Opera "Altsina", Bolshoi Theater: reviews, description, history and interesting facts

The sensation of the theater season of 2017 can be attributed to Handel’s opera Alcina on the New Stage of the Bolshoi Theater. Director Katie Mitchell with his production makes it possible to reconsider the traditional attitude to opera not only for spectators, but also for critics. In the form of an erotic thriller in the realities of our time, an innocuous fairy tale story written by Handel appeared before the audience.

In October 2017, posters of Moscow opera houses replenished with two productions. These are fairy-tale operas, the productions of which were performed at the Bolshoi Theater - “Altsina” by Handel and “Hansel and Gretel” by Humperdinck in the “New Opera”.

Poster of the New Opera

According to the director of the New Opera, D. Sibirtsev, the theater’s plans for the production of Hansel and Gretel were not this season. But due to the fact that the production of another fairy tale planned in the repertoire was postponed, the director E. Odegova proposed to include in the repertoire Hansel and Gretel, an opera for children, which was in her plans for the near future. This production was very popular in pre-revolutionary Russia, but under the name "Vanya and Masha", and went on in the Private Russian Opera.

Odegova believes that this is a very timely production, as this is a fairy tale opera for children, despite the fact that this phenomenon is rare on the domestic stage.

"Alcina" at the Bolshoi Theater

Altsina was not popular in Russia. The first time her parish was from the Baltic states as a tour of the Tallinn Opera in 1985 and the Riga Opera in 2003. Handel’s works were rarely used in Soviet times , and Altsina became the third production after the Julia Caesar staged at the Bolshoi Theater in 1979 and the premiere of the opera Rodelinda in 2015.

On January 16, 2015, in honor of the 330th anniversary of the birth of Handel, the Altsina opera was presented in concert format in the Tchaikovsky Hall. Latvian opera star Inga Kalna participated in a concert program. She played seven very complex arias as Alcina. The singer participated in a concert program with bronchitis, but nevertheless sang all the arias. And, as viewers noticed in their reviews of Handel’s opera Alcina at the Bolshoi, she sang better than her colleagues without bronchitis. With this party she conquered the world opera stages.

These performances were signs of openness to the theater culture of Europe and the desire to become part of the world’s theater space, to join the baroque repertoire, which has been developing in the West for more than half a century.

From the story of Handel’s opera

The German Georg Friedrich Handel lived for many years in England, wrote operas in the Italian style and in Italian. This is the recognized and greatest composer who has ever lived. The opera "Alcina", written in 1735 by Handel, is magical and resembles a fantasy novel. After its first production, the opera for some reason disappears from the repertoire for a long time. They remember her only in 1928.

In the XX century, critics singled out only two of her successful productions: in 1960 the opera was staged at the La Fenice Theater (Venice), in 1999 it was hosted by the Paris Opera. At the Aix-en-Provence festival in 1978, Alcina was not understood and accepted by everyone. Bernard Fokkrul, artistic director of the festival, believes that this is quite normal, as conservatives and modernists clash here with their own views on what is happening on stage.

Handel score

In Handel’s opera, the love line is shown in the images of the warrior Ruggiero and his beloved Bradamanta, dressed as a warrior and set off in search of her beloved. Her task is to draw Ruggiero into reality from the enveloping charms of Alcina. Handel’s score contains psychological states and feelings of the heroes, reflecting passion and despair in his melodies. In his work, he used tools to understand and hear big and genuine feelings in the opera score. By the way, the opera of Friedrich Handel quite often staged on various stages of the West and in our time.

A joint project

Collaboration on Mozart’s Don Giovanni opera by artists from the Bolshoi Theater and Aix-en-Provence Festival began in 2011. In the spring of 2017, on the Russian stage, soloists of the Bolshoi Theater and Aix-en-Provence performed two productions of Katie Mitchell: "It Is Written on the Skin" and "Funeral Night". A joint product and continued collaboration of these groups is the staging of the opera Altsina at the Bolshoi Theater on the New Stage.

This is the third opera of Handel, whose premiere performances will be held on the New Stage of the theater. This is not the first time the collective has staged this opera. In 2015, at the status festival in Aix-en-Provence, the Bolshoi Theater was a co-producer of her production.

Version by Katie Mitchell

Nowadays, one can find versions of performances, the directors of which expose the rethinking of the work, interpreting them based on current realities. The famous Englishwoman Katie Mitchell, whose fantasies have no limits, is no exception. The heroines of her performance were moved from the Handel era to our century, giving the fabulous history the reality of our days. As a result, the opera turned out to be unusual and vibrant. In Russia, baroque operas (written before the classics of Beethoven and Mozart) are very rarely staged in Russia, since it is believed that there are no singers who can perform ancient music. There was no exception to the opera performed by Katie Mitchell, where the main parts were sung by guest opera singers.

The premiere of “Alcine” at the Bolshoi Theater took place on October 18, 2017, and four more performances during October were also premieres and took place on the Bolshoi’s New Stage. All this time, Muscovites and guests of the capital were under the spell of "Alcine."

Score by kathy mitchell

If for 400 years the viewer saw the opera “Alcina” in the format of a vision by her man, then Katie Mitchell found her score, focusing on the feminist core of the plot. The story she told in the opera Altsina at the Bolshoi Theater is cunning moves and sound production. The score of the performance is simply virtuoso. This is the transformation of Handel’s harmless baroque opera into an erotic performance, where the main character Altsina sings most arias in bed.

The production of Katie Mitchell is a reflection of human nature, the naturalness of human reactions and instincts. The doctrine of the play is an illusion of youth. Alcina never knew love and had only sexual experience. She falls in love for the first time in many centuries of her existence. Mitchell showed in her baroque opera the woman's attitude to love, sex and age.

Cinematic performance

In front of the audience on the stage of the theater, representing two floors, all the magic of the opera takes place in real time. The old ugly sorceress Altsina and her sister Morgan live on a peculiar island, which today turns into a deluxe room, surrounded by gray unlit comas - the wrong side of luxury. It is in them that the real life of Alcina and Morgana (the lower floor of the stage) takes place.

According to Mitchell, in the opera, created according to the chivalry poem "Frantic Roland", written in the 16th century, there are no castles and knights, but there are people with machine guns and camouflage, there is a huge bed in the center of the stage, where erotic scenes with whips and ropes are played out . It is here that Alcina turns into sexual slaves all who step over their possessions. There are bored loves among them, they turn them into stuffed animals in a kind of laboratory, which is located on the second floor of the stage - the attic. In reviews of Altsin at the Bolshoi, viewers noted the unusual scenery of the play and its similarity to the cinematic tape, when several actions can be observed simultaneously.

Interesting finds of the play

An interesting find by Katie Mitchell in her production is a kind of dubbing of artists. In fact, the roles of Alcina and Morgana are played by two opera singers and two dramatic actresses. Thanks to this, Alzina and her sister Morgana in an instant turn from luxurious beauties into old women, crossing the wall of their wisps, and vice versa, returning to the central stage, become enviable beauties. This instant reincarnation was liked by the audience, which they wrote about in their reviews of Altsin at the Bolshoi Theater.

The great merit in creating the scenery and costumes in the play belongs to the set designer Chloe Lamford, costume designer Laura Hopkins.

Composition of singers and musicians

A unique connoisseur of baroque music of the Middle Ages, Italian conductor Andrea Marcon worked at the Bolshoi Theater with a mixed composition. They were full-time theater musicians and guest performers on such ancient instruments as baroque winds and the continuo group. Having limited time for preparing the play, Marcon nevertheless achieved an understanding of music by those musicians who did not specialize in it. To possess the skills of the game, it is necessary to deal with this music not from case to case, but systematically.

Marcon explained that baroque has almost the same freedom for a soloist as jazz. In the Baroque opera, the word and text of the arias are primary, the instrumental accompaniment is secondary. That is why not all reasonable requirements of the conductor were implemented. The reason was the limitation of the voice capabilities of the soloists.

The production was attended by invited Western singers, possessing the ability to sing old music, where large loud voices with vibration are not needed. These are Heather Engebretson (Altsina), David Hansen (Ruggiero), Katarina Bradych. However, at Heather Engebreton, not everything in the arias evolved as Marcon required. She had enough non-singing sounds associated with a light timbre and the rupture of musical phrases. According to critics, the soloist of the Bolshoi Theater Anna Aglatova (Morgana) could well approach the role of Altsina's prima in terms of voice capabilities.

Reviews

"Alcina" at the Bolshoi Theater was presented to the viewer five times in October and forced to reconsider the traditional view of opera. The audience at the play did not get bored. They saw the vicissitudes of romantic love with all its moodiness, fatalism, stupidity and weakness. Director Katie Mitchell offered opera lovers a rare pleasure to watch the disclosure of themes of reality and illusion, truth and deception. Reviews about the opera Altsina at the Bolshoi were mixed.

A lot of good was said in the reviews of the performance addressed to the leading actor Alcina of the American Heather Engebretson, who first participated in the Baroque opera. Viewers also note that sometimes they sit, frozen from tension, the director’s text of the play turned out to be so unexpected for many.

True, understudies did not always work harmoniously. Transformations sometimes (not in all performances) were performed poorly, and the viewer saw both the beauty and the old woman at the same time. Sometimes there were inconsistencies in noticeable details, such as the growth of the singer and the backup actress. After all, the old Morgan cannot be taller than herself young? This could also be read in reviews of the Altsin of the Bolshoi Theater. Many opera lovers liked Alexei Korenevsky - a young singer who performed his arias almost flawlessly. He is young, and it’s hard to say what kind of singer he will be after a mutation of transitional age, but he understands and feels music in music.

The staging of baroque operas on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater is most likely not an accident. And will they be part of the troupe’s repertoire or not, so far no one has voiced it.