Organization

Singer

Janina Baechle

Anna Akhmatova

Michael König

Lev Goumilev

Lionel Peintre

Pounine

Varduhi Abrahamyan

Lydia Tchoukovskaïa

Valérie Condoluci

Faina Ranevskaïa

Christophe Dumaux

Le Représentant de L'Union des écrivains

Conductor

Pascal Rophé

Stage director

Nicolas Joël

Set designer

Wolfgang Gussmann

Costume designer

Lighting designer

Hans Toelstede

Chorus master

Patrick Marie Aubert

Fabrice Dalis

Un Sculpteur

Un Universitaire anglais

Opéra National de Paris

Others

Chœur de l’Opéra national de Paris

Orchestra

Paris Opera Orchestra

francès

Akhmatova

Paris

France

Opéra Bastille

The Opéra Bastille presents as a world premiere, Bruno Mantovani’s second opera inspired by the life of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) of which he made an opera with a psychological course, a mirror of the inner heartbreak of a humiliated, worried intellectual by the Stalinist regime. The libretto by Christophe Ghristi is particularly interested in the (difficult) relationship of Akhmatova and her son Lev who was interned several times without the mother apparently struggling or fighting the regime to get him out. Like Paul Hindemith’s painter Mathis, recently approached on the same stage, the opera evokes the place of the creator confronted with tyranny. What to do, what to say? To be silent in silence but to resist by thought and a literary and poetic work which continues today to grasp and question … This is the way of Anna Akhmatova, poet of the shadows, tortured mother but tenacious spirit , tense, still on the brink. However, Bruno Mantovani’s music is far from whispering. Between two explosions, the poet speaks of her discomfort and her helplessness …

Akhmatova Mantovani

Public

Approved

A tale of two cities: London recently found itself lumbered with Anna Nicole. Meanwhile, Paris, in the guise of Nicolas Joel, had commissioned Bruno Mantovani to write his second opera. Akhmatova was the result, a retelling of key episodes from the life of the poetess, Anna Akhmatova, with particular focus upon the torment of her relationship with her son, Lev, that torment in good part a consequence of Stalinist persecution. Premiered on 28 March, this was Akhmatova's second performance. Divided into three acts, it was performed with an interval between the second and third.

If I hesitate to say too much in detail concerning the music, then it is because I think I should need a second or third hearing to be in any sort of position to offer more than the most cursory observations. However, the fact that I am sure I should benefit from a second or third hearing already draws a contrast with Anna Nicole: what one heard - and saw - on the surface in London appeared all too clearly to be all that there was. Mantovani's music, by contrast, suggests secrets to be given up with deeper acquaintance, microtones and all. And there was no doubt that, on this occasion, music was the raison d'être of the opera. Immediately striking was the opening viola solo - Mantovani has written a concerto for two violas - and different instruments enjoyed their moments in the sun, almost as if this were a concerto for orchestra with voices. An accordion added particular colour, plangently 'Russian' in its way, though there is, we may be thankful, no resort to pastiche. (For one thing, one gleans from librettist Christophe Ghristi's words in the programme that Mantovani is no more a fan of Shostakovich's music than I am…) Spatial effects are employed sparingly and therefore with dramatic effect. There are even evocations of particular places and moments - tone-painting, one might say - such as the train that takes Akhmatova to Tashkent or suggestions of the siege of Leningrad, yet within a framework of overall continuity.

English

Akhmatova by Mantovani, B., De (2011/2011), Dirigit per Nicolas Joël,, Director musical Pascal Rophé, Opéra Bastille, Paris, France

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