Marlies'Artbeat: Shostakovich's "The Nose" returns, in Live-at-the-Met-in-Hd

A Nose by any other Name could not smell more satirically, or as disturbingly... This was not to be an easy to take afternoon for the Live-at-the-Met-in-HD audience experiencing Dmitri Shostakovich's opera, The Nose, for the first time. Or so I thought! Instead, all the people I queried afterwards, picked it up as a farcical romp and were very much entertained. Enthusiastic applause also proved the case.

Ingeniously presented with animation, drawings and type projected onto scrims and sets, this production of The Nose had a successful run at the Met in 2010.  The skillful inspiration of artist William Kentridge with Luc DeWit and set designer Sabine Theunissen, this is a repeat of that run. It is exceedingly clever with touches such encapsulated scenery pulled away by cast members after finishing the scene.

The plot of the opera is based on a short story by famed Ukrainian/Russian author, Nicola Gogol (1809-1852.)

Only one of two finished operas by Shostakovich (the other being Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk, which incidentally is even easier on the ear), was composed when Shostakovitch (1906-1952) was all of 22 years of age. It stems from a period when artists were not controlled by the restrictive hand of Soviet Union censorship. Hence we experience Shostakovich unfettered, not hampered by politically imposed stigma that were to dog him almost all his later career.

Inventive, and innovative, the music is atonal, with persistent dissonance, but always logical in its experimentation. It is a forecast to the future work of this truly important composer of the 20th Century. It is he, with a few others, with works such as his First and Fifth Symphonies, that acclimatized many of contemporary listeners to accept atonality -- and grow to like it! It obviously prepared this, admittedly smaller audience than the HD's usually draw, that took the atonality in stride.

In The Nose Shostakovich frequently mimics earlier musical forms and styles, but for instance, introduces a percussion interlude that persists for a full three minutes. The score is 500 pages long; has 78 sung roles (obviously some are combined to be sung by one singer), and breaks through boundaries not challenged before. But in my estimation it is not a work to include in a list of the most important 100 operas!

It had its premiere in St. Peterburg (then Leningrad), in 1930, but was not performed in the Soviet Union again until 1974, long after Shostakovich's death.

Gogol, who's short story inspired it all, has a fascinating history. Many know him lately for the movies made of his works such as "Taras Bulba" (2009) or "The Girl in the White Coat" (2011.) A political satirist, he was born into Ukranian petty gentry, but was sent away school at the age of 12, and became a peripatetic figure throughout his life. Living in Germany and Switzerland, he settled in Rome for 12 years, had important homosexual liaisons, and has a ghoulish tale about his burial in Russia.

Seems when the government wanted to entomb him in order to re-bury him in a graveyard befitting his fame, they found the body lying face-down in the coffin. The ghoulishly horrifying tale was spread that this indicated he had been buried alive. Let us hope the whole story is a grotesque fabrication.

To recount the 3-act opera's intricate plot, filled deliberately with, often trite, tedious, yet meaningful detail, would take more space than this site should take. Thus in summary: Taking place in St. Peterburg in the 1830's, a minor bureaucrat (Kovalyor), has a shave at the barbershop of Yakalevich, who the next day, to his horror, discovers a nose in a freshly baked bread. In trying to dispose of it, he is arrested.

In the meanwhile the nose-less Kovalyor, after many gyrations to retrieve it,  discovers the nose, now human-figure-sized, wearing a uniform indicating a station higher than his own. The nose condescendingly refuses to deal with his inferior and runs off.

After many an adventure to demonstrate the foolishness of status evaluation and bureaucracy, the nose miraculously reappears attached to where it should be. As Kovalyor parades it, some of the opera's characters discuss the implications of the absurd events just portrayed.

The Brazilian Baritone Paulo Szot repeated his well received triumph as Kovalyor. Also a repeat of the 2010 production, was the excellent performance of the Russian tenor, Andrey Popov, as the Police Inspector. A new Nose to the Met's rendition, was cleverly supplied by Alexander Lewis, who stems from Australia. The myriad other singing parts were absolutely clear and persuasively performed.

It was all under the able hand of  the conductor Paul Smelkov, who himself fittingly comes from St.Petersburg. The always dependable Met orchestra performed the devilishly difficult score admirably, as fully expected. Aren't we blessed to experience all of this without the hassle (or expense) of getting ourselves to the actual house? There the equivalent seat would have cost us something like $400!

The host was the wonderful Patricia Racette, who will be our Tosca on November 9th.

It is almost a pity that this short opera is performed without intermission, because it deprived us of the usual, interesting intermission features. Before the start of opera, however, we were offered an informative interview by
General Manager Peter Gelb of William Kentridge. We would never have been privy to that, even in the $400 seats!

The encore will take place at 6:30 on Wednesday, Oct. 30th, as usual at WP's  City Center Cinema 15 and NewRoc'sCity 16.


When I tackled some of your neighbors for reactions to The Nose, I hit the motherlode:

Charles Robert Erler of Hawthorne is the ideal opera lover. He has been attending since the age of 18, and for 20 years volunteered as a Met backstage tour guide. "I'm crazy about opera," he told me. Certainly extremely knowledgeable he found all the visual material "most interesting,"  and thought "the singers were all into their roles so well, truly performing what the opera is really about."

Florence and Daniel Roher of WP have been attending the Met for 30 years. "It was the most imaginative production I have seen in a long time," Mrs. Roher said. "Paulo Szot's was absolutely a bravura performance." But she took exception to the opera itself. "I was prepared for the atonality, but the score  keeps on going too much at its continuous tempo." Her husband, who incidentally supered at the City Opera, found The Nose "a little different, not like the classic opera we usually see."

Shirley Silverberg of WP "Enjoyed it thoroughly. It was original, a farce exciting to see." She wonders about the political implications, plans to do research and see it again, maybe as early as the Encore. She hopes Chanel 13 will repeat all these transmissions, as it has done before. (Don't all of us hope that!)

Emanuela Brizzetti of Mt Kisco reported that a lady in the seat on her right said she was "so bored that she dozed off several times." The lady on her left, a friend with whom she had come, was a first-time HD attender who "thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience." Mrs. Brizzetti has a special take on the HDs because her daughter has been producing these Met transmissions since their inception. She herself had "a positive attitude toward The Nose," but does not care for the harshness of the Russian language for opera. "The voices, however, were quite extraordinary."

But the "piece de resistance" was when I spotted a very little girl perched between her grandmother and mother. (The grandmother, evidently afraid of spam, would only identify herself as Grace, the visiting mother as Cathy and the  5-year old as Juliette.) Turns out the little girl is a huge fan of opera which she usually watches on DVDs. She loves Carmen, The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville, Don Pasquale and on and on. As a matter of fact, it was she who turned her mother on to opera! The unassuming 5-year old thought this opera "very funny, especially when the nose was running around." She also thought the music was "funny" and would like to see the opera again some time. (Meeting her was a wonderful reassurance that opera will survive.)