|
|
Vladimir Lupovskoy / For MT
|
|
|
Russia's Gold Standard
The Golden Mask Festival opened Thursday, kicking off a three-week celebration of Russia's most outstanding drama, music and dance.
Lada Bakal reports.
By Lada Bakal
Published: March 28, 2008
The 14th Golden Mask Festival, Russia's national performing arts festival, opened on international Theater Day on Thursday. A record number of candidates are on the bill this year -- 136 nominees are up for 30 awards in the fields of drama, opera, ballet, contemporary dance and puppetry. Two juries -- dramatic and musical, headed respectively by scholar and critic Alexei Bartoshevich and composer Leonid Desyatnikov -- will spend over two weeks choosing the winners and will announce the results onstage at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater at the closing ceremony on Apr. 15.
The first winners have already been announced: Lifetime Achievement awards will be presented to St. Petersburg stage designer Mart Kitayev and ballerina Zaituna Nasretdinova, 85, from Ufa. Kitayev, who was born in Riga but has worked in Russia for over three decades, is known as a daring and unpredictable innovator, while Nasretdinova's performance in "Crane Song" inspired Rudolf Nureyev -- the late Russian ballet legend -- to take up ballet. The award for Best Foreign Production performed in Russia in 2007 will be given to the Canadian writer and director Robert LaPage for his remarkable one-man show, "Far Side of the Moon," which explores 1960s society against the background of the space race and was performed in Moscow last summer at the Chekhov International Theater Festival.
The most difficult task of all this year falls to the musical theater jury, which has 34 shows to watch. The scheduling demands of companies such as the Mariinsky Theater have meant that almost the entire ballet program took place before the start of the festival: Only the Bolshoi Theater's "Le Corsaire" and Boris Eifman's "The Seagull" remain to be seen.
The competition in the opera categories is fierce, but one work in particular stands out -- the Bolshoi's "Yevgeny Onegin," produced by Dmitry Chernyakov. This beautifully rounded reworking of Tchaikovsky's classic has divided opinion. Veteran singer Galina Vishnevskaya said she was "embarrassed" when she saw it, but others have acclaimed Chernyakov's work for the audacity of its radical revision. The production has gained much attention abroad and will open the 2008-9 season at the National Opera of Paris in September.
But it will face stiff competition. The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater's production of Claude Debussy's "Pelleas and Melisande" is musically excellent, if weak in its staging. The same company's "Onegin," the final work of the outstanding scene-designer David Borovsky, is also in contention.
Damir Yusupov / Bolshoi Theater Dmitry Chernyakov's "Yevgeny Onegin" has proved controversial, but is a top contender for the Best Opera Production Award. | | |
The Mariinsky's productions of "Elektra" and "Jenufa" are, as ever, innovative and two of the strongest contenders for Best Opera Production. The excellent staging of Richard Strauss's "Elektra" is particularly notable for Paul Brown's impressive set design and Larisa Gogolevskaya's striking vocal work. Leos Janacek's "Jenufa," with sparkling vocals by Irina Matayeva and Gogolevskaya, is a strong, thrilling story set to the beautiful music of the Czech composer's original redaction.
It is impossible to imagine a Golden Mask Festival without Teodor Currentzis and the Novosibirsk Opera. The charismatic young conductor has turned Novosibirsk into Russia's third opera center and in many ways molds the country's musical landscape. This year he will present "The Marriage of Figaro" and "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District," and, as always, he'll be a top contender for awards.
In the ballet section of the awards, variety is the key. There is something for all tastes, performed to a high standard: from little-known 20th-century classics such as Jerome Robbins's ballets to new foreign productions -- Edward Liang's "Whisper in the Darkness" -- to a pastiche of the old ballet "Le Reveil de Flore." When the Bolshoi's "Le Corsaire" and the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater's "The Seagull" in John Neumeier's production are added to the list, then, if there were any justice, every production would receive an award.
Of the nine ballets up for awards, six are one-act productions. Two of the contenders are feature-length ballets based on Chekhov's "The Seagull" (as well as Eifman's version, there is a production by John Neumeier at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater).
Vadim Lapin / Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater Dmitry Khamzin and Valeriya Mukhanova star in John Neumeier's production of "The Seagull." | | |
The drama program features theaters from throughout Russia, from Lev Erenburg's staging of "The Storm," performed by the Pushkin Drama Theater from Magnitogorsk, to "The Lonesome West," put on by Perm's U Mosta Theater. The Alexandrinsky Theater's "The Living Corpse," the Maly Drama Theater of Europe's "Life and Fate," the Satirikon Theater's "King Lear" and the Moscow Art Theater's "The Pillowman" are up for a number of awards.
The Alexandrinsky Theater will bring five performances to Moscow from St. Petersburg. Classic names, but in unusual interpretations: "Ivans," inspired by Gogol, Tolstoy's "The Living Corpse," Dostoevsky's "The Double" and Chekhov's "The Seagull." Andrei Moguchy's "Ivans" and Valery Fokin's "The Living Corpse" are in contention for the best small-scale and best large-scale awards, respectively. The rest are showing outside the competition. Moscow director Fokin has been reviving the former imperial theater for the past five years with great success, and "The Living Corpse" is a strong contender. "The Seagull," produced by the Polish director Kristian Lyupa, is unlike any other production of Chekhov -- among other unusual occurrences, Treplev does not shoot himself at the end.
Alongside the awards, a number of projects are running at the festival. "Legendary Productions of the 20th Century" features the work of Giorgio Strehler and the Piccolo Teatro di Milano "A Servant to Two Masters," which has visited Moscow twice. The production is already 60 years old, and its creator is long dead, but for more than 40 years the lead role has been played by the remarkable Ferruccio Soleri. He is more than 70 years old, but until he takes off his mask at the end of the performance, you'll be convinced that it's a strong twenty-something moving nimbly across the stage.
The Goldenmask.club program is aimed at younger audiences, and this year takes place at the club Gogol. From Mar. 27 to Apr. 12 there are three consecutive weeks of music, cinema and book presentations, with one week each devoted to France, Russia and Sweden. Prototypes, Rhesus and R. Wan (Java) from France will be playing, and Swedish music comes from Division of Laura Lee, Miss Li, Hoffmaestro & Chraa. Marimba Plus, Billy's Band, Simba Vibration from Russia are also on the bill. In previous years, the event was run at the Theater Center na Strastnom, but has moved to Gogol because of financial considerations.
And the festival does not finish at the closing ceremony. In May the Golden Mask will stage regional festivals in several Russian cities, and at the end of the month the Moscow fringe festival will take place, showing foreign and Russian alternative works. The directors of Golden Mask have also announced guest performances by the Maly Drama Theater of Europe, devoted to the anniversary of Lev Dodin's theater, which will take place in autumn.
See opposite for John Freedman's preview of drama productions at the Golden Mask Festival.
For complete information about Golden Mask Festival shows, times and venues, see the Calendar listings. www.goldenmask.ru. Tel. 755-8335.
Copyright © 2008 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
|
June 27 - July 3, 2008 
