Full of Irony 26 febbraio

Full of Irony
Shostakovich's 'The Nose',
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

The Nose by Dmitri Shostakovich is performed less often than it should be, even though the forthcoming Metropolitan Opera House joint venture with the Aix-en-Provence Festival may provide a much needed revival outside the Russian Federation. As a matter of fact, after its initial triumph at a small secondary theatre in St Petersburg (by then named Leningrad) on 18 January 1930 and a short revival the following year, the opera had disappeared from the Russian scene until 1974 because of the difficulties Shostakovich had with Stalin and his entourage. It was staged, almost simultaneously in 1964, in Düsseldorf (in German) and in Florence (in Italian), both with considerable success.
But theatre managers considered it a daunting enterprise to produce because it has: a) twelve short scenes in three Acts (the opera lasts less than two hours), all in important and well known St Petersburg locations around 1880 (from the impressive huge Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan to the Summer Garden, from Avenues to artisans' shops); b) a cast requiring at least thirty singers (the concertato in Scene 7 has twenty-one singers on stage) with the ability not only to master difficult vocal skills (melologue, polyphony and very high pitches) but also to act and to dance effectively; c) a score for a small chamber orchestra where on a basic Slavic approach, Shostakovich inserts jazz, atonality, and traditional instruments such as the domra, balalaika, and flexaton.
Finally, the plot; after a Gogol's short novel, it is the surrealist tale of a pompous military officer losing his own nose in the barber's shop -- it gets cut off merely by chance -- and searching desperately for it throughout St Petersburg. Meanwhile, the nose had disguised itself as a State Counselor. The search for the nose -- and the nose's attempt to have its own personality and its own life -- became a pretext for an abrasive satire of society. In the Cyrillic alphabet, if the letters spelling the word 'nose' are inverted, they became the word 'dream'; thus, satire could be an unreachable dream.

A scene from Shostakovich's 'The Nose' at Teatro Regio di Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
In short, The Nose is the reverse of Alban Berg's Wozzeck; musically, both of them are experimental and abrasive in their social critique, but while Berg is sad and gloomy, Shostakovich is airy, bold, full of irony and somewhat dreamy.

A scene from Shostakovich's 'The Nose' at Teatro Regio di Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
Young Dmitri Shostakovich was an attractive twenty-four year old: a womanizer and a good drinker, but also a very serious supporter of the Communist Revolution. However, not only did the libretto and the score shock the critics -- the audience loved it! -- but the authorities were left with a reasonable doubt: did the satire apply to Czarist society or was it addressed to the Moscow bureaucracy? We should not forget that Leningrad was libertarian (especially in sexual matters), very open to international (viz German, French, Italian) influence, and rather outspoken, whereas in Moscow, the Stalinist regime was taking hold.

A scene from Shostakovich's 'The Nose' at Teatro Regio di Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
In 1974, after the collapse of Stalinism and one year before Dmitri Shostakovich's death, in a small two-hundred-seater movie house converted into a theatre, stage director Boris Pokrovskij, collaborating with set and costume designer Vladimir Talalaj and choreographer Lilija Talankina, demonstrated that a recently created music company (The Moscow Chamber Opera Theatre) could stage The Nose in high quality, with a small budget. Since then, this production of The Nose has been for Moscow almost what Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap has been for the last fifty-nine years in London's West End; it is always on stage either in the Russian capital or touring domestically or abroad. The Pokrovskij production has been several times on worldwide tours, especially in 2006 for the one hundredth anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich's birth. Then, the company visited, in Italy, Turin for almost a week in the main opera house, and Rome for two evenings in a secondary theatre. Now the 1974 production of The Nose is in Parma and Reggio Emilia. I was at the opening night in Parma's glittering Teatro Regio on 23 February 2011.

Teatro Regio di Parma. Photo © Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
Firstly, it is amazing how the production is still fresh and effective. With a few props, clever lighting and smashing costumes, we feel the atmosphere of all the ten different places where the swift action develops in the course of almost only one day. Especially impressive was the Cathedral scene: there are thirty singers -- the full company -- but you have the sense of a grandiose staging of the second Act of Aida. In short, Pokrovskij's production deserves to be studied, especially now that opera houses all over the world have tight budgets; it proves that with little means but a lot of brain and taste, good staging can be achieved, and that it can be adapted to small and large theatres and live happily for decades for the enjoyment of generations.

A scene from Shostakovich's 'The Nose' at Teatro Regio di Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
Secondly, the small orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Agronskij, does really marvelously: its sound is sharp and round, and every single note can be appreciated in Parma's Teatro Regio, a much larger venue than the Moscow house where the company normally performs.

A scene from Shostakovich's 'The Nose' at Teatro Regio di Parma. Photo © 2011 Roberto Ricci. Click on the image for higher resolution
Thirdly, the singers. The Nose requires team work by a versatile cast, a condition you have in repertory opera houses, not where the 'season system' is followed (such as in Italy, France, the UK, Spain, Portugal and, to a large extent, the USA). The cast is strong and has been working as a team for several years. There are just too many to be quote them all individually. The protagonist, Roman Bobrov, a very agile baritone, was excellent. Also remarkable in his very high range was the tenor Leonid Kaza Kov in the role of the nose. In the women's group, I especially appreciated Aleksandra Martynova, a soprano who has several roles in the opera.
The audience laughed and applauded.
Copyright © 26 February 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
THE NOSE
TEATRO REGIO
PARMA
ITALY
SAINT PETERSBURG
RUSSIA
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