Nicholar Palmer noted briefly how good the performances of Mavra and
Maddalena were. Here are a few more comments on these and on The queen of
spades, and the casts.

Maddalena (Prokoviev, no date given, first performed 1979, first staged 1981)

Natalia Zagorinskaya    Maddalena
Vadim Zaplechny         Gennaro
Igor Tarasev            Stenio
Natalia Palguina        "She"

Mavra (Stravinsky, 1922)

Elena Kachura           Parasha
Ekaterina Melnikova     Mother
Olga Resaeva            Neighbour
Sergei Yakovlev         Hussar

Director: Dmitry Bertman
Conductor Kiril Tikhonov (credited for both, only conducted Mavra)

These two pieces are tasty scrapings from the pan of twentieth-century
opera. They're not quite substantial enough for the main repertoire, but in
Helikon's highly theatrical stagings they were well worth seeing. Nicholar
Palmer said that the productions were simple, which is true in that they
used minimal sets (basically a flat with three panels, mirror on one side,
black on the other, and some architecture fragments). But I thought the
stagings were actually very rich, and simple in the sense that the got the
point over with great clarity.

Maddalena (second in the program, but done first without warning --
fortunately, they call her by name several times) is similar to Korngold's
Violanta. In 15th-century Venice, two men fight over a woman, and kill each
other leaving her to gloat. Natalia Zagorinskaya looked stunning (think
Princess Di on steroids) and sang in a consistent, in fact, monotonous,
glamorous fortissimo that seems to be characteristic of the Russian
sopranos I've heard. Vadim Zaplechny as her abused husband looked and acted
like a silent movie star, and also sang powerfully, though much more
fluidly. The silent "She", platinum blonde in a tuxedo, was a cryptic
presence, doubling the singing Maddalena's action in chilly mode, and
eventually replacing her in the action. The real stars of this production
were the chorus of carnival maskers. They looked seriously sinister, with
masks both back and front so that you couldn't tell which way they were
really facing.

Mavra was done as an energetic folk-tale. Sergei Yakovlev was manic and
quite funny as the Hussar who drags up as a maid to get into his
girlfriend's house then gets caught shaving. The music was Italian-tinged,
but not pastiche, and I found it rather insubstantial, though it kept the
comedy moving.

Queen of Spades

Natalia Zagorinskaya    Lisa
Vadim Zaplechny         Herman
Igor Tarasev            Yeltsky
Elena Guschina          Countess
Sergei Kostuk           Tomsky

Director: Dmitry Bertman
Conductor Kiril Tikhonov

This is obviously a more chucky piece. I'd never seen it before, but I
understand it was cut rather roughly. The singers were again loud and
energetic, and Zaplechny was again impressive as Hermann.

The production had a single big idea. The whole action was a game of cards
in which the characters bet against each other and dropped out one by one.
Each had headgear to identify them with a card (Herman's was the Joker's
cap and bells), which they put on as they left. Lisa was inscrutable. The
Countess looked a bit like Joan Collins doing a cabaret turn and flashing
her legs at every opportunity. The aria in act II (er, the famous one with
the French in) she performed on a chair a la Ute Lemper. I found this very
effective: she's meant to be old, but  Herman is obsessed with her, and
making her effectively an "ageless" stage performer, who appears glamourous
but who we know is getting on and a bit rouee, seems exactly right. I
wonder if the director was thinking of EM. (The singer actually looked a
bit like Joan Collins, who is sixty-something but definitely attractive in
a slightly strange kind of way, but I think this was a co-incidence.)

Helikon is supposed to represent radical new opera-theatre in contrast to
the deeply traditional performances of the Bolshoi and Kirov. What I found
interesting about these productions was that they were thoroughly
entertaining and brought out the drama of the operas, and then found some
more. But all of them, and particularly Maddalena, were more than somewhat
like silent movies in style. I wonder if we're not looking at a revival of
the Max Rheinhardt tradition. Thinking theatrically rather than musically,
I hope they have a go at Strauss (maybe Ariadne). Zagoriskaya and Zaplechny
would blow the set away as Ariadne and Bacchus.

Regards,

Helen