Poor Tchaikovsky, poor Tatyana

The “Russian soul is a mystery” (for other cultures). What a stereotype! But sometimes listening to foreign singers performing vocals for Russian chamber music or operas; I think that not only the soul, but Russian music as well is a mystery to them.

That thought hit me yesterday evening at the opening of International classic music festival, “Kharkov assembly” (http://www.city.kharkov.ua/en/news/festival-harkivski-asambleyi-startuye-30-veresnya-9804.html ) which is celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year. It took place it the small hall of the Kharkov Opera and Ballet Theatre. The status of “international” requires inviting guests from abroad, who come here right before the festival and perform with the local orchestra. It’s usually a great risk because they have a couple (or even less) rehearsals with a new conductor or singer, or both a new conductor and singer which is worse, and right after have to go on stage. They basically have no time to become perfectly coordinated and arrange some necessary “teamwork”. This is a good excuse for all the weak parts in the concert program, but sometimes even this doesn’t work. I want to tell only about one piece, which made me unenthusiastic about the musicians.

So, there were three foreigners in: one in the orchestra, the conductor from UK, and the soprano from UK (let’s do without naming names). Also, there was the scene of Tatyana’s letter from “Eugene Onegin” (Yevgeniy Onegin) by Tchaikovsky, of course, based on Pushkin’s “novel in verse”.

It went wrong almost from the beginning. The orchestra started properly, in active tempo, but the heavy voice of the soprano wasn’t able to handle it. Apparently, it’s either a weariness of 30 years on the stage or too much experience that made itself manifest. She didn’t even sound close to the “18 year old Tatyana” experiencing her first strong emotions (I know it’s not tactful to mention a female performer's age in a review, beg my pardon).

So conductor got all confused and slowed the instrumentalists down. The first part of the scene of Tatyana’s letter is the fastest and consequently tempo started getting slower and slower and finally reached the point where it was almost unbearable and you could hear all motives of each instrument of orchestra and all their roughness (affected by the lack of rehearsing) which would have been unnoticeable if they had played livelier. Once the soprano finished, the conductor let the instrumentalists play the coda in normal tempo which couldn’t be considered normal anymore because the plan for the whole scene got messed up.

Usually the audience complains about the horrible accent of foreign performers singing in Russian, but it appeared to be the less significant of the problems in this situation.

Sighs of relief and loud applause appeared after this short, but what seemed quite longer disaster. If I were a good girl, instead of all these words I would say: “We heard a new interpretation of the image of Tatyana performed by English singer, marked by deep thoughtful work on intonation, original tempo and dramaturgical plan”. And I will very much likely write it soon but in a different place, in a different language.

Posted by Helen