OPERA REVIEW : ‘Orleanskaya Dyeva’: St. Joan Gets Burned--Bolshoi Style

This sort of thing could only happen with the massive and eminently ponderous Bolshoi Opera of Moscow--an ancient, noble, somnolent institution that suddenly finds itself stumbling earnestly if clumsily toward the 20th Century.

The stage is decorated and populated to delirious excess. Various visual styles clash in vulgar splendor as the music soars, rips, roars and thunders. Restraint is not practiced here.

The big event, Wednesday night at the Metropolitan Opera House, was the first New York staging of Tchaikovsky’s much neglected, vastly uneven, often fascinating and sometimes poignant “Orleanskaya Dyeva,” a.k.a. “The Maid of Orleans.” But Joan of Arc was never like this.

A huge chorus, uniformly garbed in churchly mufti from the turn of the century, stands around in military formations and makes mighty, marvelously resonant oratorio noises. A big brass band, spiffily clad in modern tuxedos, tootles portentous fanfares from various picturesque perches.

Meanwhile, the protagonists of the faintly familiar drama, period-pretty in 15th-Century finery, demonstrate quaint impressions of Stanislavsky-Method acting. They perform their narrative rituals while shrieking, yelping, wobbling and bleating with ever-urgent valor in the apparently authentic Soviet manner.

There is more. Mini-ballerinas, apparently masquerading as Fates and/or Muses, model quasi-Grecian nighties while encircling the unhappy heroine and striking poses obviously copied from antique vases. Another corps, this group adorned with Mary Pickford curlicue wigs and cardboard wings--yes, wings--invokes blessings from on high as bigger-than-life angel dolls descend from the flies.

But wait. It isn’t over till the fat lady burns.

At immolation time, Joan sings a sweetly lyrical farewell duet with her adored Lionel--yes, there is love interest here--while secured to a stake on a wooden platform. Chains drop from heaven to draw the prima donna and her platform slowly upward toward eternity. Smoke billows from below. Red lights glow. An assembled cast of hundreds--or is it thousands?--offers a stunned benediction.

Nothing like it has been seen hereabouts since Grizabella went to meet her maker on an ascending tire at the uplifting apotheosis of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats.”

Most modern companies would approach such maneuvers in the high spirit of low camp. The Bolshoi forces, however, manage to keep a straight face. If they have a saving grace, this is it. There is courage, if not naivete, in their conviction.

Everyone from star to spear-carrier enacts the semi-stylized charades devised by Boris Pokrovsky with compelling ardor. The ballet fugitives move as if Mikhail Lavrovsky’s choreographic impositions actually made poetic sense.

One would like to admire this mishmash as an archaic relic of an unabashedly innocent age. “Orleanskaya Dyeva” entered the Bolshoi repertory, however, only a year ago, after more than 60 years of understandable neglect.

The action--and the inaction--is framed by Valery Levental’s handsome but cumbersome, multilevel unit set, embellished with a clever, never-ending series of fancy drop curtains. The silliness certainly looks pretty.

Most important, Alexander Lazarev conducts his troubled soloists, splendid chorus and overwhelming orchestra with unflagging, galvanizing vigor. Under his flamboyant influence, the inspired moments of the score ring with pathos, the bombastic passages sound nearly cataclysmic and the vapid interludes pass by with merciful speed.

The arduous title role was entrusted on Wednesday to Makvala Kasrashvili. When the Bolshoi last visited New York in 1975, the young lyric soprano from Georgia looked exquisite and sounded radiant in a number of roles vacated by Galina Vishnevskaya. Now Kasrashvili has graduated to prima-donna status, and her voice, like her body, has taken on considerable weight. Her tone sometimes loses focus under pressure, but at her best she remains an illuminating singer and a compelling actress.

Not incidentally, she bravely sang the role as Tchaikovsky conceived it, ignoring the simpler, lower version that the accommodating composer had arranged for the mezzo-soprano who undertook the premiere in 1881.

The supporting cast included the ubiquitous Oleg Kulko as a strained Charles VII and Nikolai Vasiliev as an unsteady Raymond (Joan’s peasant suitor). The tenor shortage in Moscow must be acute.

Representing a surprisingly unimposing contingent of bassos, the gigantic Gleb Nikolsky served as a shaky Archbishop and Vyacheslav Pochapsky introduced a pallid Thibaut. Mikhail Krutikov forced his light voice to simulate heaviness in the grumbling platitudes of Dusnois--a role created by none other than the father of Igor Stravinsky.

Young Vladimir Redkin found the rolling lyricism of Lionel more congenial than the dramatic stress of Yevgeny Onegin, his opening-night assignment here. Yekaterina Kudryavchenko floated a limpid soprano line offset by strident accents in the innocent reverie of Agnes Sorel.

Incidental intelligence:

* The original announcements for the Bolshoi season heralded “Orleanskaya Dyeva” as an American premiere. This was later modified when authorities were reminded that the opera has been staged at least twice in Reno (first with Jeanne Piland, then with Dolora Zajick) and once, appropriately, in New Orleans (with Mignon Dunn).

* True to Met tradition, supertitles were not used for the Bolshoi engagement. The projected translations will materialize above the proscenium, however, when the Muscovites travel next week to Wolf Trap, near Washington in Vienna, Va.

* Neither the house program magazine (distributed gratis) nor the slender souvenir booklet ($15!) contains much essential material on the background of the operas, and some major singers are totally ignored. Both publications are generous, however, with misinformation, stylistic inconsistencies and editorial errors. There has to be a better way. . . .