Dubrovsky in Mariinsky Concert Hall in St. Petersburg, the 1st of October, 2019

I could hardly believe my luck, when I managed to combine an opera rarity (concert performance) with my business trip to St. Petersburg. Conductor Eduard Napravnik was at his time the head of Mariinsky Theatre and he composed total of four operas. In the beginning “Dubrovsky” was a rather popular opera and it was regularly performed both in Russia and in the Soviet Union plus in a few other countries. In the last few decades it has, however, been almost totally forgotten and even concert performances are rare. The libretto, made by Modest Tchaikovsky, is based on a story by Alexander Pushkin.

The story of the opera is rather conventional. Dubrovsky the elder loses his farm to his ex-friend Troekurov and dies. Dubrovsky the younger – Vladimir – becomes the leader of a group of bandits and falls in love with the daughter of Troekurov – Masha. Vladimir joins the Troekurov household pretending to be the French tutor of Masha and she also falls in love with him. In the end Vladimir is found out and has to flee. He wants to meet Masha once again to reveal her himself his identity. Masha forgives him the betrayal, but Vladimir is shot to death and Masha loses her mind.

This was the first time in Mariinsky (and I have visited Mariinsky rather often) they did not have any subtitles in any language. Usually there are subtitles at least in Russian (excluding Prokofiev Hall performances), but this time the performance, that actually also had French bits, did not have any subtitles at all. Though, I did think during the performance that even if you had not understood anything of the text, the music itself was so expressive, that you could have understood the story relatively well.  

Napravnik was a new composer to me. His music was beautiful and expressive but not unusually memorable. The choice of singers was good. Actually only the singer of the role of Vladimir, that is  Dmitry Voropaev, was a disappointment. His is often singing the male lead in the Concert Hall performances and I have never been the biggest fan of his voice. This time he barely lifted his head from the score, so the impression was even colder than usually. Fortunately, there were plenty of other singers on the stage. Andrei Serov, who sang the role of Andrey Dubrovsky, was excellent as the dying father as well as Yaroslav Petryanik as Troekurov. I also liked Ekaterina Bondarenko’s Yegorovna. But my clear favourite of the evening was Ekaterina Latysheva in the role of Masha. Absolutely gorgeous, clear soprano. Her singing was wonderfully effortless!

In the end I have to say that I have heard lot worse operas than “Dubrovsky” performed, so you can only wonder, why isn’t it staged more often. I would like to go and see it as a regular opera performance, so I can only hope it will be staged one day in the old Mariinsky. Though, I have to admit that there were so many unsold seats even in this concert performance that old Mariinsky may be a vain hope.