shrill charm
by Douglas Messerli
Dmitri Shostakovich, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Georgy Ionin, and Alexander Preis (libretto, based on the story by Gogol), Dmitri Shostakovich (music), William Kentridge (stage director), Gary Halvorson (director) Nos (The Nose) / 2013 [The Metropolitan Opera HD-live broadcast]
Yesterday
Howard and I saw, for the first time, the rather raucous, even, at times, rackety
opera by Dmitri Shostakovich composed in the last wave of Soviet Futurist experimentalism
in 1927-28, and premiering in Leningrad a year later.
I cannot imagine a more innovative and
stunningly visual version of this short opera than William Kentridge and Luc De
Wit’s dynamic production which combines small, beautifully lit (by Urs Schönebaum)
“realist” sets upon and behind which is projected a stunning collage-film of
Russian visuals and English-language and Russian-language words that creates
the entire world of Leningrad whirling out of control around the fairly simple
story of a lower bureaucrat, Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov (wonderfully played
by Paulo Szot), who one morning wakes up without his nose.
The nose has been found in a piece of
bread baked by the wife of the local barber, who the day before has attempted, unsuccessfully,
to shave Kovalyov. The barber, Ivan Yakovlevich, immediately attempts to get
rid of the discovered nose, but has a great deal of difficulty as he is met
throughout the streets by friends and enemies alike, establishing the almost
always mix of wildly exuberant and severely controlled world of Gogol’s story.
Finally, attempting to throw the nose into the Neva river, Ivan is spotted by a
police officer who immediately arrests him.
As
Kovalyov wakes up to bemoan the missing appendage, the utterly absurd story begins
it dramatic arch as the nose, suddenly now as large as a person (played in this
production by Alexander Lewis), is seen running through the streets, and soon
after is encountered by Kovalyov in the Cathedral—now dressed in the uniform of
a State Councilor, who, compared with the Collegiate Assessor, is of so high a
rank that Kovalyov dare not even address him. When he does demand that the nose
come back to him, the appendage declares to have nothing to do with him and, in
the crowded service, again escapes.
Outraged, Kovalyov visits the chief of
police, only to be told, as in so many tales of the slipperiness of those in
power, that the chief has just left his office. A too-long encounter with
journalists at the local newspaper follows, wherein they refuse to post
Kovalyov’s notice of his lost nose for fear of discrediting the newspaper; who
would believe in the loss of a nose: When Kovalyov finally reveals his face,
however, they are convinced, but still refuse to post the advertisement,
ironically offering him some snuff in recompense. In anger and self-pity the bureaucrat
leaves them to return to his room in despair.
The real pleasure of Kentridge’s sets and
film reveal the nose in various “adventures,” linking itself, at one moment, to
an equestrian statue, at another dancing upon head of Anna Pavlova. Mostly, the
poor nose roams the city, attempting, like the murderer in Fritz Lang’s M, simply to not be noticed and trapped.
As the artist-director described his interpretation of Gogol’s story in an
engaging conversation with Met manager Peter Gelb before the opera, he sees the
nose as something like a writer reading his failed words in despair, the words
unable to match what in his head. The nose, a bit like one’s words, simply
desires a life of its own, a life apart from its humdrum pimpled existence upon
the face of the failed human being, we gradually discover, who Kovalyov is.
Adding another layer of irony to the story, Kentridge modeled the opera’s nose
upon his own quite sizable proboscis.
Throughout the opera, indeed, much is
ironic and everything is almost always satiric, without being truly funny (despite
the constant chortles that issued from the elderly woman sitting next to me who
obviously confused attention to the opera with the need to issue vocal clues to
her appreciation). Indeed Shostakovich’s piece, one might argue, presents
itself as a kind of one-liner. Without character development in the narrative,
and basically shrill in its scherzo ostinato and high tenor and baritone
squeaks, the work, despite its often exciting score, generally overwhelms its
subject matter, particularly in the crowd scenes, both in the train station and
on the streets as the large wonderfully-costumed cast run about in chase of the
nose and scream out their fears for the dangers the escaped nose represents. At
times, one sought just a few moments of tonal relief, but when those moments
arrived, as in the comic balalaika song sung by Kovalyov’s servant or the
somewhat quieter moment when, after everyone has rushed to a park to see the
nose, one viewer summarizes the “nothing” he has seen, the momentarily quietude
was quickly swept up again in the frantic action and sounds of Shostakovich’s
busy city life.
There is ultimately a kind of sadness to
this satiric work, as when, even when Kovalyov’s nose is returned, it still is
determined not stay upon his face. The Collegiate Assessor even fantasizes, briefly,
an evil spell cast upon him by Madame Podtochina, whose daughter he has refused
to marry, and continues refuse even after the fracas has died down.
In
the end it appears that the nose has just been worn by all the hubbub of the
citizenry and police stalking the Nevsky Prospekt and other parts of the
Russian city. It is only then, when Kovalyov discovers upon awakening the next
day, that his nose has returned of its own will, that Shostakovitch’s opera
quiets down into a fetching polka, as the gossipy city-dwellers—similar to the
officials proclaiming the Stalinist-imposed restrictions—chastise the writer
for even thinking of such a silly and unbelievable story—although admitting, in
true Eastern European manner, that, of course, such things can happen. That
even the unbelievable can sometimes occur.
If Shostakovich’s first foray into theater
and opera is not a great work, it is, nonetheless, a kind of hidden treasure,
despite its often strident narrative and sounds. And William Kentridge has
transformed this work into a true visual pleasure which I will not soon forget.
Los Angeles,
October 27, 2013
Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (October 2013).
No comments:
Post a Comment