Tcherniakov, Dmitri

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    Review: The Time for Prokofiev’s ‘War and Peace’ Is Now

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    After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this opera adaptation of Tolstoy seemed unperformable. But in Munich, it has become an urgent antiwar cry.MUNICH — Sergei Prokofiev died the same day as Joseph Stalin: March 5, 1953. It’s a coincidence you’re more likely to come across in the composer’s biography than in Stalin’s.Because while Prokofiev barely figures in Stalin’s life, his own was profoundly, inalterably changed by Soviet rule. Among the many documents of that is his “War and Peace,” a work contorted through forced revision into strident propaganda. Rarely performed, it opened this week on the anniversary of their deaths at the Bavarian State Opera here in a darkly urgent and sensitively executed new production haunted by the war in Ukraine.Prokofiev began to adapt Tolstoy’s novel — an expansive portrait of Moscow society around Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia, and a study in the scattered forces that shape history — in the early years of World War II, as the capital was under threat from another Western European dictator. By then, Prokofiev, who had left his homeland after the Russian Revolution, had returned and settled in the Soviet Union.His work was repeatedly inhibited by the state and subject to censorship, though he also took up nationalistic commissions like the score for Sergei Eisenstein’s film “Alexander Nevsky.” And he obliged when ordered to revise “War and Peace” to include, in its martial second half, rallying choruses and a grandly heroic treatment of General Kutuzov as a stand-in for Stalin.The edits made for a clumsily uneven work of vestigial intimacy and blunt, bombastic flag-waving. Yet when “War and Peace,” which premiered in 1946, is staged — always an event because of its sheer immensity, with more than 70 characters — the score is often received uncritically, even praised.The State of the WarRussian Strikes: Moscow fired an array of weapons, including its newest hypersonic missiles, in its biggest aerial attack on Ukraine in weeks, knocking out power in multiple regions.Bakhmut: Even as Ukrainian and Russian leaders predicted that the fall of the city could open the way for a broader Russian offensive, the U.S. intelligence chief said that the Kremlin’s forces were too depleted to wage such a campaign.Nord Stream Pipelines: The sabotage in September of the pipelines has become one of the central mysteries of the war. A Times investigation offers new insight into who might have been behind it.That is, until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine called into question the taste of performing it. The Bavarian State Opera, which had been planning this production for several years, was faced with a dilemma. Moving forward would invite controversy; calling it off would play into President Vladimir V. Putin’s claims of Russian culture being canceled in the West.The show went on, but with a rare public defense by the house’s leader, Serge Dorny, who said, “We must not limit art to the nationality of those that create it,” and with more than 30 minutes of cuts to sand down the score’s more uncomfortably chauvinistic moments. Ultimately, though, the production — staged by Dmitri Tcherniakov and conducted by the State Opera’s music director, Vladimir Jurowski, both Russian-born and sharply critical of the war — would have to speak for itself.And it does. This “War and Peace” will go down as a milestone in Jurowski’s tenure at the State Opera, and in Tcherniakov’s often divisive career. They rise to meet the moment, overcoming the work’s near untenability not only to argue for its place in the canon, but also to use it as a vehicle for a passionate statement against Russian nationalism — and, by extension, Putin himself.Tcherniakov’s staging doesn’t retell the story of “War and Peace” so much as examine Russia’s condition as a perpetual outsider and oppositional force, the cyclical ways in which it has been attracted to and at odds with the West — and the destruction those beliefs have repeatedly brought about, foreshadowed in the production’s epigraph, Tolstoy’s 1904 remarks on the Russo-Japanese War: “Again war. Again sufferings, necessary to nobody, utterly uncalled-for; again fraud, again the universal stupefaction and brutalization of men.”Andrei Zhilikhovsky as Andrei, whose death serves a more political purpose than usual in this staging.Wilfried HöslThe opera is only an impression of the novel. It follows the contrasts of the title, not by juxtaposing the battlefield and the ballroom episodically but rather by dividing them in two. The first part, peace, recounts Natasha’s engagement to and betrayal of Andrei; the second, war, focuses on the occupation and burning of Moscow. Prokofiev and the librettist, Mira Mendelson (his second wife), reduced the plot to a telling parallel between Natasha’s losing her way in her lust for Anatole and the French fashions he represents, and Russia’s falling victim to, then triumphing over, Napoleon’s invasion. Largely lost in translation is Pierre’s meandering search for meaning.In his staging, Tcherniakov brings both strands under the same roof. Literally: He sets the entire opera in the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions in Moscow, an 18th-century building that survived the fires of 1812 and over the years hosted society balls, the music of Tchaikovsky and the show trials of Stalin; it is also where Soviet leaders, from Lenin to Gorbachev, have lain in state. Here, it is densely populated with people sheltering from some kind of conflict, as Ukrainians have in their landmark buildings.There are cots throughout, and mats for sleeping. People of all classes seem to have come together; some are in jeans or threadbare shirts, while the wealthy Pierre wears shined leather shoes, a Barbour coat, and a wool sweater and hat. Yet no matter their background, they unite to pass the time — first days, then weeks, then months. They throw a New Year’s ball with sashes made from newspaper, toss rings onto toy swords and race in sleeping bags. Private dramas play out publicly. And patriotic pageants that begin innocently turn violently real, feral and ruled by a drunken slob turned warlord.It’s a drive toward self-destruction that was matched in the pit under Jurowski’s baton. He wrangled the eclectic, if erratic, score — a succession of talky set pieces in which arias are more like brief soliloquies — into a coherent, flowing drama. In the first half, he relished dancing rhythms and shifted between Natasha and Andrei’s repeating theme, a quintessentially Prokofiev melody of a long lyrical line leaping upward, and buffo interludes from the likes of Anatole and Dolokhov, with unstoppable momentum. Then, in the second part, he resisted overblowing the choruses and orchestral explosions, making room for intricate, at times disturbingly wicked details, and shaping a long crescendo to the end of the climactic 11th scene of Moscow’s burning and Pierre’s near execution.The cast, Jurowski has said in interviews, is nearly an entire Soviet Union; there are singers from Russia, yes, but also Ukraine, Lithuania, Moldova and other former republics. Onstage, they behave like a true ensemble, with well-rehearsed excellence. There are too many soloists to name — 43 to be exact — but some stand out: Bekhzod Davronov’s bright and belligerent tenor as Anatole, Dmitry Ulyanov’s commanding bass as Kutuzov, Alexandra Yangel’s youthful but determined mezzo-soprano sound as Sonya. As Pierre, Arsen Soghomonyan had a by turns sympathetic and, against the mighty wartime orchestra, surprisingly powerful tenor.From left, Stanislav Kuflyuk, Tómas Tómasson and Kevin Conners as comical depictions of French forces.Wilfried HöslFinest among them were the Ukrainian soprano Olga Kulchynska as Natasha, with a malleable voice that traced her arc from naïve to careworn, and the Moldovan baritone Andrey Zhilikhovsky as an often aching, persuasively acted Andrei. And the chorus, ever-present, was a tireless and frightening force, even if cut back in this production. For the final scene, typically a lightly veiled paean to Stalin, the voices are eliminated entirely, replaced by an onstage brass band.With that change, though, the ending is still troubling. Andrei, who traditionally is wounded in battle and forgives Natasha as he dies, here shoots himself in the chest, mourning the loss of his beloved Russia as he knew it — a self-made victim of the violent nationalism taking hold. His death remains touching; Natasha repeatedly tries to lift him, attempting to dance the waltz that played as they fell in love.But as Andrei’s lifeless body rests at the front of the stage, ignored as the cast erects an ornate podium for Kutuzov to lie in state, Tcherniakov leaves the audience with a hopeless message. And in doing so he depicts a Russia that, despite internal dissidence and generational shifts in politics, is bound to repeat this scene again.War and PeaceThrough March 18, then again in July, at the Bavarian State Opera, Munich; staatsoper.de. Also streaming at staatsoper.tv. More

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      Review: Berlin Takes Wagner’s Approach to Staging the ‘Ring’

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      All four parts of Wagner’s epic were presented within a week, in a new production by Dmitri Tcherniakov inspired by the work’s experimental roots.BERLIN — Lately, the German capital has been looking more like a city to the south: Bayreuth.At least in one respect. The Berlin State Opera, in mounting Wagner’s four-part “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” has taken Bayreuth’s approach — begun by the composer himself — of presenting it all within a week. Most houses build to that marathon slowly, sometimes over the course of several years, but Berlin has unveiled an entire production at once, with the first cycle ending Sunday night.It’s an enormous undertaking — 15 hours of music to be staged and rehearsed by a couple of hundred performers — especially for a busy repertory house like the State Opera. But this new production, a myth-busting and subtly provocative take by Dmitri Tcherniakov, was designed for a special occasion: the 80th birthday of Daniel Barenboim, the company’s long-reigning music director and a titan of Berlin culture.Barenboim’s health, though, has deteriorated in recent months, and he withdrew from the premiere. In his stead came Christian Thielemann, one of very few conductors to have led all 10 of Wagner’s mature operas at Bayreuth. He hasn’t much experience with the State Opera’s orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin, but after his first “Ring” with them, he suddenly seems like a worthy contender for its podium when Barenboim eventually steps down.The Staatskapelle executed Thielemann’s vision for the “Ring” — a long crescendo built over the four operas — with sensitivity and skill. His tempos, slower than usual, tested the stamina of singers, but he also had a keen sense of balance, scaling his sound to match theirs onstage. This was an often quiet ring, a near opposite of Georg Solti’s famous (and ever-elevated) studio recording from the mid-20th century with the Vienna Philharmonic. It did, though, reward patient listeners, with Thielemann simultaneously shaping the score on the level of scenes and the immense entirety.Robert Watson as Siegmund and Vida Mikneviciute as Sieglinde in “Die Walküre.”Monika RittershausHe also had a gift for illustrating the representative moments in Wagner’s score: sheets of rain in the opening of “Die Walküre,” or the idyllic forest murmurs at the heart of “Siegfried.” Those, as it happened, were about the only glimpses of nature in Tcherniakov’s “Ring,” which not only demythologizes the work — like the contemporary-dress family drama presented at Bayreuth last summer — but also isolates its characters in a world so human, it’s constructed by their hands and cut off from the outside world.Talk to anyone who saw this “Ring,” and you’re unlikely to hear the same response twice. It’s telling, and satisfying, that the State Opera auditorium was divided in boos and cheers for Tcherniakov during the curtain call for “Götterdämmerung” on Sunday. There didn’t seem to be a passive listener in the house.Wagner’s sprawling, dramaturgically imperfect work — a multigenerational power struggle among gods, creatures and men — has been interpretive fodder for nearly 150 years. In his book “The Perfect Wagnerite,” George Bernard Shaw argued that the “Ring” was a Marxist epic; so did the director Patrice Chéreau in his benchmark centennial staging at Bayreuth.Tcherniakov offers an original reading on the “Ring,” one that departs severely from Wagner but with a story just as rich — unfurling in a challenging, at times obtuse production that defies quick judgment and demands curiosity. The plot doesn’t map onto the libretto, yet like the text, it is many things at once: commentaries on the dangers of playing god; the limits of knowledge and science; the evolution of sexual politics; generational conflict; even the ways in which a renovation can ruin historical architecture. Funny and aching, ironic and horrifying, it is, however irreverent, loyal to the “Ring” as a work of novelistic complexity.Michael Volle as Wotan with Anja Kampe as Brünnhilde in the final scene of “Die Walküre.”Monika RittershausHere, the four operas unfold within the walls of a Cold War-era research center called E.S.C.H.E. (Esche is the German word for ash tree, which in Wagner’s text is mutilated in the name of power, and withers in parallel to the fall of the gods.) It’s a vast facility; the curtain is a blueprint of the third floor, which alone contains 185 rooms. The production’s program refers to Wagner’s lifetime as a golden age of experimentation — sometimes world changing, sometimes perverse. So were the post-World War II years of arms races and scientific pipe dreams, when the story of this “Das Rheingold” begins.The kind of experimentation that takes place at E.S.C.H.E. becomes clear within the opening minutes, in which people gather in a lecture hall to watch a video (by Alexey Poluboyarinov) of a liquid being injected into a brain, stunting neural pathways as they’re being formed. That’s the least of the unnatural acts to come.Wotan, the ruler of the gods — Michael Volle, the production’s high point as a commanding baritone and actor of remarkable range — oversees a kingdom of inquiry into the human mind. Subjects undergo stress tests or are manipulated into love and violence for the sake of observation. In a world where everything is an experiment, nothing emerges as reliably real.The characters visibly age over the four operas. By “Siegfried,” Stephan Rügamer, left, as Mime, and Volle appear decades older than in “Das Rheingold.”Monika RittershausThe ring is not a physical object so much as the idea of knowledge as power. Scenes that would typically be highlights of stage magic — the crossing of the Rainbow Bridge, the blaze that surrounds a sleeping Brünnhilde, the flooding of the Rhine — don’t exist as such in Tcherniakov’s staging, except with unnecessarily winking substitutes. And there isn’t such a high body count; most characters make it to the end of this “Ring” alive.Tcherniakov, as usual, manages details on a level rarely seen in opera. Most impressively, his characters perform to each other rather than at the audience; with no sound, the action could still communicate its essentials. The soprano Vida Mikneviciute, mighty yet fragile as Freia in “Das Rheingold” then Sieglinde in “Die Walküre,” wears years of emotional and physical abuse in her facial expressions and wincing reflexes; Lauri Vasar’s Günther, a boss made into a cuckold in front of his colleagues in “Götterdämmerung,” looks back at one of them with an uncomfortable, sympathetic smile; Claudia Mahnke’s Fricka is a desperate wife who, resigned to a bitter relationship with Wotan, gestures cruelly for him to keep the pen she lends him to sign away Siegmund’s fate.Elsewhere, the cast performs with laugh-out-loud physical comedy, especially Rolando Villazón, however effortful in the unlikely role of Loge. This “Ring” would be an office sitcom if its subtext weren’t so appalling. Tcherniakov traces E.S.C.H.E.’s existence over a half-century or so, beginning in the 1970s and reflected in Elena Zaytseva’s grounding costumes. The place is rotten from the start, seemingly built with dirty money by Fasolt (Mika Kares, who returns in “Götterdämmerung” as a wickedly resonant Hagen) and Fafner (Peter Rose, who comes back in “Siegfried” not as a dragon, but as a psych patient in a straight jacket).Andreas Schager as Siegfried, the ultimate test subject, with Victoria Randem as the forest bird.Monika RittershausThat original sin serves the plot less than it normally would; more important is Alberich’s theft of “gold.” Later scenes suggest that he is an employee at the center, but one who submits to a stress test and breaks under pressure, violently removing the sensors from his head and running out of the lab with as much data as he can carry. He — Johannes Martin Kränzle, a characterful foil to Volle’s Wotan — forms his own dominion of research in the subbasement.Wotan turns out to be the supreme schemer, though, rather than on an equal level with his rival as written: his “Light-Alberich” to the dwarf’s “Black-Alberich.” By “Götterdämmerung,” Alberich — aging throughout the cycle like everyone else — seems to have died, existing only in the mind of Hagen, whereas Wotan appears in all four operas, instead of the usual first three. His cameo at the end, during Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene, is where Tcherniakov’s production snaps into focus; much of her monologue, delivered by the soprano Anja Kampe with equal parts anguish and revelation, is an indictment of Wotan sung directly at him, in a reversal of the final scene of “Die Walküre.”It’s almost as though, like Wagner, Tcherniakov started there, with Siegfried’s death, and worked backward. If you follow that thread, you see his “Ring” as a series of missteps and misplaced priorities. The first two operas exist to set up Wotan’s ultimate test subject: Siegfried, born in the center and raised under constant surveillance. And throughout, Erda (Anna Kissjudit, as assertive as Volle) appears at pivotal moments, along with her three Norns, dispassionate witnesses to Wotan’s folly.Not everything adds up. As is often the case with Tcherniakov, you get the feeling that he ran out of time. He introduces an actual ring in “Götterdämmerung,” but because it serves a traditional purpose as a symbol of fidelity, it doesn’t make sense as an object of everyone’s obsession; also made literal are the sword Nothung and Wotan’s spear, their powers mysterious and irrelevant in a world without magic.Kampe with Schager and Volle. During Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene, she delivers the monologue to Wotan as an indictment.Monika RittershausBut where successful, Tcherniakov’s approach is thoughtful, if rending. He shows how, from the 1970s to the present, women have risen from casual workplace cruelty to precarious power; but also how abusive relationships will always take form in ways like Brünnhilde’s neglect by Siegfried (a tireless, crowd-pleasing Andreas Schager), which drives her to depressive behavior and possibly alcoholism. And Tcherniakov demonstrates, through his own scenic design and lighting by Gleb Filshtinsky, how easily history can be taken for granted or erased, whether Wotan’s legacy or the architecture of E.S.C.H.E.Because so few characters die, they are left to live with their mistakes, and perhaps to perpetuate them for as long as the center remains open. But all “Ring” productions should have an element of renewal, and here that is granted to Brünnhilde, sung by Kampe with a heroic but smaller sound than other sopranos in the role. Instead of greeting the flames of Siegfried’s funeral pyre, she walks out of the facility with a bag in hand. On the empty stage’s back wall, Tcherniakov projects Wagner’s Schopenhauer-influenced version of the Immolation Scene that he never set, in which Brünnhilde describes fleeing from the world of delusion, enlightened and having seen “the world end.”She’s tempted by Erda, who flaps the wings of a toy bird in her hand. But Brünnhilde won’t be fooled. She leaves it all behind, pulling the curtain down behind her — without the knowledge her colleagues so carelessly pursue, perhaps, but with wisdom.Der Ring des NibelungenThrough Nov. 6, then again in April, at the Berlin State Opera; staatsoper-berlin.de. More

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      Review: At Wagner’s Festival, a ‘Dutchman’ Never Sails

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      With neither ship nor sea, Dmitri Tcherniakov’s new Bayreuth Festival staging recasts the opera as a tale of violent revenge.BAYREUTH, Germany — The pilgrims to the Green Hill, who have been making their way to the storied festival Richard Wagner founded here 145 years ago, looked more like cattle on Sunday. The theater’s bucolic grounds had become a network of roped-off, one-way sidewalks and checkpoints.With stricter pandemic safety measures than many other European opera houses, the Bayreuth Festival’s opening night — a new production of “Der Fliegende Holländer” (“The Flying Dutchman”) — lacked some of its usual glamour. Indeed, the romance ended at the sight of mobile bathrooms outside the theater; the ones inside had been deemed too risky. The audience was limited to 900, less than half the house’s capacity.Yet the unpleasantness of these restrictions faded as the lights dimmed, the hall resounded with the stormy opening of “Holländer,” and the Bayreuth experience began to work its usual magic.And what a sound it was: The orchestra, propulsive and spirited from the start, was led by Oksana Lyniv, the first female conductor in the festival’s history. Much has rightly been made of that milestone, however embarrassingly overdue.In Dmitri Tcherniakov’s production, the opera takes place firmly on land, with the opening scene at the bar of a small town.Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther FestspieleLyniv’s “Holländer” was occasionally a little brash, but it was always both driven by and driving the drama, with sharp attention to detail and pacing — in a work whose repetitive score can easily sag under a less assured baton.She wasn’t the only newcomer at the festival this summer: Dmitri Tcherniakov, virtually unavoidable at European houses in recent years, was directing his first Bayreuth production. And Asmik Grigorian, a steel-voiced soprano and one of the finest acting talents in opera, was making her debut here as Senta — a performance met with a roaring ovation.There was polite applause for Grigorian’s colleagues, as well; the audience seemed ready to warmly greet whatever they saw after Bayreuth was canceled last year. But although there were some elements of normalcy on Sunday — Chancellor Angela Merkel was even back in her usual box — the festival was still far from its former self.The full forces of Bayreuth’s fabled chorus, for example, were not allowed onstage. Instead they were divided: half singing in the theater, complemented by an ensemble of lip-syncing actors, and half broadcast from a separate hall. The effect was at times acoustically disorienting.From left, Marina Prudenskaya as Mary, Eric Cutler as Erik and Grigorian as Senta.Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther FestspieleAs a director, Tcherniakov is often interested in trauma: the ways in which it is overcome, sublimated or succumbed to. Here, that was manifest in the Dutchman’s origin story, recounted in a series of vignettes during the overture.The Dutchman, in this telling, grew up in a small town — possibly coastal, though there is neither a ship nor sea in sight — with uniform, clean, monochromatic, rather sinister architecture. His single mother had an affair with a married man, who violently broke things off with her. Gossip spread, and she became an outcast, isolated in an already isolating place. So she hanged herself; the boy, unable to help, was left mournfully holding onto her swinging foot.He leaves his hometown and later returns — like the libretto’s cursed Dutchman, docking his ship every seven years in search of a love that will redeem him. Now an adult, with an imposing build and furrowed brow, he is unrecognizable at a local bar, where he tells his tale to a half-interested crowd. (The baritone John Lundgren’s delivery of the monologue was strained, and misaligned with the menacing force of his demeanor.)Among the people the Dutchman meets at the bar is Daland — in the libretto a sea captain and the father of the opera’s heroine, Senta, but here a clean-cut, middle-class man. (Indeed, the one who ruined his mother’s life.) The bass Georg Zeppenfeld portrays him with a warm tone and a touch of naïve insouciance.From left, John Lundgren, Prudenskaya, Georg Zeppenfeld and Grigorian in Act II of the opera.Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther FestspieleThe cityscape shifts between scenes, its buildings fluidly rearranging into new configurations. At the beginning of Act II, they create a plaza-like space for the “Spinning Chorus,” led by Mary, Senta’s nurse (though in Tcherniakov’s staging presented as her mother and played, often silently, by Marina Prudenskaya with weary exasperation).This scene introduces Grigorian’s Senta, a young woman with Billie Eilish hair and a defiant streak. She sings her Ballad — which recounts the Dutchman legend, with an emphasis on his redemption by a woman who will be faithful to him until death — with dramatic gesticulations and a sense of ironic overstatement. But later, when she is alone onstage and her theme returns, Grigorian delivers the tune with quiet, sincere longing, perhaps seeing in the Dutchman a kindred spirit.She and the Dutchman meet over an awkward dinner at her house, separated by her parents and seated at opposite ends of the table, which is laid out slowly and fussily. It’s not exactly a meet-cute, but something clicks, and the parents fade to invisibility as Senta and the Dutchman sing what came off on Sunday as a mismatched duet, Grigorian luxuriously lyrical and Lundgren a little thin. (Eric Cutler, who sang the role of Erik, the Dutchman’s rival for Senta’s affections, similarly struggled to rise to her level.)The Bayreuth Festival’s chorus was divided in two, with half singing onstage, complemented by silent actors, and the others broadcast from a separate hall.Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther FestspieleAct III opens like most any “Holländer” production, with the town’s women bringing the men food — only here they gather to enjoy it together. Off to the side, though, is a group of sullen men whose dark clothing contrasts with the earth tones of the locals. Traditionally, they would be the Dutchman’s ghostly crew, and they provide one strategic use of the broadcast choir. As their lines are played through speakers, the men onstage remain threateningly silent.They are, it becomes apparent, willing collaborators in the Dutchman’s plot to exact deadly revenge on the town. After Erik confronts Senta about their now-broken promises to each other, a fight breaks out in which the Dutchman coolly shoots someone while the crowd retreats back into the town — which the mysterious men have set on fire.As smoke fills the space and the Dutchman violently casts Senta aside — just as her father once did to his mother — Mary enters with a shotgun, aims it directly at the Dutchman’s chest and pulls the trigger. It’s a lot of violence in not a lot of time, and it wasn’t easy to follow on opening night.But one thing was clear. Even though this production, as it had been described in advance press, is focused on the psychology and background of the Dutchman, the redemptive power of Senta was inescapable. Rather than join him in an act of eternal devotion, she takes the gun from her shaking mother and holds her, bringing a sense of calm as the curtain comes down.So while Tcherniakov might have been most interested in the psyche of an angry and vengeful man, the only character who truly changes — and, indeed, matures — in his staging is Senta. Especially with Grigorian onstage, it’s very much her opera.Der Fliegende HolländerThrough Aug. 20 at the Bayreuth Festival, Germany; bayreuther-festspiele.de. Also streaming Tuesday on DG Stage; dg-premium.com. More