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“Now is the time for Ukraine to become an independent state,” goes up the cry. If there was ever an opportunity to put on Tchaikovsky’s rarely performed opera Mazeppa, set in Ukraine and with a rallying call for the country’s independence at its heart, it is surely now.
Never a company to duck a challenge, Grange Park Opera in Surrey has stepped up to the mark. There has not been a production of Mazeppa by a UK company since the headline-grabbing “chainsaw” staging by English National Opera in 1984, so this one is overdue.
The main stumbling block has been the opera’s reputation for doom and gloom. As its first conductor, Eduard Nápravnik, noted, it heaps “scene upon scene, each more horrible than the last: enmity, betrayal, torture, execution, murder and madness”. The plot is based on a narrative poem by Pushkin, which provides a clear storyline and strong characters, albeit at the price of favouring the Russian take on history.
Grange Park’s director, David Pountney, has resisted the temptation to portray the opera as being about today’s war in Ukraine. His setting is contemporary, but the missiles and other weaponry could belong to any conflict. What we get is a more general warning of how savagely an all-powerful leader can crush a disloyal lieutenant (think Putin against Prigozhin).
Pountney pitches the action between realism and symbolism, getting the best of both worlds in the black comedy of a motorbike ride featuring humorous road symbols. Not everything works so well, but towards the end a grisly ballet for corpses that climb out of their coffins aims for the same macabre tone.
All this is held together by the character of Mazeppa, strongly sung by David Stout. History has handed down to us a controversial figure, who may have been a freedom fighter for Ukrainian independence or just a political opportunist working in his own interests (and marrying his godchild, 50 years his junior, is another problematic detail). Stout vividly puts across both the warrior’s charisma and the mature lover’s ardour.
There is fine singing, sure and well-schooled, from John Findon, a young tenor to watch, as Andrei. After an unhelpfully booming start, Luciano Batinić warmed to his task as Kochubey, delivering powerful, focused singing in the scene where he is tortured (no chainsaws this time, though something nasty was being done to him with what looked like a pair of tweezers). Rachel Nicholls is an impassioned, sometimes squally Mariya, Mazeppa’s loved one, and Sara Fulgoni rises to her scene as Mariya’s mother, Lyubov. The Grange Park chorus, more numerous than usual, is on top form.
The visiting Orchestra of English National Opera is in the pit, giving Grange Park the orchestral boost it needs, and it is good news that it will be back for the forthcoming Ring cycle, starting next year. High-quality orchestral playing is assured by conductor Mark Shanahan, but the performance is perfunctory where it should be intense and fiery. Put another 500 volts through it and this could be the Mazeppa we need.
★★★★☆
To July 6, grangeparkopera.co.uk
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