Out of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s operas “Eugene Onegin” and “The Queen of Spades” are the most frequently performed ones. You sometimes see also “Mazepa” and “Iolanta”, but the rest of his operas are seldom seen even in Russia, let alone in other countries. So when I saw that “The Enchantress”, that had its opening night in Mariinsky in 2003, would be shown again in Mariinsky-2, I got a good reason to make a weekend trip to St. Petersburg.
I originally bought the ticket just because the opera is so seldom in the programme, but when Mariinsky finally announced the performers, I got an extra bonus, since the role of Nastasya was sung by Elene Stikhina, who made an indelible impression on me in the Finnish National Opera’s “The Troubadour” last year. My joy was dimmed a bit by simultaneous announcement that the conductor would be Valery Gergiev, whose constant lateness really bugs me. This time he was – to my surprise – only 20 minutes late, which in his case is actually on time. And contrary to his usual behaviour he also returned from the interval on time, so I was really happy.
“The Enchantress” tells a story about a prince, his wife, son and an enchanting woman – Nastasya. The prince falls in love with Nastasya, who is in her turn in love with the son. The wife is jealous of her husband and the son promises first to kill Nastasya to get revenge, but then falls in love with her. The wife poisons Nastasya and the prince kills the son out of jealousy and loses his mind afterwards. The opera is based on Ippolit Shpazhinsky’s play, which he turned into an opera libretto at the request of Tchaikovsky.
The music of the opera sounds very much like Tchaikovsky’s music does. My favourite parts were Nastasya’s arioso in the first act and the duet between the mother and the son. Even though Elena Stikhina was this time also the star of the performance, Vladislav Sulimsky as the prince and Olga Savova as the princess did really well. The Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra conducted by Gergiev made a routine performance with no great peaks, but also without any mistakes.
I loved the work of director David Pountney. He had created an imaginative world where just by changing some parts, you could imagine being in the dark, oppressive forest or grandiose prince’s palace. Set designer Robert Innes-Hopkins and costume designer Tatiana Noginova had used only three colours (white, red and black), which created magnificent contrasts between the characters and made the visual image as such very impressive.
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