The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (79 page)

Although Shostakovich was one of the twentieth century’s great cynics, this opera is only incidentally a satire – for all its mockery, it is not heartless and the music makes it clear that we should see Katerina as a sort of heroine.

An obvious ploy for a modern producer is to transplant the action to die Stalinist era.
For ENO, David Pountney provided a hugely impressive constructivist set, using the imagery of an abattoir and emphasizing collectivist, conformist
behaviour by providing elaborately choreographed synchronized movements for the chorus.
At the Met, Graham Vick presented it in a modern strip-cartoon setting, with surrealist touches.
Russian productions have been less exaggerated, and perhaps more moving in consequence.

Recording

CD: Galina Vishnevskaya (Lady Macbeth); Mstislav Rostropovich (cond.).
EMI 49955 2

Sergei Prokofiev

(1891–1953)

War
and
Peace

Thirteen scenes. First performed incomplete, Moscow, 1944; First performed complete, Moscow, 1959.

Libretto by the composer and Mira Mendelson

A series of tableaux, lasting about four hours, drawn from Tolstoy’s epic novel and much influenced by Tchaikovsky’s
Eugene
Onegin
and Mussorgsky’s
Boris
Godunov.
It was largely composed in Russia during the terrible years of 1941–2, but despite Prokofiev’s best efforts to create an ‘accessible’ piece that would help the war effort, the opera was disliked by the Stalinist authorities and it was not heard in anything like a complete version until some six years after the composer’s death.

Plot

Part
One:
Peace

Russia, during the Napoleonic wars.
Prince Andrei Bolkonsky falls in love with young Natasha Rostov.
Andrei’s crusty father disapproves of the match and sends Andrei away: in his absence, the impressionable Natasha falls for the scheming Kuragin, but their elopement is foiled.
Pierre tries to help Natasha, but he is trapped in an unhappy marriage and in love with her too.
News comes of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.

Part
Two:
War

In despair at Natasha’s betrayal, Andrei enlists.
Napoleon receives bad news from the front and marvels at the strength of Russian resistance.
Field-Marshal Kutuzov yields Moscow, in order to regroup.
Pierre learns that Natasha and the Rostov family have fled, taking with them some Russian soldiers, among them Andrei – he and Natasha are reconciled on his deathbed.
The French retreat and the Russians acclaim Kutuzov.

What to listen for

Prokofiev is the most noble failure among twentieth-century opera composers.
Like so many of his compatriots, he was deeply influenced by Mussorgsky’s insistence on a continuous dramatic flow, uninterrupted by formal arias, but Prokofiev was not greatly gifted as a writer for the human voice and his operas seem dramatically and emotionally superficial, even though the adaptation of Dostoevsky’s tale
The
Gambler
(1917), the comic fantasy
The
Love
for
Three
Oranges
(1921) and the drama of devil-possession
The
Fiery
Angel
(1923, revised 1927) all have impressive aspects and memorable tunes.
War
and
Peace,
his most ambitious operatic project, is likewise more notable for its ballroom dances, patriotic choruses and scenes of mayhem and destruction (such as the burning of Moscow) than for its sustained or focused drama.
Among a cast of nearly seventy characters, only Andrei has anything of much note to sing – both his opening paean to Natasha’s beauty and his death scene are gratifying to a lyric baritone.
Perhaps Prokofiev should rank as a greater composer for the cinema than for the opera house.

In performance

A challenge for the resources of any opera company, requiring an enormous cast of soloists and enlarged chorus, as well as four hours of the audience’s attention.
A showpiece for Russian companies like the Bolshoi and Kirov, it has also been successfully staged throughout Europe and the USA, as well as being chosen for the opening of the Sydney Opera House in 1973.
Budgetary restraints mean that productions will be visually austere rather than spectacular – both Colin Graham and Tim Albery have turned this to the work’s advantage at ENO, giving the action a fluidity that isn’t dependent on changes of scenery.

Recording

CD and video: Gegam Grigorian (Pierre); Valery Gergiev (cond.).
Philips 434 097 2 (CD); 070 427 3 (video)

Igor Stravinsky

(1882–1971)

Oedipus
Rex

Two acts (normally performed without an interval).

First performed Paris, 1927.

Libretto by Jean Cocteau

Described as an ‘opera-oratorio’ and often presented in concert form.
The text of the drama, based on Sophocles’ play, is sung in Latin, with a connecting narration spoken in the audience’s native language.
With its simple harmonies, austere orchestration and rigid separation of recitative and aria, the music embodies Stravinsky’s neo-classical style in its purest form.

Plot

Thebes is stricken with plague and its citizens beg their king Oedipus to free them from the curse that appears to have caused it.
Oedipus’s father-in-law Creon announces that the Delphic oracle blames the murderer of old King Laius, who is still at liberty within the city walls.
Oedipus angrily accuses the seer Tiresias, but Tiresias insists that it is another king who is guilty.
Oedipus’s wife Jocasta stops the ensuing quarrel, and reminds them of the prophecy that Laius would be killed by his own son, and the fact that he was murdered by robbers at a crossroads between Daulia and Delphi.
Oedipus is horror-struck, recalling that he once killed a stranger at those very crossroads.
A messenger arrives, bearing news of the death of Oedipus’s father, Polybus.
It transpires that Polybus was not Oedipus’s biological father at all, and that the infant Oedipus was recovered from a hillside by a shepherd.
Jocasta leaves, appalled, and is later discovered to have hanged herself.
The truth is out: Oedipus is the son of Laius and Jocasta, abandoned at birth, and he has both killed his father and married his mother.
The humiliated Oedipus pierces his eyes with Jocasta’s golden pin and the Thebans sadly banish him from the city.

What to listen for

Stravinsky wrote
Oedipus
Rex
at the height of his neo-classical phase, during which he chose to abandon the Wagnerian-Mussorgskian-Debussyan quest for continuous dramatic flow and revert instead to the eighteenth-century model, in which every number was discrete and song clearly separated from recitative.
Oedipus
Rex
recalls Handelian oratorio and Italian opera, though its style is monumentally severe and emotionally unambiguous, with angular vocal lines, hard, static rhythms, lucid orchestration and clearly defined keys.
Oedipus is written for a lyric tenor (Stravinsky specifically insisted that the singer ‘must exploit dynamic contrasts, and his gradations in volume are extremely important’), Jocasta for a mezzo-soprano.
Stravinsky had a particular soft spot for the ‘early 20th-century Fox’ trumpet fanfares which herald the arrival of the Messenger.