Opera and Ballet: The Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia

I have recently written acerbically about the politics dominating our modern arts scene. This is not a new phenomenon, however. On my recent trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, I saw two performances of works with clear political agendas, both at one of the famed Mariinsky theaters. One, the ballet Spartacus, fell to the level of the mediocre art on display at the Whitney Biennial (see my review here). The other, the Shostakovitch opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, raised political protest to the highest artistic level. 

Spartacus is a bit of a relic. Set to music of Aram Khachaturian, it was a modern ballet that passed the Soviet government’s morality and political correctness code, at least on its second go round in 1968 with choreography by Bolshoi favorite Yuri Grigorovitch. This version is familiar to western audiences from frequent Bolshoi tours and TV broadcasts. But that was not the version that I saw at the St. Petersburg new Mariinsky theater. This company has continued to use the earlier version from 1956 by Leonid Yakobson, withdrawn due to controversies about the non-classical technique (the dancers do not perform on point) and possibly the Jewish heritage of Yakobson. The Yakobson-Mariinsky version is hardly a path-breaking modernist ballet, and seems squarely in line with Soviet ideology. The story is the familiar one from the movie: Spartacus, a gladiator, leads a revolt against his Roman masters. The slave revolt, after some initial popular success, is ruthlessly crushed, with most of the slaves/gladiators crucified. This story give lots of opportunity for spectacle, military conflict, macho gladiators, and weeping women. The dancing  and orchestral playing was quite fine. I was amused by the homoerotic costumes—the Romans and gladiators wore micro-togas that barely reached the thigh, exposing lots of buttocks.

There was also much guy-guy contact, all in a macho way, of course. I find it amusing that the most homophobic cultures (including modern Russia) are able to put on such homoerotic displays, perhaps because it does not occur to them that any of this is homoerotic!

Spartacus really seems dated now, a far cry from the modern dance choreographed by Soviet expatriate Balanchine in New York in the same period. It apparently kept in the Russian companies’ repertories for nostalgic reasons. The past few years the Mariinsky has done it in early May, likely to coincide with the May 9 Russian Victory Day holiday, commemorating the WWII victory over the Nazis. This is the one that used to feature massive tank and missile displays in Red Square, and now does again, reinstated in the past few years by Mr. Putin.  While I was there just before the holiday, rehearsals of marching troops were occurring in the main square, and various tanks and military vehicles were arriving in town. Valery Gergiev, the director of the Mariinsky Theater, is a big fan of Putin, so likely now includes an annual Spartacus as part of the holiday commemoration. The irony of all this is that while the theme of rebels against an oppressive state was seen in 1958 as a metaphor for the Russian revolution, it is just as easy to see it as rebellion of individualism against a totalitarian Soviet state. The ballet’s opening Roman military parade really looked like Red Square with togas to me. The following evening I saw Shostakovitch’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, a wonderful 1934 opera that was banned by Stalin for being “coarse, primitive and vulgar", a "cacophony" of "nervous, convulsive, and spasmodic music" that is little more than a "wilderness of musical chaos" and lacking "simple and popular musical language accessible to all." This, plus "leftist distortion", "formalism" and "petty-bourgeois innovation”. It is now in the regular repertory of Russian and international companies, a good thing since it joins the works of Solzhenitsyn in giving us a taste of the stultifying repression of Stalin’s USSR. In the opera, the bored, abused Katerina kills her husband and abusive father-in-law (ergo the “Lady Macbeth” reference), sleeps with the virile Sergei (perhaps the most wonderfully comic depiction of sex in all of music, replete with trombone descending glissandos after the man climaxes) and is marched off to Siberia, during which she jumps into a frozen lake and dies. All of this is supposedly set in the late 1800’s, but Shostakovitch's audience (including Stalin) surely got the contemporary protest message, since the 1930’s were a time of massive deportations and death from Stalin’s purges. This was a really courageous opera to compose, and it is amazing that the composer was not purged outright (the librettist was not so lucky—he died in Siberia). This production was blandly generic, with modern wooden panels moving around, and failed to emphasize the bleakness of Katerina’s predicament. The performance was very good, with singers and players quite at home with the style and familiar with the music. It is remarkable to me that the Mariinsky can produce such good performances given its repertory system. This was the single performance of Lady Macbeth of the year and, like other repertory houses, the performers might do Carmen the next night, The Marriage of Figaro the following. Rehearsal time must be minimal, at least after the initial opening of a new production. It is great that these performers are so familiar with this opera that they can play it on demand. In the West we may see a performance of this great opera every 10 years.


Mariinsky notes: I saw Lady Macbeth in the venerable old Mariinsky theater, built in 1860. It is quite beautiful, with clear acoustics (only 1500 seats), a Tsar’s box, gilt fixtures, and a blue-gold color motif. However, the chairs are narrow and brutally underpadded, the lobbies are primitive, and the whole thing looks like it needs renovation. I like the vertical design of these older European halls. They have fewer rows in the orchestra (maybe 25), and build 5 levels up, so more seats are closer to the stage than at say, the Met in New York with its 4000 seats. 

I saw Spartacus in the recently opened Mariinsky II Theater, which sits right across the canal from the older theater, creating a cultural hub for the city. It is set up with the same “vertical” design as the older theater, but now with modern seats, lobbies, and architecture. Slightly larger (2000 seats), it still feels intimate, even if the design is less special than the older theater. In both theaters, intermissions take forever (a full 30 minutes), likely due to orchestra contracts, so the evening feels too long, and the dramatic momentum in Lady Macbeth was dissipated. English supratitles were shown, albeit in an inappropriately old fashioned translation with lots of “thine”s and “dost”s. The audience was shockingly young, averaging perhaps 30 years old. This is largely due to the fantastic subsidization of tickets for college students, who pay $10 per ticket and then fill the hall. They were inexperienced concert goers, applauding hesitatingly and talking too much; when there were no dancers or singers onstage it was an apparent signal to chat, as in Broadway musical theater tradition—very annoying. But where were the grey hairs? I felt like the oldest person in the audience! I saw almost no older people in all of St. Petersburg, at least the downtown and shopping areas. Where have they gone? Are they stuck in the big Soviet-style apartment complexes 15 miles outside of town? It may be that, unlike NYC, there is no elderly moneyed class in Russia. Most of the elderly have not had a chance to benefit from capitalism and therefore cannot afford to attend at non-subsidized rates (the website does not distinguish a tourist price from a Russian citizen price). It really felt like I was in a different galaxy from Carnegie Hall, with its well to do geriatric set.

General St Petersburg observations: This is a beautiful city, well preserved from when it was set up by Peter the Great and Catherine the Great to be Russia’s outlet to the west. The state museums (Hermitage, Russian) have great collections of art, if not quite the Louvre. There are enormous palaces, open plazas and canals running through town (like Amsterdam). I was fascinated by the residual Soviet culture—hammers and sickles on several buildings, a big square with a massive Lenin statue (and skateboarders), and “full employment” residuals like each bus having its own ticket taker, usually an older adult.  

What the city lacks is spontaneity and the creative spirit that big cities normally foster; the big public spaces are devoid of the protests, creative entrepreneurs, or street vendors you see elsewhere. Russia is still a controlled state, and freedom of expression is present but limited. The one exception was a wonderful private contemporary art collection called Erarta, which featured recent Russian art replete with protest, sarcasm, and sexuality, none of which is seen at the big state museums. 

It is good to see that outlets for creativity and independent expression do exist, even if they are not yet in the lifeblood of most of the city. This contrasted to Tallinn Estonia, another ex-Soviet capital that has pretty much scrubbed away every vestige of its past as part of the USSR, despite the 30% of its population that are Russian-speaking. These people were imported over the years to “Russify” the Baltic republics, then stayed after the USSR dissolved. Tragically, an equal number of Estonians were exported forcibly to remote regions of the USSR, many never to return. Perhaps that history explains the expunging of most Soviet architecture, symbols, statues, and tradition from contemporary Estonia.