{"id":90738,"date":"2017-08-07T18:05:59","date_gmt":"2017-08-07T16:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbopera.it\/?p=90738"},"modified":"2017-08-07T18:14:14","modified_gmt":"2017-08-07T16:14:14","slug":"bard-summerscape-dmitrij","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/bard-summerscape-dmitrij\/","title":{"rendered":"Bard SummerScape: “Dmitrij”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sosnoff Theater, Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
\n<\/em>“DMITRIJ”
\n<\/strong><\/span>Opera in four acts, Libretto by Marie \u010cervinkov\u00e1-Riegrov\u00e1<\/span>
\n Music by Antonin <\/b><\/span>Dvo\u0159<\/span>\u00e1k\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> <\/strong><\/span>
\nDmitrij<\/em> CLAY HILLEY<\/span>
\n<\/span>Marina<\/em> MELISSA CITRO
\n<\/span>Xenia<\/em> OLGA TOLKMIT
\n<\/span>Marfa<\/em> NORA SOUROUZIAN
\n<\/span>Patriarch Jov<\/em> PEIXIN CHEN
\nPrince Shuisky<\/em> LEVI HERNANDEZ
\nBasmanov<\/em> JOSEPH BARRON
\nNeborsky<\/em> ROOSEVELT CREDIT
\nBucinsky<\/em> THOMAS McCARGAR
\nAmerican Symphony Orchestra
\n<\/span>Conductor <\/span>Leon Botstein
\n<\/b><\/span>Chorus Master <\/span>James Bagwell
\n<\/b><\/span>Production <\/span>Anne Bogart
\n<\/b><\/span>Set Design <\/span>David Zinn
\n<\/b><\/span>Costume Design <\/span>Constance Hoffman
\n<\/b><\/span>Lighting Design <\/span>Brian H. Scott
\n<\/b><\/span>Language Coach <\/span>Veronique Firkusny
\n<\/b>Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, July 30, 2017
\n<\/em><\/span>\"\"<\/a>Antonin Dvo<\/span>\u0159<\/span><\/span>\u00e1k\u2019s <\/span>Dmitrij<\/i><\/span><\/strong> was given its fully-staged American debut last week at the Sosnoff Theater<\/strong>, Bard College\u2019s superb Frank Gehry opera house. The opera, a grand opera on the Scribe-Meyerbeer template, had its American concert premiere no longer ago than 1984. It has never been well known outside the Czech lands, in part because no Czech operas other than those that had been translated into German (such as <\/span>Bartered Bride <\/i><\/span>and <\/span>Jenufa<\/i><\/span>) got many performances outside the Czech lands until quite lately. <\/span>Dmitrij <\/i><\/span>is full of massed choral scenes, and though Dvo<\/span>\u0159<\/span><\/span>\u00e1k was a notable composer of choral music, international choruses rarely study Czech. At the annual Bard SummerScape festival on the cliffside campus about two hours north of New York City, the Bard Festival Chorale sang their Czech ardently and distinctly, Leon Botstein<\/strong> led the American Symphony Orchestra<\/strong> in a surging, lyrical performance, and everyone seemed to express surprise at how beautiful the music was.
\nDvo<\/strong><\/span>\u0159<\/span><\/strong><\/span>\u00e1k is better known for symphonies, tone poems, Slavonic Dances and chamber music \"\"<\/a> than for opera,<\/strong> but no one ever questioned his gifts for melody and orchestration. The imperious Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, admired <\/span>Dmitrij<\/i><\/span>\u2019s premiere in 1882, and a feud between Old Czechs and Young Czechs over whether or not Dvo<\/span>\u0159<\/span><\/span>\u00e1k had offended Smetana was inadvertent on Dvo<\/span>\u0159<\/span><\/span>\u00e1k\u2019s part and soon died away from lack of encouragement. The opera was performed some sixty times in Prague before the composer\u2019s death, but never caught on anywhere else. Of course it\u2019s beautiful.
\nBut <\/strong><\/span>Dmitrij<\/i><\/strong><\/span> is also slow and static<\/strong>. Four hours of beautiful can sweep you along or they can be ponderous. Dvo<\/span>\u0159<\/span><\/span>\u00e1k\u2019s librettist was inexperienced, and while the love-triangle-played-out-against-national-uproar plot was tried and true (<\/span>Aida<\/i><\/span> comes to mind; also <\/span>Les Huguenots, La Juive<\/i><\/span> and<\/span> La Favorite<\/i><\/span>), sometimes it does not come alive. Dvo<\/span>\u0159<\/span><\/span>\u00e1k never seems to know when he\u2019s made his point and it\u2019s time to move on or quite how to build a scene to a brisk climax. I concluded, as at other Dvo<\/span>\u0159<\/span><\/span>\u00e1k operas I\u2019ve attended (<\/span>Russalka, Armida, Vanda<\/i><\/span>) that the man did not have the opera gene. Dramatic form was not instinct in him, and he did not seek out hit plays as models for his stage works, as most successful opera composers of the century did.
\n<\/span>For <\/span>Dmitrij<\/i><\/span>, Dvo<\/span>\u0159<\/span><\/span><\/strong>\u00e1k chose the story of the pretender to the Muscovite<\/strong> throne upon the deaths of Boris and Fyodor Godunov. He is unlikely to have known Moussorgsky\u2019s opera, premiered in 1873 but not performed in the west until 1908, but his librettist, Marie \u010cervinkov\u00e1-Riegrov\u00e1, the daughter and granddaughter of Slavic nationalist politicians, may well have read Pushkin\u2019s play, Moussorgky\u2019s source. <\/span>In Dvo<\/span>\u0159<\/span><\/span><\/strong>\u00e1k\u2019s opera<\/strong>, Dmitrij\u2019s Polish bride, Marina, refuses to accept Russian \u201cways,\u201d taunts Dmitrij to a mazurka rhythm, and invents a tale of mixed and murdered babies right out of <\/span>Il Trovatore<\/i><\/span>. Dmitrij then falls in love with Xenia Godunova, Boris\u2019s hapless daughter, whom he has rescued from assault. Dmitrij\u2019s mother, Marfa, who had \u201crecognized\u201d him in Act I, changes her mind in Act IV, in a scene borrowed from <\/span>Le Proph\u00e8te<\/i><\/span>. (There is also a conspirators\u2019 chorus into which, as in <\/span>Ernani<\/i><\/span>, the objective, Dmitrij, intrudes. \u010cervinkov\u00e1-Riegrov\u00e1 seems to have been desperate to try anything that had worked for someone else.) Xenia is murdered by Marina in a jealous fit, and Prince Shuisky, leader of the Russian rebels, murders Dmitrij who has earlier spared Shuisky\u2019s life. None of these pile-on incidents seems sufficiently motivated by the story and all of them linger, musically, longer than they have to. This is a beautiful but bloated opera, wonderful in festival circumstances but not a candidate for the repertory.
\n<\/span>\"\"<\/a>At SummerScape, it did not help things that Anne Bogart<\/strong>, the director, refused to set the piece anywhere near 1606 or the Kremlin, site of Dmitrij\u2019s coronation and murder. My guess is they couldn\u2019t afford fancy costumes for anyone but the Orthodox priests. Bogart says the confusion of the Time of Troubles (1598-1613) reminded her of the confusion in 1989 at the fall of communism, which I suppose means she regards Putin as a Romanov. (There was a golden-haired child dancing through the set at odd times, representing the future\u2014Michael Romanov, I\u2019d imagine.) The single set was a battered, unkempt gymnasium-assembly room in a post-Stalin Era public building (no outdoors! No Kremlin towers in the distance!) and the costumes were drab and casual except for the posh gowns of Marina and Marfa. Xenia has no princess clothes but only rags (and flat shoes). Soldiers get to carry AK-47s. Gangs of assassins have flashlights wavering in the dark, which is getting to be a clich\u00e9 but remains effective. Crowd movement (and there\u2019s a lot of it) was not among Bogart\u2019s stronger foci. The static nature of this opera was emphasized at every turn. Compared to this <\/span>Dmitrij<\/i><\/span>, Verdi\u2019s <\/span>Vespri Siciliani <\/i><\/span>is a tight, clear, active story. In my own despite, however, it is only fair to say that a glance about the Sosnoff Theater during the final act\u2014will Marfa swear Dmitrij is Dmitrij or will she go back on her earlier recognition?\u2014showed the audience at every level sitting up straight, attention caught, eager to find out how the tale would come out.
\nFollowing the Wagnerian style then chic (1882 is the year of <\/span>Parsifal<\/i><\/span>), the score is not divided into discreet numbers but flows from one to the next, constructed on motives based on each character or theme. As usual with SummerScape\u2019s revivals of important but neglected operas (in fifteen years, they have staged such works as Taneyev\u2019s <\/span>Oresteia<\/i><\/span>, Schumann\u2019s <\/span>Genoveva<\/i><\/span>, Schreker\u2019s <\/span>Die Ferne Klang<\/i><\/span> and Smyth\u2019s <\/span>The Wreckers<\/i><\/span>\u2014Rubinstein\u2019s <\/span>Demon<\/i><\/span> is slated for next year), the youthful singers were always decent and often remarkable.
\nThe title role is long and stentorian<\/strong>: Dmitrij must declaim, fight, woo and defy crowds, woo and\"\"<\/a> defy ladies, and die heroically. Clay Hilley<\/strong>, who has sung Siegfried and Radames, did an extraordinary job last Sunday, swiftly attaining the proper level of passion and never pulling back from it. As sheer vocal athleticism, it was an astonishing performance but there wasn\u2019t much subtlety about it, much gradation to suit emotional waywardness, and he hardly seemed to be paying attention at all during Marina\u2019s tirade and revelation of his birth. <\/span>Melissa Citro<\/strong>, tall and blonde and fierce, sang Marina, a termagant role that must race through hoops of music. Shrill and of wandering pitch in Act II, she later pulled herself together for many effective dramatic phrases effectively grounded. The contrast with her rival, Xenia Godunova, could hardly have been more striking: Not only does Xenia have gentler music to sing, but Olga Tolkmit<\/strong>, a slight figure in drab clothes, has far less of a stage-eating presence. She has a nice rounded soprano, however, that builds to climaxes (as when Marina has her stabbed), and I\u2019m not sure how much of her hiding in the shadows, wandering aimlessly on and off, was director Bogart\u2019s idea. The most striking female voice on stage belonged to Nora Sourouzian<\/strong> as Marfa, Dmitrij\u2019s long-lost mother. Sourouzian seemed unusually well dressed and radiant for a self-effacing nun, but her voice was sumptuous and stirring. Among the smaller male roles, Peixin Chen<\/strong> had the ponderous authority for the patriarch and Joseph Barron<\/strong> was effective in the angry, bitten-off phrases of the brutal Basmanov.\u00a0 The crowd around me buzzed happily at the unexpected charm of the score, but the slightness of the drama makes its inclusion in the international repertory seem unlikely. It was a pleasure but not a thrill. Photo Cory Weaver<\/em>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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