Aleksandra Sennikova / Reviżjonijiet

"Love for China in the play was fantastically synthesized with admiration for Mozart's music and admiration for the Rococo style." The first review of the premiere was published by Moskovsky Komsomolets. The Mikhailovsky Theater staged "Marriage of Figaro" with elements of martial arts plot of Beaumarchais, Mozart made Chinese Chinoiserie ... Translated - "kitayschina". It was this style that director Vyacheslav Starodubtsev applied in his production of The Wedding of Figaro by Mozart. Boldly? Quite. Suddenly? Very. Is it funny? Undoubtedly. And somehow so easy, fun, paradoxical, beautiful. In a word, in Mozart's way ... Well, or almost ... The overture captivated me from the first bar - with a really fast pace, “correct” Mozart sound and intra-orchestral balance, possible only with a chamber composition of strings, purity and intonation accuracy of sound. The young conductor Ivan Velikanov took up the concept of the musical director of the production, Mikhail Tatarnikov, almost without losing it. Why "almost"? Looking ahead, we will have to admit that not all the singers “kept up” with the tempos taken: someone sacrificed timbre, someone lacked virtuosity. However, all these losses did not destroy the general tone and level, which can be characterized as follows: "briskly, curly, in love." On the whole, the artists performed their roles quite decently and evenly in terms of vocals and very merrily and artistically in terms of dramatic performance. Boris Pinkhasovich (Almaviva), Maria Buinosova (Countess), Svetlana Moskalenko (Suzanne), Sofia Fainberg (Cherubino), Alexander Bezrukov (Figaro) - they were all in their place, and in some episodes Pinkhasovich and Buinosov made the listeners completely immerse themselves in the pleasure of beautiful singing. A detailed study of the character, his behavior, plasticity, existence in a duet and an ensemble is Starodubtsev's signature technique, who did not learn from Dmitry Bertman for nothing. The heroes of The Wedding of Figaro are quite lively people with a great sense of humor, well, perhaps too much addicted to excessive love for China. who did not study with Dmitry Bertman in vain. The heroes of The Wedding of Figaro are quite lively people with a great sense of humor, well, perhaps too much addicted to excessive love for China. who did not study with Dmitry Bertman in vain. The heroes of The Wedding of Figaro are quite lively people with a great sense of humor, well, perhaps too much addicted to excessive love for China. Love for China in this performance was fantastically synthesized with admiration for Mozart's music and admiration for the Rococo style. Artists Pyotr Okunev (scenography) and Vadim Dulenko (video) created a world filled with the shell excesses of a French palace of the 17th – 18th centuries, decorated with flowers, birds, ornaments and dragons of traditional China. Well, what the costume designer Zhanna Usacheva did in this performance should be discussed at a special workshop for designers. The artist weaved together European powdered wigs and Chinese braids, ruffles and neckline with bell sleeves and wide belts, fluffy whipped hairstyles with Asian long pins, whitewashed faces, fashionable in the era of Madame Pompadour, with the coloring of Chinese beauties of the Song dynasty, and all this is so organic, and all this is so organic that suddenly you begin to realize the eternal truth: So the wedding ritual for Figaro and Suzanne was carried out in the Chinese spirit - with an abundance of peach and plum flowers, from which Basilio (Dmitry Karpov) was seriously allergic. The extras demonstrated elements of Chinese martial arts, and Count Almaviva, in a fit of remorse, almost made himself hara-kiri. True, this is a Japanese tradition, but nothing - here it is quite appropriate. The impulse for "enveloping" the Beaumarchais-Mozart plot was the actual fact of fashion for everything Chinese. Even in the palaces of Peter the Great there were "Chinese rooms". The fact that this impulse has grown so dashingly and entangled the entire performance is, of course, nothing more than the arbitrariness of the directors. But they absolutely do not want to blame them for this: after all, this technique did not encroach on the meaning, or on the history, or on the characters of the heroes, or on the reading of the score. Only gave more humor, freshness, dynamics, lightness, beauty, youth - all that is in this opera initially.