среда, 18 февраля 2009 г.

Lucia di Lammermoor - Stanislavsky



Unfortunately, I was late for the show, and only managed to hear and see the second act (which was played without intremission together with the first) and the third act. Overall, I really liked the show, which I found to be one of the best Lucia stagings I've seen. The sets, costumes and directing are so stylish, modern, however flirting beautifully with the classical productions. From that point of view, it's one of the better opera produtions seen recently in Moscow.

Musically, the show was OK. Quite average, with several high points. The problem, though, is that it wasn't extraordinary, as one always expect from Lucia's performance. Basically, the issue was with a very average performance by Hibla Gerzmava. She has a beautiful voice, hits all the right notes, even at the right time, but without any coloring, any emotions and definitely no madness. The main reason anyone goes to the performance of Lucia is to hear the vocal extravaganza called the "Madness scene" (or something like it). Most of the people hearing this show for the first time had no idea that this was the central point of the show. They’ve just ignored it, since Gerzmava did not give them any reasons to get excited.

So we got a strange situation that the best impression was left by Edgardo (Dolgov). He did outshine Lucia by far, maybe not by singing perfectly, but by showing emotions and energy and dominating his scenes with such an ease, that the audience was captivated immediately.

Wolf Gorelik, is one of those conductors theatre uses, when they believe that the score is so simple to play, that you don't even need a conductor, it just plays itself. Theatre in such case doesn't care, it is the cheapest option around, and so you give him the score to conduct. As the result you get a very simple and bleak performance of Lucia. Actually, I've also believed that it was impossible to screw up the music of Lucia. Gorelik didn't do just that, but made it sound quite uninteresting.

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