A Laboratory for Russian Opera

Los Angeles has seen its share of Russian opera, but we don’t know the half of it. The repertory is deep, the singers are plentiful, and its specialists--Russian singers, orchestras, conductors--have been relatively rare in Los Angeles. At Los Angeles Opera, for example, this season’s “Queen of Spades,” by Tchaikovsky, was the first time the company had fully staged a Russian opera, and many of the singers, stars in their homeland, were making local debuts. To complete the picture, Valery Gergiev, head of St. Petersburg’s Maryinsky Theater (a.k.a. the Kirov), conducted.

Now a young company is coming to town with more. Yuri Alexandrov, artistic director of the St. Petersburg Opera, is bringing two Pushkin-based operas, Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” and Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” to the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts this weekend for four performances, direct from their native Russia.

The St. Petersburg Opera began in 1987 as a chamber opera company mounting compact productions with small casts and orchestras. It now boasts 150 people, including singers, stage personnel, a chorus and full orchestra. Alexandrov, who graduated from Leningrad’s Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory in 1975, has been directing operas with the Kirov for the past 25 years. Speaking by phone via translator from Grand Rapids, Mich., where he is staging a “Queen of Spades” for that city’s opera company, Alexandrov says he is glad to be able to bring his troupe to the United States for its debut visit.

“I’ve brought my best people on this trip to show the capability of my group. One of the things I want to show is the young performers and the sincerity with which they are able to perform, the enthusiasm. I want to put that across. I selected ‘Eugene Onegin’ and ‘Boris Godunov’ because the two operas are totally different in character. ‘Boris’ is epic, dramatic; the other one is a lyric type of presentation.”

“Onegin,” a story of unrequited love based on a Pushkin poem, has a young provincial girl falling for the worldly Onegin, while “Godunov” is a tragedy complete with a czar, assassination, guilt and madness.

Alexandrov, who brings 110 of his company members with him, including two conductors and two complete casts, says he approached “Onegin” in a style reminiscent of Chekhov, with characters being looked at almost from a distance or from a new angle. “We are not showing Tchaikovsky’s opera,” he explains, “but rather our attitude to Tchaikovsky.”

And in Alexandrov’s hands, “Godunov,” normally staged as very grand, is, in this production, deliberately ascetic, although the suffering the protagonist undergoes is still, the director says, of “Shakespearean proportions.”

This would seem in keeping with Alexandrov’s career: In the 14 years since St. Petersburg Opera’s inception, Alexandrov, 51, has been one extremely busy man. At the Kirov, for the St. Petersburg, and for other companies around the world, he has staged nearly 90 operas, ranging from Russian fare, including Tchaikovsky’s “Mazeppa” (he directed a Kirov production that toured to New York’s Metropolitan Opera House in 1998), and Stravinsky’s “Mavra,” to operatic staples such as Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” and a number of Verdi works.

Indeed, in London last summer, as part of that composer’s centennial celebration, Alexandrov premiered an “Otello,” as well as mounting his 2-year old staging of “Don Carlos,” with Gergiev conducting the Kirov Opera in its two-week season at Covent Garden. Reviews were wildly mixed: In the London Sunday Telegraph, Peter Reed called it, “a monstrously overblown ‘concept’ affair,” while Rodney Milnes of the London Times said, “After a shaky start, Kirov Opera has redeemed itself in a serviceable production ... that hardly deserved boos at the curtain calls.” The Daily Telegraph’s Matthew Rye said his “Don Carlos” had “economical designs that nevertheless capture the grandeur of the Spanish Renaissance.”

But it’s with his own company, which he views as something of a laboratory for unconventional ideas, that the artist is allowed to run with his imagination, presenting new works or operas that have been rarely performed. In 1997, the troupe presented the European premiere of Shostakovich’s “The Gamblers” in Switzerland. And in 1998, his risk-taking paid off when he earned the Golden Mask Award, Russia’s highest theater honor, for staging the premiere of Siegfried Mattus’ 1985 opera “The Lay of Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke.” The German opera, sponsored by the St. Petersburg branch of the Goethe Institute, also earned the award for best production. Last year, Alexandrov won another Golden Mask for his staging of Prokofiev’s “Semyon Kotko.”

An opera company is only as good as its voices. With many of Russia’s best singers wanting careers outside Russia or striving to be part of the Kirov, Alexandrov nevertheless says he has no trouble attracting or finding talent. One of his strategies is the usual one of employing guest artists. For this production, bass baritone Edem Umerov, who sings the title roles in “Godunov” and “Onegin,” is on loan from the Kirov. But most of the singers have full-time jobs with St. Petersburg Opera.

“I use singers from all over Russia who are usually very happy to come to St. Petersburg. [My] emphasis is on good quality, young singers and [to] help them get started. Once they establish themselves, I let them go.”

Whether international careers are ahead for Umerov, Natalia Evgenova or Olga Kovaleva (who both sing Tatyana in “Onegin”), no one knows. As for Alexandrov, he is concentrating on the present and hoping the company’s U.S. bow is a success. Besides stopping in Los Angeles, the tour goes to Santa Barbara, Bakersfield, Riverside, Phoenix and Palm Desert.

“One of the purposes of the trip is to show the capabilities and get further development. Being here now [though] was extremely difficult in view of what happened on Sept. 11.

“[But] I feel the fact that I’m here and performing is a goodwill towards the United States. My troupe has the music for the national anthem, and before each presentation we’ll be very happy to sing the U.S. anthem and the Russian hymn. I’ve been able to get extremely talented people. The rest is up to God.” *

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ST. PETERSBURG OPERA, Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. Dates: “Eugene Onegin,” Friday, 8 p.m., and next Sunday, 2 p.m. Also, “Boris Godunov,” Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m. Prices: $40-$50. Phone: (800) 300-4345.