The West has been known for some time for its inane opera productions. The trick is to ignore called-for locales and stated stage directions in every conceivable and inconceivable way, and thus keep mindless or ignorant audiences awestruck, while getting egomaniacal directors hailed as geniuses. Until recently the East tended to lag behind, sticking to conventional mountings that, though often pedestrian, made sense; now westward-mobile, its productions, instead of dragging their feet, are proudly putting their foot in it with the west of them.
The Kirov Opera of the Mariinsky Theatre–an awkward moniker combining the company?s imperial and communist names–and its artistic director and chief conductor Valery Gergiev, brought over six productions from St. Petersburg, a major logistic, if not necessarily artistic, achievement. One of them, a mere concert version of The Demon by Anton Rubinstein, the one sporadic survivor of his nineteen operas, I chose to skip. The overarching impression produced by the five others was that the Russian singers are generally good, the orchestra (though sometimes driven too hard and loud by Gergiev) apt, and the chorus, in a grand Russian tradition, consistently compelling.
On the debit side, however, the direction was always poor or worse; the sets were, with one opera?s exception, senseless and appalling; costumes and lighting varied greatly. But thanks to the incompetence or cowardice of the reviewers and the ignorance or lack of taste of the public, all but the disastrous Verdi Macbeth were received with critical flattery and orgiastic audience acclaim.
