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[Met Performance] CID:350257

Metropolitan Opera Premiere, New Production

War and Peace
Metropolitan Opera House, Thu, February 14, 2002

Debut : Anna Netrebko, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Oleg Balashov, Frank Dellapolla, Sergey Murzaev, Evgeny Nikitin, Mzia Nioradze, Trevor Kaplan-Newman, Christopher Dumont, Mikhail Petrenko, Roy Stevens, Stefan Szkafarowsky, Peter Volpe, Leonid Lyubavin, Warren Adams, Kelly Ebsary, Gints Berzins, Craig Hart, Robert Baker, Steven Tharp, Andrei Konchalovsky, Tatiana Noginova, Elaine McCarthy, Eugene Monakhov







Performance interrupted briefly in last scene when a super jumped into the orchestra pit. Before the final curtain calls, Joseph Volpe announced that the super was unhurt
Co-production with the Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, Russia
War and Peace received ten performances this season.
Note: Evgeny Nikitin was billed as Evgenij Nikitin until 3/1/07.
Production photos of War and Peace by Winnie Klotz / Metropolitan Opera.
Chapter: Early Attempts to stage War and Peace at the Met.
Evgeny Nikitin was billed as Evgenij Nikitin until 3/1/07.
Chapter

Review 1:

Review of John W. Freeman in OPERA NEWS

Although a special event, Prokofiev's epic "War and Peace" took the Metropolitan Opera by storm. Though performed more often than its scope and difficulty would seem to permit, Prokofiev's "War and Peace" will always be a special event, like a complete "Ring" cycle, in the international repertory. New to the Met's repertory, the work appeared on the Met stage in previous productions by the visiting Bolshoi Theater in 1975 and English National Opera in 1984. This coproduction with the Mariinsky Theater opened in St. Petersburg in 2000; it opened in New York on February 14.

Prokofiev's score, an outgrowth of his experience in ballet and film as well as his other operas, combines effusive lyricism with subtle characterization, running full range from delicate introspection to jingoistic jubilation. Its libretto. fashioned by the composer and his common-law wife Mira Mendelson, compresses Tolstoy's novel drastically, yet there are still sixty-eight roles, divided at the Met among fifty-two singers. For the extensive public scenes, the Met uses a chorus of 120, forty-one dancers and 227 supers, plus a horse and several other animals.

Filling a stage with hundreds of people, however, could result in nothing but a crowded stage, like a high-school graduation ceremony. That this didn't happen is a credit to director Andrei Konchalovsky (Met debut) and his four busy assistants, as well as to choreographer Sergei Gritsai (another house debut).

Their efforts were both expedited and impeded by George Tsypin's ambitiously conceived stage, a dome-shaped semicircular spin-off from the Bayreuth world disk. (There's still plenty of mileage left in this half-century old innovation of Wieland Wagner's.) But Tyspins version suffers from steepness and height. The designer used it as a hill, bridge or redoubt in the second, "War," half of the opera. Everyone had to step carefully and in the finale a retreating French grenadier slipped off into the orchestra pit, where he was caught by a safety net. This briefly stopped the performance. During curtain calls, general manager Joseph Volpe brought the man onstage, reassuring the audience that he was all right.

Tsypin designed the rest of the picture as if for a ballet, limiting broad imagery to the cyclorama, where Elaine McCarthy (new to the Met) supplied projections of scudding clouds, a Moscow skyline, [and] smoke and flames from the burning city. Against this changing background, Tsypin suspended pieces of architectural scenery and arranged a few small, quickly removed, realistic props. This system permitted fluid transitions among the opera's thirteen scenes. By leaving the stage mostly open, it allowed for crowds and movement. It had two dampening effects: one on the intimate scenes, which looked lost, the other on the soloists' ability to project voice and character, perched as they were high on the ramp, far from the audience, without acoustical support from built scenery.

The one element that fit Tsypin's concept equally comfortably in Parts I and II was the costuming by the Kirov's Tatiana Noginova. In her Met debut, she anchored the generalities of the stage framework with an imaginative authenticity and energetic variety that made the period come alive, focusing the episodes in a time and place more specific than what one saw in the sets.

In other respects, Tsypin's vision suited Part I, "Peace," less comfortably than Part II. The [beginning] scene takes place in May - too early for the White Nights, perhaps, but too late in the year for the inky, starry sky that negated the characters' descriptions of springtime and nature. In a quick transition, translucent columns, lit from within (a 1940s Hollywood touch), descended to suggest, rather than define, the ballroom for Scene 2. The dancing mostly choreographic, rather than ballroom dancing - felt as distant as it looked. In Scene 3, the contrast of the stuffy, confined Bolkonsky drawing room could only be imagined, not felt. Scene 4, a reprise of the party atmosphere, added a boudoir mirror in the middle of the dance floor, a symbol of vanity and duplicity. The remaining three scenes of Part I worked more effectively, either by playing closer to the audience (in Lt. Dolokhov's apartment) or by expanding the furnished playing area to allow more movement.

In Part II, with the action outdoors and the scenery turned realistic, the breadth of the stage felt more natural. The nervous rallying of the troops on both sides, criss-crossing with banners, matched up with the sights and sounds of battle. At last the sky showed daylight. There was no falling back on the static, May Day cantata style of Socialist realism for choral scenes. The opera made its point: eventual success depends on a coalition. The Russian military, trained and uniformed much like Napoleon's, drew support from the civilian population, which improvised its own campaign against the invaders.

At the head of this endeavor stood an unlikely hero, Marshal Kutuzov, himself no longer in great shape physically, but possessed of both military savvy and peasant shrewdness. Samuel Ramey, who has usually played strongmen in opera, gave this character its more interesting dimension. He acted the role with some signs of weakness and faltering, causing concern that Kutuzov might not be up to the job; but during his big monologue, his voice grew in determination and conviction, overcoming its own initial hints of hesitancy. A touching moment was his meeting and immediate mutuality with Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, an officer from a social background opposite to his own. While war is an abomination, Tolstoy's novel tells us, it does bring people together in awareness of what's important.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky's fluent nobility of sound suited Prince Andrei as perfectly as his tall physique. The baritone built this character from early stirrings of self- awareness (the nocturnal musings of Scene 1) to a death scene in which his initial vision of Natasha materializes again from fragments of consciousness, much as Tolstoy described. Possessed of a dramatic voice and powerful legato, Hvorostovsky also has a remarkable capacity for registering degrees, for finding the musical equivalent of "le mot juste." During the death scene, director Konchalovsky gave Andrei a hallucinatory rise from his hospital bed to reenact his first waltz with Natasha. While this seemed dramatically questionable, it did illuminate Prokofiev's reasons for writing such a dreamy, distant, unreal waltz in the first place.

Anna Netrebko, slim, radiant and fresh-voiced, is a lighter-weight Natasha than the usual spinto soprano, but her lines carried with clarity and assurance, while she acted with an easy blend of näiveté and youthful impetuosity in her Met debut. After a bad reception by Andrei's relatives (Scene 3), she was off balance and susceptible to her would-be seducer, Anatol Kuragin. In that role, Oleg Balashov (Met debut) conveyed a volatility and impulsiveness that dangerously ignited hers. In subsequent scenes with fellow officers and with Anatol's brother-in-law, Count Pierre Bezukhov, the tenor probed his character's shallow depths for further traces of instability and cowardice - no small achievement for so brief a role.

Tenor Gegam Grigorian made the most of Pierre's sympathetic nature. To him belongs a memorable line, delivered in disgust at the social whirl around his scheming wife, Helene. (blowsy, full-throated Victoria Livengood): "The only value of such a life lies in the pleasure of giving it up." Pierre's decency, his thoughtfulness and concern, came through in Grigorian's measured delivery and temperate acting. Vassily Gerello's studiously deranged Napoleon, on the other hand, showed how a corrosive mixture of idealistic theory and military genius could dehumanize life, reducing it to a chess game. There were numerous other vivid characterizations - Vladimir Ognovenko's crusty Bolkonsky père, Elena Obraztsova's hoarsely indignant Mme. Akhrosimova, Ekaterina Semenchuk's Met debut as a gentle Sonya, Nikolai Gassiev's patiently philosophical Platon Karatayev. As the list of cast members grew longer, their roles grew shorter. The ensemble, uniform in its readiness, dealt fairly with all these assignments.

Valery Gergiev, a solid advocate for Prokofiev's operas, dug his hands into the score, bringing out its glinting details as well as its sprawling grandeur. Because of the staging - the height and distance of the chorus from the stage apron in the first ballroom scene, for example - and the characters' frequently insecure footing, it wasn't always possible to maintain close coordination. But choristers and orchestra players alike put their backs into it, lifting the mighty apparatus until it soared. There were times when less might have been more, but this mass effort was every bit the sum of its parts.

Review 2:

Program Notes by Peter Clark
Early attempts to stage War and Peace at the Met

The Metropolitan Opera premiere of Prokofiev’s War and Peace took place on February 14, 2002, in a co-production that originated at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre on March 11, 2000. A little known fact is that the Met had planned to perform War and Peace as early as the 1943-44 season. The first published version of the opera appeared in Russia in 1943. The correspondence of Edward Johnson, general manager of the Met at the time, contains a letter of May, 1943, that states, "The Editors of Prokofieff’s ‘War and Peace’ assure us that this new work of the Russian composer will be available for next season, but advise us also that it may not be produced until it has appeared in Russia." A Bolshoi premiere in 1943-44 was in the works, and, at the suggestion of Amrus [the publishers in the U.S.], the Met cabled Moscow in September 1943, pleading for the orchestra score and materials to be sent in hopes of staging the work later that same season. The terse reply from Maxim Litvinow at the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs was "Problem outside my province but am informed that composer wishes opera performed first in Moscow and Amrus should know it regards". The opera at this stage was composed in eleven scenes and a choral epigraph. It was performed only incomplete and in concert version in Moscow, and not until 1944 (seven scenes) and 1945 (nine scenes).

The Met had not given up hope, however. Johnson brought up the possibility of performing War and Peace at a press conference before the 1945-46 season, stating that the score was on its way. Something must have arrived because a couple of excerpts were performed in New York at the American-Soviet Cultural Cooperation conference in late 1945. But by March of 1946 problems persisted. The intention had always been to do the opera in English, and no good translation existed. The score had now been revised and expanded to thirteen scenes and would, supposedly, need to be presented in two evenings. This was very awkward for the Met’s subscription schedule. Also the publisher’s royalty was initially more than the Met wanted to pay, and the post-war material shortages made the construction of so much scenery difficult.

Some of these problems were overcome, and in December 1946, the Met finally secured performance rights for War and Peace. Yet, a month later the Met board minutes reflect new problems because "the artistic branch of the Soviet Government had suddenly become cautious about the dangers of presenting this great Russian work without adequate preparation." Meanwhile the first "Peace" half (eight scenes) of the work had been premiered with considerable success at Leningrad’s Maly Theatre. The second "War" half was being prepared for performance there later in 1947. After a dress rehearsal in July, however, the authorities blocked its performance. The artistic atmosphere had been growing steadily more repressive in 1946 and ‘47, and clearly the government was "cautious" about more than "adequate preparation." Prokofiev revised the work again deleting the two scenes, nine and eleven, that were most problematic with the censors, as well as the epigraph and scene seven. His efforts were to no avail. Prokofiev was officially denounced by the Soviet government in February 1948, along with Shostakovich and Khatchaturian, and would never see War and Peace performed in its entirety.

Back at the Met, discussions continued about producing War and Peace. In October 1947, Johnson and the board’s production committee decided to try and perform the opera in concert by the end of the 1947-48 season. The Met’s financial position was precarious, and a new production of the Ring cycle was putting a considerable burden on available funds. When the production committee met again in February 1948, a budget analysis showed only $8,000 available for War and Peace. A press release went out stating that the Prokofiev opera would be performed early in the 1948-49 season, with exact date and cast to be announced. The Soviets’ denunciation of their greatest composers had caused an uproar of protest in the West. In reporting the Met’s plans The New York Times felt compelled to point out "No political considerations, it was said authoritatively, were involved in the initial decision to do the opera or in yesterday’s announced reaffirmation that it would be presented as soon as all the artistic problems were met."

The Met finally gave the project up in October 1948, the board minutes noting that "inasmuch as the materials necessary had not been furnished in a usable form, and that it would be impossible even if they were so furnished to prepare and mount the opera this season either in a concert version or otherwise." Prokofiev continued to revise the score until 1952, ultimately returning to the thirteen scene plan. He died in March 1953. The final, published version reflects his last revisions, and was finally performed, with many cuts, in 1955 at the Maly Theatre (eleven scenes), at the Stanislavsky -Nemirovich-Dachenko Theatre, Moscow (thirteen scenes) in 1957, and finally, more or less complete, at the Bolshoi in 1959.

The Bolshoi brought its production of War and Peace to the Metropolitan in 1975, under the baton of Mark Ermler. The English National Opera performed it in English during its Met engagement in June 1984.

The musical style of War and Peace is quite different from that of The Gambler, Prokofiev’s opera composed between 1915 and 1917, and premiered at the Met last season. Whereas The Gambler was strictly through-composed in an attempt to render the dialogue as close as possible to a play in music, War and Peace includes melodic lyricism, heroic and genre elements, and a more "classical" operatic approach. In his article on Prokofiev for The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Richard Taruskin writes: "Despite all vicissitudes, then, Prokofiev’s Soviet operas do not necessarily represent an unmitigated stylistic impoverishment. Setting War and Peace, by now a repertory item, alongside The Gambler, or especially The Fiery Angel, one can see the modifications he made in his methods and resources in response to external demands as introducing a new versatility into his operatic technique, legitimately enriching what had been a rather dogmatic and one-sided approach to musical drama."

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Met careers

• Valery Gergiev [Conductor]
• Dmitri Hvorostovsky [Prince Andrei Bolkonsky]
• Anna Netrebko [Natasha Rostova]
• Ekaterina Semenchuk [Sonya]
• Elena Obraztsova [Madame Akhrosimova]
• Claudia Waite [Madame Peronskaya/Shopkeeper]
• John Cheek [Count Ilya Rostov]
• Victoria Livengood [Hélène Bezukhova]
• Gegam Grigorian [Count Pierre Bezukhov]
• Oleg Balashov [Prince Anatol Kuragin]
• Frank Dellapolla [Czar Alexander I]
• Delores Ziegler [Maria Bolkonskaya]
• Vladimir Ognovenko [Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky/Matveyev]
• Samuel Ramey [Field Marshal Kutuzov]
• Vassily Gerello [Napoleon Bonaparte]
• Sergey Murzaev [Colonel Vaska Denisov]
• Evgeny Nikitin [Lieutenant Dolokhov]
• Sergei Koptchak [Balaga/General Bennigsen]
• Mzia Nioradze [Matryosha/Mavra Kuzminichna]
• Haijing Fu [Métivier/General Rayevsky]
• Gary Rideout [Fyodor]
• Trevor Kaplan-Newman [Trishka]
• Edward Crafts [Marshal Berthier]
• Christopher Dumont [Marshal Caulaincourt]
• Mikhail Petrenko [Marshal Davout/Tikhon Shcherbaty/Valet]
• Roy Stevens [General Belliard]
• Iosef Shalamayev [General Barclay de Tolly]
• Stefan Szkafarowsky [General Yermolov/French Officer]
• Ronald Naldi [General Konovnitsin/Adjutant/Footman]
• James Courtney [Captain Ramballe]
• Peter Volpe [Captain Jacqeau]
• Bernard Fitch [Lieutenant Bonnet]
• Vladimir Grishko [Gérard]
• Leonid Lyubavin [Monsieur de Beausset/Host/French Abbé]
• Rachel Schuette [Columbine]
• Warren Adams [Harlequin]
• Kelly Ebsary [Character Ballerina]
• Jane Shaulis [Housemaid]
• Gints Berzins [Joseph]
• Philip Cokorinos [Gavrila]
• Marjorie Elinor Dix [Dunyasha]
• Charles Reid [Orderly]
• Craig Hart [German General/Madman]
• Vaclovas Daunoras [German General/Lackey]
• Robert Baker [Staff Officer]
• Richard Vernon [Staff Officer]
• LeRoy Lehr [Adjutant]
• Dennis Petersen [Adjutant/Ivanov]
• Maria Zifchak [Adjutant]
• Emmanuel di Villarosa [Offstage Voice]
• John Fiorito [Offstage Voice]
• Steven Tharp [Factory Worker]
• Nikolai Gassiev [Platon Karatayev]
• Michael Forest [Madman]
• Janet Hopkins [Actress]
• Beverly O'Regan Thiele [Actress]
• Andrei Konchalovsky [Production]
• George Tsypin [Set Designer]
• Tatiana Noginova [Costume Designer]
• James F. Ingalls [Lighting Designer]
• Elaine McCarthy [Projection Designer]
• Eugene Monakhov [Associate Set Designer]
• Sergei Gritsai [Choreographer]