The Nose blows into town…
by Neil McGowan

Shostakovich, The Nose
Pokrovsky Chamber Opera, Moscow
6th June 2002

Seventy-eight singing and acting roles, an orchestral score of dazzling complexity, and dozens of different scenes and settings… whilst Dr Pokrovsky's classic production may not be the last word on The Nose, it remains at least the only word at present. The logistic challenges the work presents have discouraged the largest operatic institutions in the composer's home-country… with the irony that it is pulled-off in a tour-de-force by the tiny Pokrovsky company in a studio-sized theatre. If opera productions were eligible for the award of Veteran of Soviet Labour, this 1974 production would now be due to pick-up an extra bar too, but it shows no signs of dating (and has been re-costumed recently). Amazingly, it is still in the hands of its creator - Dr Pokrovsky is actively directing revivals and new productions at the age of 86. (In typically vague style, a poster in the foyer announced his new productions of Wolf-Ferrari's I quattro Rusteghi and Handel's Iulio Cesare - dates yet to be confirmed). The production now showing on Nikolskaya Street is substantially the same as the famous version recorded for Melodiya (catalogue number 74321603192) under Rozhdestvensky in the 1980's, (when the Company was still known as the Moscow Chamber Opera) and some of the recorded cast are still appearing in their roles.

The baton is now in the hands of Pokrovsky Music-Director Vladimir Argonsky, who makes a worthy successor to Rozhdestvensky whilst shaping the piece in his own way. Where his predecessor accentuated the starkness of the textures, Argonsky finds lyricism and tenderness. The manic drive in the Rozhdestvensky recording, like an unstoppable train, is softened-off here, and the slowed pace allows for a different dramatic view of the characters too. The hapless Major Kovalyov is merely an idiotic dupe who can't be left to look after his own nose properly in the recording - but in the theatre over 20 years later, he has acquired a pitiful side, rather like Gogol's other woebegone, Akaky Akakievich. Zamyatin's libretto for Shostakovich is a very cruel comedy indeed - without touching either text or music, this production finds some of the pathos in Gogol's original tall tale. As Kovalyov runs through the city, his noseless encounters with the terrified townsfolk increasingly resemble those of "The Elephant Man", John Merrick. To communicate this tenderness with the meagre orchestral resources available (two desks of firsts, three second violins doubling balalaikas, one desk each of violas and cellos, and a single bass) is an outstanding achievement indeed. It should also be mentioned that most of the orchestra could be found doubling through the evening - mainly for the extended percussion-break sections of the work, which saw almost all the wind players getting busy with triangles, cymbals and drums of different kinds. The result is rather like seeing a big "special effects" movie - you don't quite realise how spectacular it is because you are so easily drawn in by its complete credibility. But spectacular it is, most certainly.

Eduard Akimov reprises his recorded role as Major Kovalyov, an ineffectual "chinovnik" (burocrat in the Imperial Service - a word retained by the Soviet system), a Collegiate Assessor for the Province of Georgia. He sounds even better than when he recorded the role, and since he's now the right age for his character, it's a totally convincing portrayal. His horror and self-loathing are not merely pantomime slapstick, there is a sadly human side to the comic high-jinx as he suffers the indignities of chasing his own runaway nose around C19th St Petersburg. Sergey Vaslichenko brought a deliciously world-weary seediness to the Classified Ads Editor - when rejecting Kovalyov's "Lost - one Nose" ad, the scandalised irony with which he delivered the line "the newspaper's reputation might be besmirched" got a hearty laugh from the audience. Like most of the rest of the cast, he was active throughout the evening in other smaller parts too.

The role of the Police Inspector fills any tenor with dread - impossibly written in the upper stratosphere of the register, lying higher than the Queen of the Night lies for sopranos, with written sustained top f#'s (yes, the one at the top of the treble-clef). Boris Tarkhov did a better job of it than many a man half his age might have done, and really anyone can be excused falsetto-ing above top C. A final veteran of the recorded cast was Boris Druzhinin as Kovalyov's manservant Ivan, who had come out of retirement especially to play the role - his voice still has a honeyed sweetness to it. The newcomers to the production were no less good, however. Outstanding as ever was comic bass Herman Yukavsky, doubling the drunken barber (snoring seems to be a Yukavsky speciality, he did it in Paisiello's Barber of Seville too) and the bribe-hungry doctor, as well as ticking-off members of the audience as a Sentry and socking-out the bottom D's in the newspaper office. Resident comedian Alyosha Yatsenko similarly excelled in more than five roles, including the Countess's Butler and Mirza. Alexander Pekelis sang chirpily as Count Peter, whilst reprising a few of the minor roles he must have recorded whilst still in short pants?

The female roles are very under-written, but Anna Kiseleva managed to make The Old Baroness into a real character nonetheless. Lyudmila Kolmakova played against type, and made Old Mother Podtichina into a sympathetic old lady in reduced circumstances. Oksana Lesnichaya made delicious work of the solo voice of the "Kazan Cathedral Choir", whilst Julia Moiseeva provided suitably minx-like love interest as Podtichina's daughter. If a man with no nose is still a decent marriage-prospect for girls like Ms Moiseeva, there is still hope for us all.

Leonid Kazachkov sang Kovalyov's nose in its moments away from his face, and rather well, too.

The choral ensembles - sung entirely by such members of the cast not engaged in a solo part at the time - were excellent, and the Kazan Cathedral Scene dazzled with its beautiful choral tones. Appearing in the same season as the Helikon Opera's "Lady Macbeth of Mtensk", it was a chance for a reappraisal of both works. At Helikon, Vladimir Ponkin found the comic absurd lying barely-hidden under the intense workaday tragedy of Lady Macbeth. Here at the Pokrovsky, we see an opera often written-off as a zany experiment, which has themes of rejection and tender melancholy underlying the wacky gags. Bitter murderous tragedy and insane surreal comedy begin to sound astonishingly alike. Had politicians not stepped-in to halt them, who knows where Shostakovich's operatic works may have led next?

© Neil McGowan, 2002.

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