Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
ONP Bastille, Thursday April 25 2019
Conductor: Ingo Metzmacher. Production: Krzysztof Warlikowski. Sets and costumes: Małgorzata Szczęśniak. Lighting: Felice Ross. Video: Denis Guéguin. Boris Timofeyevich Izmailov: Dmitry Ulyanov. Zinoviy Borisovich Izmailov: John Daszak. Katerina Lvovna Izmailova: Aušrinė Stundytė. Sergei: Pavel Černoch. Aksinya: Sofija Petrovic. Tattered peasant: Wolfgang Ablinger‑Sperrhacke. Sonyetka: Oksana Volkova. Schoolmaster: Andrei Popov. Priest, Old Convict: Krzysztof Baczyk. Female convict: Marianne Croux. Police Chief: Sava Vemić. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.
Over dinner with friends after Lady Macbeth the other night, we counted off on our fingers the various Warlikowski productions we'd seen over the years, between Paris, Brussels, London and Berlin. Quite a lot it turned out: Iphigénie en Tauride, Věc Makropoulos, King Roger, Parsifal, Macbeth, Médée, The Rake's Progress, Lulu, Don Giovanni, Bluebeard's Castle with la Voix Humaine, From the House of the Dead, Don Carlos and now Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk...
Krzysztof Warlikowski has been responsible for some of the best productions I've ever seen. He is the only director whose work I have deliberately travelled to see, confounding - I hope - people who claim nobody goes to an opera for the production (but they're usually American, and I guess as far as Met productions are concerned, they're right). That must make me a kind of groupie of his. But earlier on, on the Métro on the way to the Bastille, it occurred to me that what I actually like so much is Warlikowski and Co.: Warlikowski working with Małgorzata Szczęśniak, Felice Ross, Denis Guéguin (and now, with oneiric 3D animations, Kamil Polak) ... the whole, meticulously-finished package.
Over the years, his directing has changed. You used to have mentally to hack your way through a thicket of references, hints and enigmas. I quite liked puzzling my way through the thorniness, even if I couldn't fathom it all out. His work is simpler now, streamlined, more obviously legible, but he still has intelligent insights, still respecting the works, that serve to knit plots more tightly together - in some cases making them more coherent than, without his insights, they were. And his ability to get everyone on the stage acting, at an incredible level of detail, remains astounding, resulting in performances of a rare degree of intensity.
In his Lady Macbeth, two ideas help weave the plot together more tightly. First, he takes the drowning at the end as a metaphor and, using dreamlike 3D projections of women seeking in vain to escape from a tiled underwater prison, makes a theme of it throughout. Second, he transforms Aksinya into a protagonist. She is usually a matronly, semi-comic figure who disappears without trace. In Warlikowski's vision she is charismatic, glamorous and scheming, power-dressed like a Trump trophy wife and apparently hoping to seduce and marry Boris, we suppose for his fortune. In Act 2, when the sleepless Boris reminisces about his youthful adventures, she's there with him, pawing his shoulders, setting out folding chairs and a transistor radio and smooching along to his song. She takes revenge on Sergei for her rape by being among the first to join in the whipping, sitting astride him and wearing his cowboy hat. She shows up in glamorous mourning at Boris's funeral and, in a tweak of the original plot, turns up again, this time on the police chief's arm, smiling broadly, to point out the corpse and the culprits and spit in Katerina's face: nemesis.
The work takes place in a single, monumental set: the shop floor of Boris's pork processing factory, with gleaming white tiles at ground level, bottle green above, and an aluminium rail running round: a conveyor carrying in whole sides of pork. The chorus busy themselves at their stainless-steel work-stations in blood-stained aprons. To the right, initially, is the Izmailov’s living space, a long cage, about the shape and size of a container, on wheels, lit by fluorescent strips. This glides about as required by the plot, which, once the development of Aksinya’s role is taken into account, advances quite conventionally, if graphically, until the wedding.
As act three begins, Katerina and Sergei are in front of the industrial curtain, already visibly jittery, to say the least, in Mephistophelian red costumes under red lighting. Blood, projected, runs down the curtain. This could have been corny but wasn’t: it was chilling. The factory's gleaming tiling, we then discover, is hidden behind a glossy crimson curtain, and the wedding guests are already assembled at long tables because, in this production, the “tattered peasant” is a tacky cabaret singer in a multi-coloured sequined jacket. The guests are also entertained by a hula-hoop act and an acrobat. The police station scene is played at the wedding, with the police brass band on stage and the chief singing his song into a microphone from a script. As the dénouement approaches, the crimson curtain parts slowly from the rear: a simple device but, like the projected blood, chillingly sinister. The couple’s fantasy of a happy marriage returns to grim reality as Zinoviy’s corpse appears, hanging like a chrysalis alongside the sides of pork, bundled up in cling film, and Aksinya returns, as I said, now on the police chief's arm, to denounce the culprits.
In act four, after a very moving video sequence set to an adagio from one of the quartets, the container-shaped cage advances into the dark empty space to disgorge its cargo of convicts. Katerina is by now a broken, doll-like figure. The development of her character from beginning to end, along with Sergei’s, is one of the remarkable aspects of this production. Another is the astonishing degree of detail achieved. Every member of the chorus is an individual character in an individual costume, with individual things to do - a far cry from the simple blocking, hands dangling, all in black suits, that we often get. Like the minutest features of Chagall’s ceiling at the Palais Garnier, invisible from below to the naked eye, the minutest details of facial expression you see when watching the videos currently available on YouTube were not actually visible even from row 4, where I sat, but as with the Chagall, they contribute essentially to the exceptional intensity of the whole. When you see them close up in the videos, you wonder how the singers even remember their cues and sing.
Sing they did. The principal trio was outstanding, vocally and as bêtes de scène absolues. Aušrinė Stundytė’s voice is dark, strong and dramatic. Not always necessarily beautiful, but that hardly matters in this part - on the contrary. "Electrifying," said my neighbour. Pavel Černoch and Dmitry Ulyanov were faultless, to say the least. John Daszak, just as intensely committed, had some very dodgy moments at the top of the range, but again, who cares in that particular role in a production of such dramatic intensity, and could Shostakovich really have expected anyone to sing those notes? Sofija Petrovic and Oksana Volkova were both strikingly good. Krzysztof Baczyk made a very comical, gangling, priest, long, supple hands all over the place. I was afraid at first that Ingo Metzmacher’s conducting was going to be a bit tame, but the orchestra soon warmed up and, when extra brass joined in from the upper balconies for Boris's funeral, reached thrilling heights. As you might expect in this work, the chorus did an outstanding job.
We have now reached a stage in Paris, I’m glad to say, where even on opening night, Warlikowski is no longer booed, though he still looks as spaced out as ever, booed or not. Evenings like this, with so many Parisians on their feet and cheering, are rare at the opera, but they’re what keeps us going back, hoping for more. "Wow, that was quite something" said the American lady next to me as she gathered up her belongings (and husband) to leave. It was.
Conductor: Ingo Metzmacher. Production: Krzysztof Warlikowski. Sets and costumes: Małgorzata Szczęśniak. Lighting: Felice Ross. Video: Denis Guéguin. Boris Timofeyevich Izmailov: Dmitry Ulyanov. Zinoviy Borisovich Izmailov: John Daszak. Katerina Lvovna Izmailova: Aušrinė Stundytė. Sergei: Pavel Černoch. Aksinya: Sofija Petrovic. Tattered peasant: Wolfgang Ablinger‑Sperrhacke. Sonyetka: Oksana Volkova. Schoolmaster: Andrei Popov. Priest, Old Convict: Krzysztof Baczyk. Female convict: Marianne Croux. Police Chief: Sava Vemić. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.
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| Muddle Instead Of Music |
Krzysztof Warlikowski has been responsible for some of the best productions I've ever seen. He is the only director whose work I have deliberately travelled to see, confounding - I hope - people who claim nobody goes to an opera for the production (but they're usually American, and I guess as far as Met productions are concerned, they're right). That must make me a kind of groupie of his. But earlier on, on the Métro on the way to the Bastille, it occurred to me that what I actually like so much is Warlikowski and Co.: Warlikowski working with Małgorzata Szczęśniak, Felice Ross, Denis Guéguin (and now, with oneiric 3D animations, Kamil Polak) ... the whole, meticulously-finished package.
Over the years, his directing has changed. You used to have mentally to hack your way through a thicket of references, hints and enigmas. I quite liked puzzling my way through the thorniness, even if I couldn't fathom it all out. His work is simpler now, streamlined, more obviously legible, but he still has intelligent insights, still respecting the works, that serve to knit plots more tightly together - in some cases making them more coherent than, without his insights, they were. And his ability to get everyone on the stage acting, at an incredible level of detail, remains astounding, resulting in performances of a rare degree of intensity.
In his Lady Macbeth, two ideas help weave the plot together more tightly. First, he takes the drowning at the end as a metaphor and, using dreamlike 3D projections of women seeking in vain to escape from a tiled underwater prison, makes a theme of it throughout. Second, he transforms Aksinya into a protagonist. She is usually a matronly, semi-comic figure who disappears without trace. In Warlikowski's vision she is charismatic, glamorous and scheming, power-dressed like a Trump trophy wife and apparently hoping to seduce and marry Boris, we suppose for his fortune. In Act 2, when the sleepless Boris reminisces about his youthful adventures, she's there with him, pawing his shoulders, setting out folding chairs and a transistor radio and smooching along to his song. She takes revenge on Sergei for her rape by being among the first to join in the whipping, sitting astride him and wearing his cowboy hat. She shows up in glamorous mourning at Boris's funeral and, in a tweak of the original plot, turns up again, this time on the police chief's arm, smiling broadly, to point out the corpse and the culprits and spit in Katerina's face: nemesis.
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| Shostakovich |
As act three begins, Katerina and Sergei are in front of the industrial curtain, already visibly jittery, to say the least, in Mephistophelian red costumes under red lighting. Blood, projected, runs down the curtain. This could have been corny but wasn’t: it was chilling. The factory's gleaming tiling, we then discover, is hidden behind a glossy crimson curtain, and the wedding guests are already assembled at long tables because, in this production, the “tattered peasant” is a tacky cabaret singer in a multi-coloured sequined jacket. The guests are also entertained by a hula-hoop act and an acrobat. The police station scene is played at the wedding, with the police brass band on stage and the chief singing his song into a microphone from a script. As the dénouement approaches, the crimson curtain parts slowly from the rear: a simple device but, like the projected blood, chillingly sinister. The couple’s fantasy of a happy marriage returns to grim reality as Zinoviy’s corpse appears, hanging like a chrysalis alongside the sides of pork, bundled up in cling film, and Aksinya returns, as I said, now on the police chief's arm, to denounce the culprits.
In act four, after a very moving video sequence set to an adagio from one of the quartets, the container-shaped cage advances into the dark empty space to disgorge its cargo of convicts. Katerina is by now a broken, doll-like figure. The development of her character from beginning to end, along with Sergei’s, is one of the remarkable aspects of this production. Another is the astonishing degree of detail achieved. Every member of the chorus is an individual character in an individual costume, with individual things to do - a far cry from the simple blocking, hands dangling, all in black suits, that we often get. Like the minutest features of Chagall’s ceiling at the Palais Garnier, invisible from below to the naked eye, the minutest details of facial expression you see when watching the videos currently available on YouTube were not actually visible even from row 4, where I sat, but as with the Chagall, they contribute essentially to the exceptional intensity of the whole. When you see them close up in the videos, you wonder how the singers even remember their cues and sing.
Sing they did. The principal trio was outstanding, vocally and as bêtes de scène absolues. Aušrinė Stundytė’s voice is dark, strong and dramatic. Not always necessarily beautiful, but that hardly matters in this part - on the contrary. "Electrifying," said my neighbour. Pavel Černoch and Dmitry Ulyanov were faultless, to say the least. John Daszak, just as intensely committed, had some very dodgy moments at the top of the range, but again, who cares in that particular role in a production of such dramatic intensity, and could Shostakovich really have expected anyone to sing those notes? Sofija Petrovic and Oksana Volkova were both strikingly good. Krzysztof Baczyk made a very comical, gangling, priest, long, supple hands all over the place. I was afraid at first that Ingo Metzmacher’s conducting was going to be a bit tame, but the orchestra soon warmed up and, when extra brass joined in from the upper balconies for Boris's funeral, reached thrilling heights. As you might expect in this work, the chorus did an outstanding job.
We have now reached a stage in Paris, I’m glad to say, where even on opening night, Warlikowski is no longer booed, though he still looks as spaced out as ever, booed or not. Evenings like this, with so many Parisians on their feet and cheering, are rare at the opera, but they’re what keeps us going back, hoping for more. "Wow, that was quite something" said the American lady next to me as she gathered up her belongings (and husband) to leave. It was.
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