The last opera of the
weekend was Rodion Shchedrin’s ”A Christmas Tale”, which is a bit misleading a
name, since it actually tells about the new year and not about Christmas. But
on the other hand, New Year celebrations replaced Christmas in the Soviet
Union, so the name is sort of justified. The story line tells about the Empress
of Russia, who loves violets and decrees that the year must not change until
she gets real forest violets instead of the violets that froze in the greenhouse.
It also tells about the stepdaughter, whose stepmother and her real daughter send
her to the snow filled forest to find the flowers. In the forest the girl bumps
into the twelve months and April creates her violets to take to the court.
After some developments all end up singing wishes of a happy new year.
I have liked the other
operas of Shchedrin that I have seen, so I was not surprised that I also liked
this one. The music was sort of dual: the stepdaughter’s music was more modern and
the other people sung a lot more down to earth music.
Even though the story
of the opera was clearly a fairy tale, it had a lot to give also to adult audience.
It contained a social message about the insanity of rulers giving stupid
decrees and it also needled a little the Russian oligarchs’ eagerness to
purchase football teams.
Once again I have to
give praise to the set and costume design. The technical systems of Mariinsky-2
allow lots of showy solutions. The trees in the forest descended and rose and
the twelve months mostly sung on top of column like constructions that were
illuminated with some lights.
The most interesting
performers were the stepmother (Natalia Yevstafieva) and daughter (Larisa
Yelina). Both were not only good singers, but their characters were also
suitably evil and exaggerated to be interesting. Compared to them the
stepdaughter (Anna Denisova) was really colourless, even though she sang quite
beautifully.
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