Salzburger Festspiele 2024
Großes Festspielhaus, Salzburg, 18 August 2024
Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Der Idiot
Inspired by Swiss nature, he praises beauty, he sees good in the pursuit of truth, human happiness is not a utopia for him: Prince Myshkin is a rare specimen who wants to marry a desirable woman out of compassion, sees his purpose in life as bringing joy to the world and, after failing, falls into a state of mental illness and isolation. Because of his selflessness, Dostoyevsky calls this almost utopian figure of light an Idiot.
Particularly today, when understandably fewer and fewer people trust anyone – politicians and the media, who often withhold the truth from them, as well as their strict fellow human beings, who are primarily concerned with their own advantage – this character seems like a true Martian. And yet, or perhaps because of this, it is certainly worthwhile, when confronted with this piece of world literature, to realise how desolate the current state of humanity is, where the tendency towards callousness has increased in recent years, accompanied by growing divisions in society.
There is even an operatic version of Dostoyevsky’s novel, written by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, which has gone largely unnoticed. The Polish/Soviet composer was long forgotten until 2010, when the Bregenz Festival staged the premiere of his Auschwitz opera Die Passagierin, which proved to be a valuable rediscovery and has been performed widely. It is therefore surprising that it took another 14 years for the opera world to turn its attention to another stage work by the composer.
The overwhelming response to this production at Salzburg’s Felsenseitschule seems a little exaggerated to me, as The Idiot, for which Alexander Medvedev also wrote the libretto, cannot compete with Die Passagierin in terms of music and dramaturgy, and at times seems a little long-winded, but it is certainly worth seeing and hearing. This is partly thanks to a strong ensemble performance and an unexpectedly atmospheric, timeless and at times appealingly Russian production by Krzysztof Warlikowski.
In particular, the cinematically simulated train journey to Sankt Petersburg right at the beginning, where Myshkin meets the man who will fatefully accompany him on his journey after a long stay in a sanatorium in Rogozhin, has a very poetic effect. A video reel in the background of Małgorzata Szczęśniak’s narrow stage shows beautiful winter landscapes with snow-covered trees, interspersed with brief glimpses of today’s dilapidated residential buildings. One might be reminded of films such as Doctor Zhivago or Anna Karenina. In keeping with this, the implied train compartment with the travellers continues to move from right to left. That’s what I call suggestion!
By contrast, the other interiors, arranged side by side, appear rather inconspicuous and arbitrary in their decoration: the house of the Ivolgin family in the centre of the stage, in whose drawing room the Idiot first meets Nastassya Filippovna, whom Rogozhin desires and whose permissive male relationships bother him so much that he proposes to her out of pity, no less than the colourfully wallpapered box with Rogozhin’s home. However, what makes the novel so special in the first place, the controversial dialogues and thoughts on important themes, seem tedious in the course of three and a half hours – greatly reduced and shortened for the opera and musically not consistently gripping.
The music, stylistically reminiscent of Shostakovich but not always of comparable genius, seems colourfully tailored to the action and changing moods, but occasionally loses its tension. The score contains dark string sounds, long, low organ passages, but also burlesque motifs and dreamy, lyrical passages with delicate woodwind melodies when the hero pontificates on the good, the true and the beautiful. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of idle time in between.
To what extent this may have been due to the fact that the conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, who was highly acclaimed at the premiere, cancelled the performance I attended for health reasons, is difficult for me to judge without a comparison. Oleg Ptashnikov stepped in for her on the podium of the Vienna Philharmonic, at least in terms of craftsmanship.
The singing and playing were mostly excellent. Bogdan Volkov was convincing both as the seemingly lost outsider in the title role and, above all, thanks to his bright, beautiful lyric tenor. His strongest performance undoubtedly comes when he suffers a severe epileptic fit with lifelike convulsions. It seems disturbingly real, and for a moment you wonder whether he is playing it so movingly himself or a double.
Vladislav Sulimsky makes a fine figure of the rougher Rogozhin, with his deep, big baritone and autocratic demeanour. Ausrine Stundyte sang and styled her Nastasya Filippovna with no less assurance, although I was not entirely convinced by her brittle timbre and unattractive vibrato in the middle register. Among the ladies, the Australian Xenia Puskarz Thomas as Aglaja, who wants to deny herself the hope of a love affair with the Idiot because she is convinced that he is meant for Nastasya Filippovna after all, won me over with her much finer, slimmer and clearer vocalisations. A scene in which Margarita Nekrasova as Aglaja’s mother, an obese matron, laments her fate of being blessed with three unusual daughters, not one of whom thinks of marriage, was unintentionally comic.
In the smaller role of Ganja, another suitor for Nastassja, Pavol Breslik lives up to his big name by moving his voice through all registers with agility. It’s hard to imagine a better performance. Whether it will become established in the opera house repertoire, as some colleagues hope, remains to be seen. The Idiot is ultimately brittle fare. And just as the plot revolves around which men are courting which women and who is with whom and why, the story remains much more superficial than the far more profound novel with its many philosophical thoughts. But who could blame such a daring composer? Adapting Dostoyevsky for music theatre is a difficult, if not impossible, task.
