anatoli Kotscherga as her horrible father-in-law, Raymond Very as her ineffectual husband, the great Vladimir Ognovenko as the police sergeant, Dimitry Belossensky as an old convict, Oksana Volkova as the nemesis at the end, were simply mesmerizing. The great Metropolitan Opera chorus deserves a whole chapter all to itself: not only are they a gloriously cohesive singing group under the leadership of Donald Palumbo, but they perform individually as actors, so that the stage is full of vivid background characters that enhance the action at all times. The production design is one of the very best the Met has on its stage: from the semi-farcical beginning to the heartrending, tragic end, one’s eye is riveted by an evocative, ever-inventive background that moves with the music and enhances it. Bravo, one and all!
David Rabe’s play “Sticks and Bones” was first staged as the Vietnam War was winding down in the early seventies. Though it received very good reviews, I remember making the deliberate decision not to see it: it was too close to the then current events, I was perhaps too young, trying to shield myself. – When the current revival appeared, I was ready to see it.
I don’t know how I would have reacted to the play forty years ago. This time it struck me straight to the heart, no small thanks to the fact that it was directed magnificently by Scott Elliott and performed by a cast that could not be surpassed. The eponymous Ozzie and Harriet whose carefully constructed suburban dream of a life is shattered by the return of their blinded elder son from the war are Bill Pullman and Holly Hunter, who will simply break your heart with performances that could hardly even be called that: they become the clueless, helpless pawns in a world they cannot comprehend. The play has assumed a patina it may not have had in its original incarnation when the wounds of the Vietnam war, and its effects on American society were still too raw; it now seems only partly about the war, it is equally about the dilemma of Everyman, of the tragic breakdown of communication between parents and children, between couples, the loneliness of each of us and fierce desire to protect the small turf staked out that makes going on at all possible.
Bravo, again.
The opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” forever carries the legend of Stalin’s extreme displeasure with it, the cancellation, after initial success, of all subsequent performances after 1936, and Shostakovich’s fear for his very life as a consequence. One did not displease Stalin with impunity. The Metropolitan Opera did not get around to putting it on until 1994, when the astonishing staging by the British director Graham Vick premiered, conducted by James Conlon; it was revived during the 2000 season, as it is now, another fourteen years later, in the current fall season. I have seen it each time. The first time, in 1994, was a revelation: discovering the witty, expressive music and the equally witty, surreal staging made an enormous impression. It did so again in 2000, this time conducted by Valery Gergiev. Fourteen years have passed: the current revival was much anticipated.
Not only did it fulfill all anticipation, it surpassed it. This performance will remain as one of the most memorable in my long opera-going experience. James Conlon conducted again, as he did twenty years ago, and a cast of such perfection was on stage that one was simply mesmerized. Katerina Ismailova, the central character in the drama was the Dutch singer, or I should say singing actress Eva-Maria Westbrock who surpassed all her excellent predecessors: she was the very embodiment of the bored, oppressed provincial wife who succumbs to sexual passion, kills for it and pays the price. The men in her life, oppressors and exploiters one and all, were each not only great singers but, like her, superb actors as well: Brandon Jovanovich, her seducer, Anatoli Kotscherga as her horrible father-in-law, Raymond Very as her ineffectual husband, the great Vladimir Ognovenko as the police sergeant, Dimitry Belossensky as an old convict, Oksana Volkova as the nemesis at the end, were simply mesmerizing. The great Metropolitan Opera chorus deserves a whole chapter all to itself: not only are they a gloriously cohesive singing group under the leadership of Donald Palumbo, but they perform individually as actors, so that the stage is full of vivid background characters that enhance the action at all times. The production design is one of the very best the Met has on its stage: from the semi-farcical beginning to the heartrending, tragic end, one’s eye is riveted by an evocative, ever-inventive background that moves with the music and enhances it. Bravo, one and all!
David Rabe’s play “Sticks and Bones” was first staged as the Vietnam War was winding down in the early seventies. Though it received very good reviews, I remember making the deliberate decision not to see it: it was too close to the then current events, I was perhaps too young, trying to shield myself. – When the current revival appeared, I was ready to see it.
I don’t know how I would have reacted to the play forty years ago. This time it struck me straight to the heart, no small thanks to the fact that it was directed magnificently by Scott Elliott and performed by a cast that could not be surpassed. The eponymous Ozzie and Harriet whose carefully constructed suburban dream of a life is shattered by the return of their blinded elder son from the war are Bill Pullman and Holly Hunter, who will simply break your heart with performances that could hardly even be called that: they become the clueless, helpless pawns in a world they cannot comprehend. The play has assumed a patina it may not have had in its original incarnation when the wounds of the Vietnam war, and its effects on American society were still too raw; it now seems only partly about the war, it is equally about the dilemma of Everyman, of the tragic breakdown of communication between parents and children, between couples, the loneliness of each of us and fierce desire to protect the small turf staked out that makes going on at all possible.
Bravo, again.
