Desyatnikov Children of Rosenthal Vedernikov
DESYATNIKOV
The Children of Rosenthal
Alexander
Vedernikov, cond; Pyotr Migunov (Rosenthal);
Kristina Mkhitaryan (Tanya); Irina
Rubtsova (Nanny); Elena Manistina (Wagner); Maxim Paster (Tchaikovsky); Vsevolod Grivnov (Mozart); Vassily Ladyuk (Verdi); Alexander Teliga (Mussorgsky); Bolshoi Theater Chorus and
Orchestra MELODIYA
10 02432 (2 CDs: 119:28)
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Leonid Desyatnikov’s opera caused a stir in Moscow
when it was premiered at the Bolshoi in 2005. Protests by a pro-Putin youth organization
took place outside the opera house, and an obscenity case was brought before
the Duma. The controversy centered on the choice of librettist, Vladimir
Sorokin, a novelist with a reputation for presenting historical figures in compromising,
and often pornographic, scenarios. In post-Soviet Russia, the nation’s
20th-century history is still a sensitive topic, and radical re-interpretations
stir strong emotions.
The Duma investigation soon fizzled out—it turned out Sorokin’s
libretto wasn’t as pornographic as his opponents were expecting. It is just as Postmodern
though, and proves an ideal fit for Desyatnikov, a composer with similar
interests in resurrecting (literally in this case) and radically reinterpreting
the past. The opera was a commission from the Bolshoi, the first, and still
only, new work by the company since the fall of the Soviet system. But given
the changes in Russian society and culture in those years it could hardly be
more timely, presenting modern Moscow as city of confused identity, still
clinging to outmoded ideas about its past, even as they become tenuous to the
point of absurdity.
The plot centers around a genetic scientist called
Alex Rosenthal. He arrives in Soviet Russia as a Jewish refugee from Nazi
Germany, already having mastered a technique of human cloning. The reasons for
his Jewish identity are not clear (to me at least), but the approval by the
Soviet authorities of his research is more germane to the satire. As the story
opens, he has already cloned Wagner (a mezzo voice here, Elena Manistina),
Tchaikovsky, Verdi, and Mussorgsky, and is in the process of cloning Mozart.
The actual opening of the first scene is an impressive coup de theatre, with an eerily amplified voice telling the
audience to switch off their mobile phones before giving the background and
presenting the laboratory scene. All the actual cloning procedures are
presenting in suitably sinister mood: Desyatnikov’s polystylism dominates most
of the opera, but he is a Minimalist too, and ominously churning repeated
figures in the orchestra underpin these opening scenes.
The story then follows the adventures of Rosenthal and
his “children” through the Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras, with both presidents
making cameo appearances. Eventually, with the fall of the Soviet system,
Rosenthal loses his funding and soon dies. The orphaned clones are thrown out
onto the streets, and the final act takes place in Moscow’s Komsomolskaya
Square, a famously run-down area with the city’s four main terminus stations in
close proximity. The five cloned composers are now living rough and busking for
a living. Mozart falls in love with a prostitute named Tanya (Kristina
Mkhitaryan), and the heroes’ efforts to buy off her pimp, Kela (Boris
Statsenko), result in their all being poisoned. Only Mozart survives, and the
final epilogue is a hallucination sequence, in which the four other clones return
to sing in his dreams.
There is obviously much subtle satire of modern Russia
that is lost on me, and probably on most other Western listeners too, but the
musical pastiche and commentary is much easier to engage with. Just flicking
through the synopsis, we find all sorts of allusions to the operas of the five
composers, for example, act I, scene 2 opens with a number titled “Schlafst du,
Wagner, mein Sohn?” Desyatnikov divides the work into sections referencing the
styles of Wagner, Mussorgsky, Verdi, and Tchaikovsky. He plays a subtle game of
stylistic allusion, never including any direct quotes, but often getting so
close in style that the notes seem to match up with the originals. So, in the
Mussorgsky section, Orthodox chant is sung by the chorus in the weighty,
emphatic style of Boris Godunov, and,
in the Wagner section, motifs that sound like they should be in the Ring cycle, but aren’t, regularly appear
in the orchestra. The fact that the four referenced composers are almost
contemporaneous means that a more generalized late-Romantic operatic style
predominates, creating valuable, if slightly paradoxical, continuity across the
work. But Desyatinkov often reminds us that this is not neo-Romanticism, as
such, particularly in the way that he structures climaxes, his Minimalist
techniques returning to the fore, with repeated lines accreting to increasingly
chaotic and dissonant tuttis.
Performance-wise, this is an impressive release. The
recording was made in 2015, presumably live and on the Bolshoi’s huge main
stage, resulting in the voices sometimes sounding distant. Balance is good
though, between stage and pit, with the voices always clear. Diction is good
too, and Desyatnikov’s relatively straightforward word setting allows the text
to come across clearly. The cast is presumably drawn from the Bolshoi company,
and all prove equal to the music’s challenges. In fact, the generally
late-Romantic sound here, combined with the composer’s obvious care in writing sympathetically
for the voices, makes this seem like a straightforward sing, at least for
contemporary opera, although that might be deceptive. Conductor Vladimir
Vedernikov finds a good balance between dynamism and clarity, and, even without
the visuals, the listening experience is one of being carried along from one aural
scenario to the next.
Melodiya have produced an impressive package for this
release, suggesting they are anticipating a high profile for it. The two discs
come in a hard-back CD-box sized book, that also includes the libretto in
Russian (Cyrillic) and English. They are not side by side, sadly, and, although
the tracking on the two discs is generous (17 and 20 respectively), the track
numbers are not included in either libretto.
But these are small qualms for what is otherwise an
impressive release. Hopefully a video of the production is also in the works.
This opera is obviously as innovative in its stagecraft as it is in its music,
and, given the specifically Russian focus of much of the satire, it is
difficult to imagine a Western production at any point in the near future.
Post-Soviet Russian music is a confusing field, led by composers with an
increasingly philosophical and abstract approach to their art. Leonid
Desyatnikov is as theoretical and abstract as they come, but don’t let that put
you off this opera, which is surprisingly accessible and endlessly intriguing,
at least to these Western ears.
This review
appears in Fanfare magazine issue 40:3
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