Timur Zangiev Conductor; Peter Sellars, Director; George Tsypin, Sets; Camille Assaf, Costumes; James F. Ingalls Lighting. Peixin Chen, The General; Asmik Grigorian, Polina; Sean Panikkar, Alexey Ivanovich; Violeta Urmana, the ‘Babulenka’ ; Juan Francisco Gatell, The Marquis ; Michael Arivony, Mr Astley; Nicole Chirka, Blanche; Zhengyi Bai, Prince Nilsky; Ilia Kazakov, Baron Wurmerhelm. Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic
I spent a pleasant few hours walking around the Residenz, and its Gallery and Museums, seeing the Modern Art Museum (a very good photography exhibition), and having a splendid beef goulash and bread dumpling lunch. Then, on to The Gambler.
This was conceived far earlier in Prokofiev’s career than I had assumed – in its original form it was written and indeed planned to be put on stage before the Revolution, with Vsevolod Meyerhold, no less, engaged as the director. However with the Revolution there was much uncertainty about putting it on stage and so the first performance – with some revisions by Prokofiev – wasn’t until 1929 in Brussels
It’s based on (another) Dostoyesvsky novel and is set in Roulettenburg, a fictional European spa resort in the 1860s. The young tutor Alexei has fallen in love with Polina, who is a ward of the General. The latter owes money to the Marquis, who is also as a rival to Alexei in being involved with Polina. The General hopes that his aunt, (and Polina’s grandmother) the Babulenka, will die, leaving him her money which will make him an attractive partner to the much younger Blanche; instead, the Babulenka turns up, very much alive, and loses everything in a wild gambling binge. After that everyone and everything starts to unravel……..So 6 main characters are involved……..
The Sellars production is again very effective in dealing with the peculiarities of the Felsenreitschule stage, which as I’ve said previously is very, very wide and has little depth. The stage has about 6 stylised roulette wheels which can move up and down, and have various flashing coloured lights emanating from them – a bit like space ships…..The walls of the stage have large fractured pieces of glass which can flash images back or distort them. Somone has also sploshed a lot of green paint asymmetrically across roughly centre stage. The work was played without an interval, lasting about 2hrs and 5 minutes
As an opera, I wondered about it at first – maybe for the first 45 minutes or so. None of the characters come across as very sympathetic, and apart from Alexei are lightly sketched – the Marquis and the General are meant to be unlikeable and Polina isn’t given enough time at first for her character to be developed. Alexei is the fullest developed character but, again, he repels as much as anything else, making a lot of noise and sometimes arguing senselessly. I wondered why I should be bothered about what happens to them. Dramatically the work, I thought, begins to improve once the (assumed to be dying) Babulenka comes in – this scene and her mad behaviour at the roulette table is funny. The scene when Alexei as it were takes to the wheel to get the 50000 roubles to enable Polina to ‘throw in his face’ the offer of that sum the Marquis has made to her, as an attempt, as she sees it, to buy her, is dramatically compelling. And I did feel finally sorry by the end for Polina and the way everyone objectifies her and sees her in monetary terms.
Musically, it’s not easy going – much less tuneful than say the Love of Three Oranges, still less War and Peace. Nevertheless I was beginning to recognise some of the character motifs by the end, never ever having heard a note of the work before. There’s actually less abrasiveness and thumping ostinato rhythms than I had assumed, though they are certainly there – particularly of course in the roulette-playing scenes.
The cast was first class. Although she is a star name, Asmik Grigorian does not have that much to do in this piece, but when she was allowed to give full vent to her feelings, she did so very powerfully. She’s also a consummate actor, and very good at suggesting a grumpy slouchy teenager – and can still look the part. The show rests, though, on the energy of the person playing Alexei, and Sean Pannikar was excellent, dashing around the stage emoting and with a full bright tenor (he was of course Loge in ROHCG’s Rheingold last year). Violeta Urmana the veteran (well, over 60) Lithuanian soprano was magnificent as the Babulenka, and brought her still-present Wagnerian power (she’s sung Kundry, Brunnhilde and Isolde) to the role, shutting everyone else up. The General and the Marquis were sung and played well. The conductor was Timur Zangiev, who has been making a name for himself as a young up and coming Russian conductor – he’s recently conducted The Tale of Tsar Saltan at La Monnaie, Pique Dame and the Romeo and Juliet ballet at La Scala, Eugene Onegin at Munich etc etc. There’s been some grumbling in the Slipped Disc blog that he’s not had the Putin test applied to him, which to me seems to be almost on the same level as banning Tchaikovsky from Western halls. It’s one thing for fully-paid-up members of the Putin fan club to be blocked, but surely we shouldn’t be asking every Russian artist to make a statement that could have them imprisoned, exiled or their families threatened……? Was Furtwaengler banned before WW2 in the UK? – answer, no
Here is the trailer – (The Player • Salzburg Festival 2024 (salzburgerfestspiele.at) to enable a further look at the sets. I think ultimately I am very pleased I have seen this work live, and particular in this Sellars production, but I am not sure I would be making a beeline for another production of the work any time soon. Peter Sellars came on stage at the end, a diminutive now rather paunchy figure with the trademark upstanding hair you can just make him out on the first photo below in blue near to the conductor and Asmik Grigorian
John's musical journey 