The Nightingale in Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, the 9th of December, 2017

Igor Stravinsky’s fairytale opera ”The Nightingale” was not widely performed in Russia until after the perestroika (though the first performance took place just after the revolution). It seems that the theme of the opera was during the Soviet era considered a bit risky, perhaps because the Soviet citizens had got used to reading between the lines. In the west the opera was performed here and there, usually together with some other opera, since its running time is only 45 minutes. The Opera tells about the emperor of China, who has heard people praise the singing of the nightingale. He manages to persuade the nightingale to sing in his court and people fall in love with the beautiful singing. Then the Japanese emissaries bring the emperor a mechanical bird, who starts to sing and the nightingale flies away. The emperor is infuriated by this and forbids the bird to return and announces that the mechanical bird will be the number one bird in the court instead. In the end, when the emperor is lying on his deathbed, the nightingale returns and even the death loves its singing so much that he goes away and the emperor recovers.

This opera was written when Stravinsky still lived in Russia and its music is almost poetic and at times nearly dreamlike, so it suits a fairytale really well. There were lots of children in the audience and therefore there was a constant background humming (whispers etc) during the performance, so that the quieter parts of the opera could not reach their full potential. I do not know if it was because of this background noise, but this time I did not find any favourites among the singers either.

But I absolutely have to praise the set and costume design by Vladimir Fider. The set design was very simple and consisted of hanging rope-like things that formed walls with Chinese characters of the emperor written on them. There were also other references to China in the performance: lots of paper lanterns and even a couple of dragons. When you add super colourful costumes with Chinese characteristics, the overall picture was truly spectacular.