OPERA REVIEW : The Bolshoi Boss Returns

The Bolshoi Opera of Moscow--apparently more popular with local audiences than local critics--began its second week at the Metropolitan Opera House with an unfamiliar figure on the podium.

Lo and behold, the energetic young maestro happened to be none other than the company’s vaunted artistic director and chief conductor, Alexander Lazarev. He had missed the opening week in Manhattan, including the world premiere of his own new production of “Yevgeny Onegin,” because of a scheduling conflict, and he wasn’t happy about it.

While Bolshoi conductors of lesser rank led the crucial first performances of “Onegin” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s exotic opera-ballet “Mlada,” Lazarev was busy fulfilling a contract for the closing concerts of a Prokofiev festival in the relatively modest locale of Duisburg, Germany. Over a jet-lagged breakfast on Monday, he blamed the contretemps on the tour managers who, he claimed, changed booking dates after the original agreement had been settled.

Candid and aggressively affable in three languages, Lazarev lauded his colleagues in the pit for their professionalism. At the same time, he said he feared that neither could protect and project the special interpretive concepts he had devised for the productions in question.

The new “Onegin,” he said, was intended as an intimate re-creation of what Tchaikovsky carefully described as “lyrical scenes.” It should not resort to the overblown operatic conventions that had become a “dubious Bolshoi tradition,” and, he added pointedly, “the able gentleman who conducted the first ‘Onegins’ in New York had long been part of that tradition.”

It remains to be heard whether Lazarev’s presence can do much to validate a staging of the Tchaikovsky masterpiece that seems both misguided and muddled. Monday night, however, he began what promises to be a grueling and revealing marathon of appearances here with a dazzling performance of “Mlada.”

Lazarev has been associated with the progressive wing of the conservative Bolshoi since 1973. He was in charge of Prokofiev’s provocative quasi-comedy, “The Gambler,” when the company first visited the Met in 1975, and he assumed his current position of leadership when perestroika began to redefine Soviet culture in 1987.

In “Mlada,” he proved that he is, if nothing else, a musician of extraordinary theatrical flair. Alexei Stepanov, his deputy, had offered a colorful, tidy, witty, thoughtfully proportioned account of the folksy-mystical score. Lazarev let Rimsky rip.

Throwing caution to the melodic breezes--and some degree of neatness with it--he wallowed in fine, second-hand Wagnerian sensuality, thumped out brazen grotesqueries that pointed the way to Shostakovich if not Stravinsky, and luxuriated in choral textures that could be astonishingly gutsy one moment and incredibly ethereal the next. He obviously is a galvanizing force.

His responsive cast represented unexpected mixing and matching of the two ensembles previously heard. With the Bolshoi, one never knows for sure who will sing a performance until the curtain rises.

The only newcomer on the stage was Svetlana Slavnaya, a minor caractere dancer unenviably elected to succeed the stellar Bolshoi ballerina Nina Ananiashvili as the murdered heroine’s ghost. Slavnaya looked pert and very pretty, moved through her petty mock-Petipa routines with easy grace, but, unlike her exquisite predecessor, hardly seemed a disembodied spirit.

Over the weekend, a new Onegin joined the “Onegin” cast under Fuat Mansurov’s indulgent baton. Nikolai Reshetnyak, who graduated from the Moscow Conservatory only last year, may be the best of the three young protagonists encountered in the production thus far. Although his dark, grainy baritone is not always perfectly controlled, he phrases with fine theatrical point, cuts an elegantly slender figure on the stage, and knows how to convey both hauteur and remorse with dignified restraint.

Mikhail Krutikov inherited Prince Gremin’s climactic aria from Yevgeny Nesterenko, who had moved on to more pressing duties in Verona. The young man sang well, without beginning to approach the senior artist’s vocal weight, leisurely legato or broad expressive scale. Not every Russian basso is a descendant of Feodor Chaliapin.

The performance, dominated by the radiant, much improved Tatiana of Nina Rautio, introduced a pallid Monsieur Triquet in Oleg Biktimirov. He at least played down the silly caricature demanded by Boris Pokrovsky’s stage direction and, unlike previous tenors in the role, sang rather than croaked the old tutor’s charming serenade.