So, 'Dubrovsky'. It actually turned out to be a very fine opera! Zero caveats. As a standalone thing a lot more harmonious than Tchaikovsky's 'Oprichnik' for instance: great melodies, superb choral scenes, nice pace with no lapces... I don't know about Napravnick's other 3 (though I'm forever interested in anything called 'Francesca da Rimini' - I love Paolo and Francesca story for operas and as far as I know we don't have an ultimate one yet! But I digress as usual) I'd love to hear this one again as a full fledged performance and not just as a concert! However that's the thing with the less popular Russian items - you're usually stuck with a couple (or in this case even one! albeit with Lemeshev in the main part) old recordings and maybe a black-and-white film made sometime after the war... Sigh. On today's performance, I can tell you it was good. Solidly, confidently good. Mariinsky's young blood did most of both heavy and light lifting) And they did a great job. My biggest kind of almost dissapointment today was bass Andrey Serov, who sang the old Dubrovsky-father - a small poignant role - he dies at the very beginning to provide a real push for the plot - and a lot of hollow rumble from the singer... Not cool. Though he does plenty of acting - even when he sings in a concert... I just wish they would discuss it and decide on a kind of a common aproach between all the soloists on stage. Because it's weird when one guy is like all in, while two guys next to him are both like 'nope - park and bark'! Also, they didn't have any surtitles tonight - neither in Russian nor in English - so the performers were really left alone with the text and their respective dictions, however good or bad. I was pleasantly surprised by the way - for the most part I didn't even had 'there should be surtitles' thought at the back of my mind. Second from worst was the main character - Vladimir Dubrovsky sung by Dmitriy Voropaev. Unfortunatelly, as he has some seriously nice music and a lot of it actually... Well, I love these consert performances - Mariinsky covers a lot of less well-known and obvious stuff this way, so I get Voropaev a lot as he does the main tenor parts in most of those with only occasional detours onto two main stages. I've probably heard him more than any other tenor and I respect and admire all the hard work he clearly puts into learning and performing all of this ginormous repertoire. But something's missing. Sigh. At times his voice today hasn't cut through the orchestra and it's a small hall - 300 something seats... and altogether the timbre is not 'wow please don't stop singing'. But once again lots of work evidently so I'm really torn. Everyone else was great - all other males -several basses and baritones - they had 12 soloists in the first half! I can't even tell who was the best - the smith Arkhip or the villain Troekurov (sung by Yaroslav Petrenyk) or maybe uriadnik... On the female side - I really liked Ekaterina Latusheva's Masha. It was my second time hearing her and she didn't dissapoint! Maybe a couple of not so good notes during the most dramatic bits but in lyrical ones she truly excelled! Both servant ladies were great as well - deep, rich but two very different voices! Ok, now I'm going to stop talking and if I've gotten anybody curious here is the above mentioned black-and-white movie:
P.S. Also another ‘Aida’ ahead. But Ekaterina Semenchuk is singing Amneris, so how could I say no?
