OPERA REVIEW : St. Petersburg Opera--From Russia With Modesty

What if they gave a season of authentic opera from Russia and nobody came?

It is virtually happening these days at Lincoln Center. A company billed as the St. Petersburg National Opera is playing at the cavernous State Theater, and half the seats seem to be empty. Something strange is happening here.

In the bad old days, before perestroika and before the crumbling of the Soviet Union, Russian cultural exports automatically created box-office euphoria. The times have changed in drastic, surprising ways.

The problems in this case obviously involve fickle fashion, not to mention suddenly easy access to formerly forbidden fruit. But there is more to this debacle.

No one really knows at first glance what the St. Petersburg National Opera is. Initially, one might suspect that it is the mighty Kirov decked out with a new, politically correct name. Not so. This, it turns out, is the less glamorous yet more adventurous company that used to be known as the Maly in what used to be Leningrad.

In a triumph of dubious planning, the Kirov is scheduled to visit New York in July, bringing two-thirds of the same repertory. Meanwhile, the brave little Maly ensemble is playing I’m-all-right-Ivan in the face of tiny audiences, lukewarm press responses and apparently inexperienced if not inept managerial support.

The season is devoted to three relatively popular works from the standard repertory, presented with supertitles in a reasonable facsimile of English: Mussorgsky’s inevitable “Boris Godunov,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Zolotoy Pyetushok”--a.k.a. “The Golden Cockerel”--and Tchaikovsky’s “Pikovaya Dama” (The Queen of Spades).

The run was originally limited to a sensible two weeks. Then, in what may have been a supreme flight of misplaced optimism, a third week was added. This, according to a risible official announcement, was “due to ticket demand.”

One could have shot a cannon into the house Friday night, when the bill was “Boris Godunov,” and hurt no one.

The Maly engagement has been sponsored by Kazuko Hillyer of International Festivals and Events Inc., prophetically described in handouts as a “not-for-profit organization.” Advertisement has been feeble, publicity has been sparse and the information provided audiences has been symptomatically bizarre.

Both the $8 souvenir booklet and the regular program magazine resemble a festival of illiterate gaffes, awkward omissions and stylistic howlers. Few names are spelled the same way twice. The performance credits sometimes lapse into French. The only reliable information comes from a few uncredited annotations that are lifted verbatim from good old Kobbe.

The Maly Opera deserves better. Founded in 1918, right after the Bolshevik Revolution, it has provided an artistic haven for the maverick basso Feodor Chaliapin and the visionary director Vsevolod Meyerhold. It has functioned, in many senses, as the people’s opera, and it has ventured the premieres of such risky enterprises as Shostakovich’s “The Nose” and “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” not to mention the earliest version of Prokofiev’s “War and Peace.”

To compare the Maly to the Kirov is about as valid as comparing the New York City Opera to the Metropolitan. The focus is different, and so is the scale. New Yorkers, unfortunately, like grand opera to look grand. If it comes all the way from Russia, some observers seem to reason, it must be big.

The Maly, by verbal definition, cannot be big. It can, of course, compensate for its poverty of resources with richness of imagination. That, however, is easier wished than produced.

The productions seen here thus far are modest in scale but authoritative--even lusty--in spirit. They are well sung, for the most part, and competently staged, though they would no doubt look better in a smaller house.

The pervasive tone is respectfully, cautiously traditional. There’s the rub. In this context, a little inspired irreverence would go a long way.

“Boris Godunov,” as staged by the artistic director, Stanislav Gaudassinsky, and designed by Semion Pastukh, musters no ornate cathedral, no Kremlin luxury, no royal splendor and certainly no cast of thousands. A few plain white flats with arched doorways are pushed about the stage and draped in varying configurations to suggest the changing locales. A frantic, full-voiced chorus numbering about 50 tries desperately to make the meager seem massive.

The let’s-pretend solutions are certainly efficient, even clever. Unfortunately, they aren’t particularly evocative.

Vladimir Ziva, the youthful chief-conductor who also holds similar position in Nijny Nivgorod, enforces a lot of energy in the understaffed pit. Of course, he cannot make a rough orchestra sound smooth any more than he can make electronic buzzes chime like thunderous bells. At least he tries.

The company uses an odd edition that omits much of the domestic byplay in Boris’ apartment, deletes Marina’s aria, restores the St. Basil scene, retains the repetitive lament of the Simpleton in the Kromy Forest and ends with the Czar’s death. Some of the orchestrations suggest lean Mussorgsky, others seem to invoke lush Rimsky.

Friday’s solid cast was dominated by the basses: Vladimir Vaneyev as a tough and assertive Boris whose dark tone sometimes loses security under pressure, Valery Kochkin as a splendidly blustery Varlaam and Valery Gavva as an compellingly sonorous Pimen.

Nina Romanova sounded exceptionally opulent as Marina, partnered by Victor Pischayev as a rather bleaty Dmitri. The other tenors were better: Victor Lukyanov as the heroically shifty Shuisky and Alexander Petrov as the lyrically innocent Simpleton. As the Nurse, Maya Kuznetsova suggested that the gallon-jug contralto may not be an extinct breed after all.

The dark and mellifluous satire of “Zolotoy Pyetushok” was given its exotic due the following night, though the Maly performance could not eradicate fond memories of “The Golden Cockerel” as staged by the City Opera in the same theater nearly a quarter century ago with Norman Treigle and Beverly Sills. Gaudassinsky created pretty cartoon pictures within Alexander Gorenstein’s simple, fluid network of patchwork tents and folksy artifacts. The precarious line separating character and caricature was sometimes blurred, however, and wit tended to flag as the drama unraveled.

Ziva again sustained musical bravado from the podium, and Valery Kochkin went from Varlaam’s rags to King Dodon’s riches with generous, bumbling bravura. Anatoly Votopayev ascended bravely to the vocal stratosphere of the Astrologer, and Nina Potasheva introduced yet another gutsy mezzo-profondo as Amelfa. The only disappointment involved Yelena Ustinova, who managed the high tessitura of the Queen of Shemakha neatly enough but missed the essential aura of mock sensuality.

The audience on both occasions tried valiantly to mask its thin ranks with thick applause.