BWW Reviews: Some Enchanted Evening with Paulo Szot and THE NOSE at the Met
By: Richard Sasanow Oct. 10, 2013
It's not often that singers make their debuts on Broadway and then make a splash at the opera, but that's what happened when Paulo Szot--a Tony winner for "South Pacific"--opened in the Met's production of the Shostakovich opera THE NOSE in 2010.
The exciting, intoxicating production by the South African multi-media artist William Kentridge, conducted by Valery Gergiev, is back. Happily, it will be broadcast worldwide in the Met's LIVE IN HD series on October 26, with Szot reprising his outstanding performance.
A youthful masterpiece
The opera, which clocks in at one hour and fifty minutes according to the Met, is a satirical piece, based on a short story of the same name by Nikolai Gogol. It tells the tale of a petty bureaucrat, Kovalyov, who wakes up to find that his nose has been stolen (or was it cut off by the barber?), and his attempts to recover it and reattach it to its rightful place "between his cheeks." The Nose takes on a life of its own, blown up to human size, as it runs around town, making mischief. Clearly, this is not Puccini.
Shostakovich wrote the work when he was only 22 (take that, Nico Muhly), combining a variety of styles (atonal writing with popular and folk music, for example) with a variety of ensembles and solos. Shostakovich obviously was out to show off everything in his considerable bag of tricks and though it probably could have used some pruning early on, oh well, that's water under the bridge.
Hearing it performed by Szot, whose role and charismatic baritone rightfully dominate the opera, with tenor Andrei Popov bringing a wonderful sense of playfulness to the role of the Police Inspector, was as persuasive a performance as one could ask for.
Demands on the singers and audience
That's not to say it's an easy opera to warm up to--because it isn't. It's true that there are some wonderful, melodic moments--the balalaika aria for Kovalyov's servant, Ivan, for example, sung wonderfully by tenor Sergey Skorokhodov, and the aria and shimmering voice of soprano Ying Fangas as Mme. Podtochina's daughter stand out.
Yet, the Shostakovich score is demanding, of the singers and audience alike, even when shaped as vibrantly as Gergiev and the Met Orchestra did at the performance I attended on October 8. There was no question, for even a moment,however, that this was a Russian opera, thanks to the outstanding work of the orchestra and a large ensemble of singers, dancers and actors.
But, oh, that physical production, which was designed by Kentridge with Sabine Theunissen, as a mythic totalitarian society (though it take place in St. Petersburg) and directed by Kentridge and Luc De Wit. (The costumes, including the oversized schnozz of the title, were done by Greta Goiris, with lighting by Urs Schoenebaum. Catherine Meyburgh provided the video compositor and editing expertise.) It's like being in a contemporary art museum and an opera house concurrently. (New York's Museum of Modern Art mounted a Kentridge exhibition at the time of this production's premiere, but it gave only a hint at what the artist was capable in a setting like the Met.)
There's an old Broadway gag about bad musicals where you "can't go out humming the scenery." Even if THE NOSE didn't have so much else to offer--and it does--the knockout scenic design alone would be worth the price of admission.
***
Photo (from left to right): Ying Fang as Mme. Podtochina's Daughter, Barbara Dever as Mme. Podtochina, Paulo Szot as Kovalyov, and Adam Klein as Yaryzhkin.
Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
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