Successful production of Rimas Tuminas at the Bolshoi Theater

MOSCOW. The Bolshoi Theater hosted the premiere of Katerina Izmaylova directed by Rimas Tuminas.

The proposal to put Katerina Izmaylova at the Bolshoi was a test for Rimas Tuminas, which he successfully managed. Fears about the lack of experience in the opera house were in vain. The successful, in the unanimous opinion, production of Shostakovich’s opera demonstrated confident and delicate handling of musical and dramatic material and correctly placed accents. At some stage of the work, Tuminas assumed the possibility of minor material reductions, but received a polite refusal of the widow of Dmitry Dmitrievich, referring to the composer’s will, in which he warned about the inadmissibility of any amendments.

For staging by the leadership of the theater, the second edition of the long-suffering opera was chosen. Shostakovich was forced to alter it after visiting the performance by the father of the peoples and his entourage. And it began. While “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk Uyezd” (the original name of “Katerina Izmailova”) was triumphant in the best theaters in the world, in her native country she was subjected to severe criticism and prohibitions. In the article “A Muddle Instead of Music,” initiated by the Central Committee, operas were nailed by ruthless epithets: Meyerhold, cacophony, leftist confusion, borrowing the fit style of music from jazz. In the second edition, the changes affected not only the musical part, but also the libretto. Only after that, in the early 60s, the opera was allowed to return to the Soviet stage.

The muffled "physiological" component in this version allowed Tuminas to more clearly highlight the philosophical depth and layering of the work. The desire to break out of hopelessness leads to disaster. The theme of freedom, relevant to Russia at any time, the desire for it and the inevitable collapse, has become the cross-cutting theme of the production of the Lithuanian director. The ruthless swamp tenaciously holds permanent inhabitants and deals with strangers. Therefore, the choice of foreign performers for the roles of Katerina and Sergey is so appropriate. The German accent of the performer of the title role Nadia Michael, her “alien” appearance cry out about Katerina’s foreignness, the impossibility of free nature to fit into the Procrustean bed of the ossified patriarchal life. The sources of cruelty of the heroes, according to Tuminas, are inherited, in the foundations laid down by the ancestors and from time to time requiring new victims.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru