Home » Entertainment » More than showing. Review of the new production of the opera Hamlet / Day

More than showing. Review of the new production of the opera Hamlet / Day

What I have is more than visible. This text in Jānis Kalniņš’s opera Hamlets The title hero speaks in the first scene of the show and does not claim the status of a key phrase in the opera itself or in the composer’s source of inspiration – Shakespeare’s tragedy – paradoxically describes the new production, which premiered on January 13 at the Latvian National Opera. This applies to several aspects.

First of all, the performance with Mārtiņš Ozoliņš at the desk, similarly to the legendary open-air production, which conductor Viesturs Gailis and his colleagues created in the ruins of Bauska Castle in the summer of 2004, confirmed and allowed to fully feel the exciting symphonic scope, splendor and emotion of Jānis Kalniņš’s music. This ingenious music is not getting old, and it deserves to be shown not only locally, but more widely.

Secondly, the soloists of the Latvian National Opera, at least the first ensemble of the performers on January 13 and 16, convinced the characters of this musical tragedy not only with their vocal performance, but also with their acting skills, deeply and truly revealing the characters’ character, actions, experiences, conflicting thoughts and mutual relations. . They are the best allies of Jānis Kalniņš’s music, reliable knights.

Third, the visual concept and implementation of the production created by director Kristīna Vuss, set designer Andris Eglītis, costume designer Kristīne Pasternakas, choreographer Agra Daņiļevičs, lighting artist Mārtiņš Feldmanis and video artist Uģis Ezeriešis than what to show “- also what you might not want to show at all and how just too much. This is especially true of the dense range of historically associative properties, which at times brings the viewing of the show closer to a visit to the museum and distracts from the main focus.

Knights of Music

It is the powerful, nuanced and professionally strong musical performance with Mārtiņš Ozoliņš at the conductor’s desk that is the core value of the production, which addresses in one wave with the music of Jānis Kalniņš. Andris Ludvigs reveals all of Hamlet’s vocal nuances in the title role, he does so in a wide dynamic range, up to the top of the hero’s tenure – first in the monologue To be or not to be (Scene 4), followed by an expressive conversation with her mother (Scene 7) and when she meets Laert at the coffin of Ophelia (Scene 9). Andrew Ludwig Hamlet also addresses him because he is deeply human.

King Claudius, depicted in the masculine baritone of Jānis Apeiņš, convincingly reveals himself in a curse of power and a knot of contradiction, with an impressive culmination in Scene 6, in which a new degree of cruelty follows the heartbreaking prayer. For Ilona Bagele, the role of Queen Gertrude is an opportunity to show off the high range of her mezzo-soprano and the heroine of the timbre color on the difficult journey back to warm humanity, achieved in a heartfelt, serene song dedicated to Ophelia. Where the willow crosses the river branches (Scene 10), in which the composer cleverly introduces the intonation of the farewell song of Ophelia. Unfortunately, the mise-en-scarce solution prevents the royal couple from appearing in a really noble, enduring royal couple’s posture in mass views, where they really should.

Inga Šļubovska-Kancēviča, in her bright, gentle soprano, gives us the most poetic, most prolific moment of the show – its quiet, lyrical culmination, as she slowly slides over the world from which the mind of Ophelia has already said goodbye. It has something transcendental and truly heavenly.

In the role of Poland, bass Krišjānis Norvelis manages to highlight the vicious, cunning nature of the chamberlain, the evil that prevents him from treating even his own daughter humanly. This role suits him, as it did in 2004, when he played Claudia in the ruins of Bauska Castle. Although Horace’s task in the drama of the show is to support a friend (Hamlet) and not to reveal himself in wide-ranging songs, Rinald Kandalincev’s stable baritone fills this image with a masculine and sublime sound. Laert’s seemingly episodic image no longer seems to play a small role in the vivid representation of tenor Mikhail Chulpayev. Initially, the lucky man, who in the end suddenly lost everything (both father and sister), swearing in pain and thirst for revenge, was hit hard in the painful finale of the tragedy. The artist’s temperament, emotional concentration and agility in the fateful, dynamic duel of Hamlet and Laert are in the right place here. It is not only clear why in the middle of an effective, perfectly developed struggle between the two, their conscience (dubbers / ballet artists) is also distracting ?!

Baritons Armands Siliņš and Juris Ādamsons, who have previously played with Laura Greck and Andris Kipļuks, perform the revealing show attractively, with grotesque comic tricks and great enthusiasm. Mouse trap, which is applied to the composer by the visually similar Kalvis Kalnins.

All that inspired

The environment of the production – the melting glacier landscape, in which sailing boats glide at times – can only really be appreciated from above. This time, the balconies are a luxury place for the public, because when sitting on the ground floor, you can not see the transparent white plexiglass stage floor, but the mighty noise that accompanies the cracking of ice in one of the symphonic interludes can even be misunderstood as a failure of the stage disc. The costumes created by Kristine Pasternak work best in the time tunnel, because they deal with the dialogue of the times through tasteful, elegant and clever stylization. The costumes are beautiful and modern, they both conjure up the aesthetics of the fairy tales and put the artificial, externally embellished, hypocritical world against Hamlet’s ascetic simplicity and sharp truth.

In turn, the exaggerated amount of stage properties and the duplicating mimic image – Hamlet heroic conscience – the intense, at times confusing stage activity of Christina Vuss turns the dialogue of the intended eras into many small countable amounts. Paintings of different times, plates, victory cups, statue of Kristaps the Great, polar bear head and other objects. A prophetic radio placed in front of the stage, manufactured by VEF in the 1930s, which sometimes sounds. Two large, shiny eggs, which, it turns out, hold the king’s chairs. Arriving at the wedding of the royal couple, the courtiers threw a basketball, which is supposed to remind the Latvian team of the legendary victory in the first European basketball championship in 1935. The King is looking at the cinema, the composer Jānis Kalniņš himself is photographing (with the legendary camera that the VEF factory produced for the opera Hamlets at the time of creation). Some lady is raising a typewriter… And where else are the organ pillars mentioned in the list of symbols, which, I’m sorry, I didn’t even notice!

There is no doubt that the director has dug deeply and has a precise justification for every thing included in the production, every detail. But is it possible to grasp all this while watching the show? Does everything that inspired and learned during the production of the production really have to be shown on stage? In other words, isn’t the forest behind the trees disappearing here?

If the viewer has not visited Talks before the premiere, has not read and listened to the director ‘s interviews or at least the messages published in the program, all this subject density can be confusing. The only thing that saves me from the flickering variegation is that the stage space (except for the royal wedding ball in bright green and yellow costumes) is kept in a white-gray, silvery color, in which the gold embedded in the costumes shines. Regarding the stage environment, however, there is no feeling that the monumental paintings of Andris Eglītis – eight large-scale stage conquests, in the creation of which a huge, technically imaginative and almost ritualized work is invested – live their own parallel life. An exhibition could be set up.

The icing of the relationship

What really works for the good of the show as a whole is the icy co-color with a lighthouse in the middle of the stage, from the heights of which the king looks at us from time to time, and from the voice of Egils Siliņš the spirit of the murdered father addresses Hamlet. Ice, cold is a symbol of icy, cold human relationships. It is not for nothing that the notable Lithuanian director Eimunts Nekrošus used to be Shakespeare Hamlet had placed a huge piece of ice hanging in the air, dripping with melting, in the center of the production, and the heroes were dressed in bears. In 1998, I saw a guest performance of this production on the stage of the Latvian National Opera. The icy landscape also stems from Hamlet’s insanity sent to Ophelia: “Be thou clear as ice, and be as white as snow.”

The new production of the opera has benefited from the use of a floor wheel, which allows for a smooth change of landscape accents without redesigning the scenery. It helps to draw artistic attention to cinematically beautiful symphonic episodes by visualizing them. In the storm view before the 8th scene, it succeeds, visually the view is resolved as both Hamlet and Laert return in sailing boats in the stormy sea. In the end, the main thing has been achieved – Jānis Kalniņš Hamlets is finally brought back to daylight, and the show leaves no one indifferent.

Hamlets
LNO 24.III, 1.IV plkst. 19
Tickets Ticket paradises EUR 7-40 in the network

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