Rock Opera ‘Junon’ Exuberant, Excessive

Even before glasnost, a new voice of intellectual freedom in the Soviet Union was being heard. The sound of that voice is very evident in “Junon and Avos--The Hope,” the first Russian rock opera, which was a smash hit in 1981 at Moscow’s Lenin Komsomol Theater, and opened last weekend at Manhattan’s City Center.

With a libretto and lyrics by noted Soviet poet Andrei Vosnesensky and music by Aleksei Ribnikov, the musical recounts the factual story of a Russian count who tried to open trade relations with the West in the early 19th Century. But its sentiments and idealism are decidedly late 20th Century.

Most critics praised the show’s exuberance, visual beauty and spirit, but could not give it a complete endorsement.

Vosnesensky’s book and lyrics “rarely dramatize the events,” thought the Daily News’ Howard Kissel, but he felt the rock ‘n’ roll score was “at its best when it suggests the rich harmonies of Russian liturgical music.” The show is probably, he summed up, “a great leap backward from their own grand traditions.”

In Newsday, Drew Fetherston called “Junon and Avos” a “fevered carnival of excesses--of story, emotions, choreography, music, lights, stage sets, special effects and just plain noise”--sounds like some other Broadway musicals-- but when it works “it is splendid and exciting . . . always a feast for the eyes, however, often it starves the intellect and assaults the ear.” He found it significant that the play’s “political sentiments were brought courageously to the stage well before the political climate was ready for them. For this and its occasional brilliance it deserves respect and admiration.”

“The drama’s allegorical implications are underscored by rigidly stylized performances,” said Stephen Holden in the New York Times, but “Ribnikov’s robust score has big, broad melodies that suggest a more folkish Andrew Lloyd Webber and a bit of Neil Diamond,” and Vladimir Vasilyev’s choreography “suggests a Soviet Socialist answer to a Bob Fosse musical.”

Susan Elliott, in the New York Post, found boldness in the “juxtaposition of traditional Russian sacred and folk music with hard-driving Western rock ‘n’ roll” and felt “there is plenty to fill the eyes and ears.” She praised the vocal ensemble work and was particularly impressed by the show’s poignant finale: the company kneels at the edge of the stage, arms linked, “tears in their eyes, for in glasnost their hope is finally being fulfilled.”

IN QUOTES: British director Peter Hall states in his “Diaries” that he doesn’t believe in theatre for political propaganda: “Good politics always make bad art.” He agrees with Eugene O’Neill, the man he calls (in the same volume) “the greatest bad writer among world-league dramatists.”

As O’Neill once said, “I suppose these lousy times make it inevitable that many authors get caught in the sociological propaganda mill. . . . The hell of it seems to be, when an artist starts saving the world, he starts losing himself.”