{"id":89886,"date":"2017-04-05T00:33:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-04T22:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbopera.it\/?p=89886"},"modified":"2017-04-05T00:33:00","modified_gmt":"2017-04-04T22:33:00","slug":"komische-oper-berlin-sorochinsi-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/komische-oper-berlin-sorochinsi-fair\/","title":{"rendered":"Komische Oper Berlin: “Sorochinsi Fair”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Komische Oper Berlin, season 2016\/2017
\n<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/span>\u201cSOROCINSKAJA JAMARKA<\/span><\/strong>\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/strong> (Sorochinsi Fair)<\/span><\/span><\/strong>
\nOpera in three acts.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Libretto by the composer after the narrative by Nikolai V. Gogol
\n<\/span><\/span>Music by <\/span><\/span>Modest P. Mussorgsky
\n<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span>After the composer\u2019s autograph reconstructed by Pavel Lamm, completed and orchestrated by Vissarion J. Shebalin
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Cherevik, a peasant<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> JENS LARSEN
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Khivrya, his wife<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> AGNES ZWIERKO
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Parasya,<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> Cherevik\u2019s daughter <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>MIRKA WAGNER
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Godfather <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>TOM ERIK LEE
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Gritsko, a country lad <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>ALEXANDER LEWIS
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Afanassy Ivanovitsh <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>IVAN TURSIC
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Gypsy <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>HANS GR\u00d6NING
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Chernobog, senior devil <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>TOM ERIK LEE
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Orchester der Komischen Oper Berlin
\n<\/span><\/span>Chorus soloists of the Komische Oper Berlin, Children\u2019s chorus, Vocalconsort Berlin
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Conductor <\/span><\/span><\/span>Henrik N\u00e1n\u00e1si
\n<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span>Chorus<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>David Cavelius
\n<\/span><\/span><\/strong>Children\u2019s chorus<\/span><\/span> Dagmar Fiebach
\n<\/span><\/span><\/strong>Production<\/span><\/span> Barrie Kosky
\n<\/span><\/span><\/strong>Stage and costumes<\/span><\/span> Katrin Lea Tag
\n<\/b><\/span><\/span>Light <\/span><\/span>Franck Evin<\/b><\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/span>Berlin, 2nd April 2017
\n\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/em>Like most operas by <\/span><\/span><\/em>Modest P. Mussorgsky, <\/span><\/span>\u201cSorocinskaja Jamarka<\/span><\/span><\/strong>\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/strong> (Sorochinsi Fair) <\/span><\/span><\/strong>is <\/span><\/span>a posthumous piece of work. Staged at the Komische Oper Berlin in 1948 it has not seen any revival in the city ever since. There are plain incidents in a loose order which are not related to each other but brought to full life in a popular way by Mussorgsky. He does not only use traditional folk songs and dances but spreads them over the whole composition and even adds his orchestral fantasy \u201cNight on Bald Montain\u201d from 1867 extended to a chorus piece as the dream or nightmare of the country lad Gritsko. Several composers <\/span>tried to turn the material left by Mussorgsky into a performable opera. The last version from 1932 issued by <\/span>Pavel<\/span> Lamm and <\/span>Vissarion<\/span> J.<\/span> Shebalin seems to get closest to the composer\u2019s intentions. It does not polish but acknowledges the coarse structure of the work to reveal its beauty and boldness. It appears to be a musical painting of rural Russian life of the 19<\/span>th<\/span><\/sup> century depicted in <\/span>Nikolai V<\/span>. <\/span><\/span>Gogol\u2019s narrative of the same title that is part of the writer\u2019s early work \u201c<\/span>\u0412\u0435\u0447\u0435\u0440\u0430<\/span> \u043d\u0430<\/span> \u0445\u0443\u0442\u043e\u0440\u0435<\/span> \u0431\u043b\u0438\u0437<\/span> \u0414\u0438\u043a\u0430\u043d\u044c\u043a\u0438<\/span>\u201c (Evenings on a farm near Dikanka). Komische Oper director <\/span>Berrie Kosky<\/b><\/span> who surprised with a highly romantic and sensitive production of Tchaikovsky\u2019s Evgeni Onegin last season approaches Mussorgsky\u2019s mere fragment with a colourful sheet of pictures, preferably in shrill neon colours on an almost empty stage by <\/span>Katrin Lea Tag<\/b><\/span> <\/b>whose<\/span> traditional Russian costumes correspond with the folklore aspect of the plot. First of \"\"<\/a>all it is a chorus opera and the <\/span>chorus soloists of the Komische Oper Berlin <\/b><\/span>(chorus master <\/span>David Cavelius<\/b><\/span>) excellently supported by the <\/span>Children\u2019s chorus <\/b><\/span>(chorus master <\/span>Dagmar Fiebach<\/b><\/span>) and the <\/span>Vocalconsort Berlin <\/b><\/span>are<\/span> <\/b>the musical highlight of the opera night along with the brilliantly playing <\/span>Orchster der Komischen Oper Berlin <\/b><\/span>under the baton of its parting General Music Director <\/span>Henrik N\u00e1n\u00e1si<\/b><\/span> who tackles the score with concentrated exactness and the right mixture of grotesqueness and surrealism. At long last orchestra and conductor seem to have found a congenial cooperation. The <\/span>light design<\/span> by <\/span>Franck Evin <\/b><\/span>is worth mentioning as it goes perfectly well with <\/span>Katrin Lea Tag<\/span>\u2019s colourful costumes and the slanting stage with a shining floor dominated by a long table across it that is moved forward or back to serve as a podium for the omnipresent Gypsy in the first, Khivrya\u2019s kitchen in the second and a huge laid table in the third acts. Mussorgsky himself considered the second act the core of his opera: nearly 40 minutes of continuous music which brings food and eroticism together. In Kosky\u2019s approach Khivrya is cooking and baking as a prelude until her young lover Afanassy Ivanovitsh turns up. She is feeding and seducing him but is found out after all and has to hide him stuffed in a big roast turkey. Kosky continues that ambiguous appetite in Gritsko\u2019s nightmare when Khivrya\u2019s erotic menu turns into a satanic food orgy. The people are divided into two groups dressed in black and red with pig masks on their heads fighting against one another, on top of it a couple of stilt \"\"<\/a>walkers. All that suggests a lively party of the villagers between faith, superstition, death and supernatural apparitions so that the patchwork scenes about the young lovers Parasya and Gritsko, the gypsy\u2019s legend of the devil who once pawned his red overcoat to the local innkeeper, the farmer and drunkard Cherevik and the love affair between Khivrya and the pope\u2019s son Afanassy appear to become episodes or brief and small snapshots as you can see when browsing a strange photo album. Like <\/span>Gogol\u2019s narrative the plot focuses on the life in the Ukranian village of <\/span>Sorochinsi and its inhabitants of Russian Orthodox faith and consequently Kosky inserts three out of the four songs of Mussorgsky\u2019s cycle \u201cSongs and Dances of Death\u201d to link the three acts to an opera night without an intermission. Even though the cycle was completed by the composer and it is highly popular in Russia, the songs remain a foreign matter which does not really fit in. The same applies to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov\u2019s Hebrew Song presented a cappella at the beginning and the end as a kind of frame. I wonder whether that is Kosky\u2019s strange attempt to emphasize the deep rootedness of metaphysics in rural life in Old Russia to explain the plot. I do not think there is any need to as Mussorgsky\u2019s music and even more his libretto tell their own tale. It is a shame that unlike in Kosky\u2019s Evgeni Onegin or The Fiery Angel before, the Komische Oper does not employ any native singers in this production that you can hardly tell of being in Russian. Even me who is said to have a fairly good command of the language had to refer to the German subtitles to get an idea of the Russian text. I stick to my opinion that Russian opera should preferably be sung by native speakers unless there are singers who are very well \"\"<\/a>trained in the tradition of the Russian singing school that puts a lot of emphasis on declamation and pronunciation. Kosky\u2019s remark that \u201cSorochinsi Fair<\/span>\u201d <\/span><\/span>is made for a company opera house like the Komische Oper is a lame excuse for the arbitr<\/span>a<\/span><\/strong>ry text handling in spite of convincing vocal performances by the soloists led by the highly comical<\/span> Agnes Zwierko<\/span><\/strong> who uses her resonant mezzo-soprano with organ-like deep notes as the frustrated wife and evil stepmother <\/span>Khivrya. <\/span>Jens Larsen<\/b><\/span> is a vocal match in the role of her husband Cherevik. Apart from the previously mentioned idiomatic aspect, his profound bass sounds ideal in Russian repertoire as reviewed before about his appearance in <\/span>Prokofiev\u2019s<\/span> Fiery Angel. <\/span>Tom Erik Lee\u2019s<\/b><\/span> baritone is luxurious for the Godfather and <\/span>Alexander Lewis\u2019 <\/b><\/span>tenor<\/span> <\/b>too white and wiry for the young Gritsko. His tenor colleague <\/span>Ivan Tursic<\/b><\/span> as <\/span>Afanassy Ivanovitsh<\/span> <\/b>sounds more convincing with his Charaktertenor. <\/span>Mirka Wagner\u2019s<\/b><\/span> soprano is clear as crystal but a little too neat or for my taste, un-Slavonic for <\/span>Parasya<\/span>. <\/span><\/span>Hans Gr\u00f6ning<\/b><\/span> convinces vocally in the gypsy\u2019s superstitious narration about the devil and his red overcoat and remains present stripped to the waist throughout the opera. There was unanimous applause for chorus, orchestra and singers at the end with occassional boos for the production team around Berrie Kosky.Photo Monika Rittershaus<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Komische Oper Berlin, season 2016\/2017 \u201cSOROCINSKAJA JAMARKA\u201d (Sorochinsi Fair) Opera in three acts.\u00a0Libretto by the composer after the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":177,"featured_media":89892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2358,18370,10805,17158,9354,9263,9270,10806,3090,16803,18372,18369],"class_list":["post-89886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria","tag-agnes-zwierko","tag-alexander-lewis","tag-berrie-kosky","tag-chor-der-komischen-oper","tag-foreign-readers","tag-henrik-nanasi","tag-jens-larsen","tag-katrin-lea-tag","tag-komische-oper-berlin","tag-modest-mussorgskij","tag-sorocinskaja-jamarka","tag-tom-erik-lee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/177"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89893,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89886\/revisions\/89893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}