DATELINE NEW YORK: "Mazeppa" at the Met (06/07/98)

DATELINE NEW YORK: "Mazeppa" at the Met

by Helen Smindak

Mazepa has been a magic name for European Romantic artists through the ages. The 17th century Kozak hetman was celebrated in poems by Lord Byron and Victor Hugo, in a famous painting by Eugene Delacroix and in a virtuoso étude by Franz Liszt that later formed the basis of the composer's sixth symphonic poem. Mazepa was the inspiration also for a number of lesser lights - Polish, Russian, German and Italian composers, who based operas and piano poems on his life, as well as composers in Spain, Ireland and England, who conceived choral works on the Mazepa theme.

Many were drawn to a story made to order for Romantic artists, an episode in Mazepa's early life that Ukrainian historians say has no basis in fact. Written down by Voltaire in his biography of Sweden's Charles XII and first popularized by the Polish memorialist J.C. Pasek, the legend recounts Mazepa's supposed affair with a Polish countess and his subsequent punishment by being lashed naked to the back of a wild horse set loose to gallop across the countryside. Surviving the ordeal, Mazepa was found by a group of Ukrainian peasants who hailed him as a liberator sent miraculously to their subjugated land. The exciting tale and the heroic character appealed to the imagination of writers and composers.

The Russian composer Alexander Pushkin, however, took a different view. Writing his verse tale "Poltava" in the time of Tsar Nicholas I, he expressed the tsarist (and decidedly Russian) view of Mazepa as a turncoat vassal, a vainglorious tyrant and a womanizer who was having an affair with his goddaughter Maria. Tchaikovsky, who began composing his opera "Mazeppa" in 1881, based his plot on Pushkin's work and made Mazepa the villian of his composition.

Since Ukrainians venerate Mazepa as a patriot, statesman and diplomat who sought Ukraine's autonomy from Russia, it was with some concern that we awaited the coming of St. Petersburg's Kirov Opera company to the Metropolitan Opera House this spring. The Kirov Opera Festival's three-week run in New York (its only U.S. appearance this season) was billed as "A Celebration of Russian Opera" that would include 17 performances of four rarely performed works: Borodin's "Prince Igor," Prokofiev's "Betrothal in a Monastery," Glinka's "Rusland and Lyudmila" and Tchaikovsky's "Mazeppa."

Would the Kirov's presentation of "Mazeppa" repeat the Russian vilification of the Ukrainian hetman? Would Ukrainians have cause for shame? What would be the response of music reviewers and critics?

Surprisingly, the answers were very positive and reassuring, an outcome that can only be viewed as a direct result of Ukrainian independence.

The Met's promotional blurbs for "Mazeppa," for instance, said Tchaikovsky's magnificent music created "an astonishing portrait of one of history's most enigmatic figures." Kirov promotional material referring to the work as "a very topical opera, as it explores events in the history of the Ukrainian battle for independence" characterized Mazepa as "a controversial Ukrainian political leader." The entertainment guide, Time Out New York magazine, noted that the opera depicted "the heroic deeds and romantic escapades of the 18th-century leader and separatist Mazeppa." (The mistaken reference to the 18th century, perhaps a typo, is an error too trivial to debate in view of the highly favorable comment.)

Following the opening performance of "Mazeppa" on May 1, The New York Times ran a pagelong review by Richard Taruskin, together with a portrait of a resplendent Mazepa, mace in hand, and a five-column-wide photo of Ukrainian Kozaks, townspeople and villagers in native dress, with a caption that read "The Kirov Opera performs 'Mazeppa,' the story of a Ukrainian nationalist, first an ally then an enemy of Czar Peter the Great."

Tchaikovsky's opera depicts the 70-year-old hetman, or military leader, in both his political and romantic exploits. The story in brief: Mazepa surprises the wealthy Kozak judge Kochubei by asking for the hand of his young daughter, Maria. Although a young Kozak suitor also professes his love for Maria, she runs off with Mazepa, provoking Kochubei to disclose to Peter the Great that there are plans to form an alliance between Ukraine and Sweden. The tsar does not believe Kochubei and delivers him up to Mazepa, who tortures and then executes him. When Maria learns of her father's fate, she goes mad.

Mr. Tarushkin began his review by pointing out that Tchaikovsky's opera is "no paean to Ukrainian nationalism" - writing a paean to Ukrainian nationalism in tsarist Russia was "a sure one-way ticket to Siberia."

The warmest moments in the opera, in Mr. Tarushkin's estimation, come when Mazepa confides to Maria both his tender feelings and his decision to seek the Ukrainian throne for himself and for her with the aid of the Swedish king, Charles XII. But despite all the romance and local color, Mr. Tarushkin concluded that the opera exuded "a heavy pall of morbidity, and that was all Tchaikovsky's."

Tchaikovsky's dark opera does not hew to traditional Ukrainian ideas, historically speaking, yet the Kirov company's staging of "Mazeppa" presents Ukrainians in a highly favorable light. Act I, set in the garden of Kochubei's estate, opens with a folkloric setting - young girls telling their fortunes and young people dancing as villagers and noblemen and women look on. There is pomp and ceremony in Act II, with a stately procession, complete with Mazepa's flag and insignia, that precedes the Kochubei execution.

Throughout, the attire of villagers, Kozaks and nobility is authentic to the period and the country, from the maidens' head wreaths and woven wrap skits to the Kozaks' felt-tipped hats and wide legged "sharavary" and the richly fur-trimmed brocade and wool garments of the townspeople.

Musically, "Mazeppa" does not deliver the impact expected from a Tchaikovsky work; the opera is considered to be among the least successful of his stage works. Ukrainian musicologist Roman Sawycky, who has made an extensive study of musical works based on the life of Mazepa, believes that the "Mazeppa" score and the biased libretto simply lack the inspiration of Tchaikovsky's other masterpieces.

There are, for instance, no Ukrainian melodies to be heard from the enjoyable women's choruses and no exciting folk dance tunes accompanying the ballet dancers' Virsky-style Kozak leaps and spins. Though the costumes are vivid and the footwork spectacular, much of the dynamism of the dancing is lost due to the lack of an appropriate musical background.

One dramatic musical segment comes with the symphonic tableau "The Battle of Poltava," describing the battle in which Peter the Great defeated the forces of Sweden and Ukraine. The sequence, incorporating the tsar's hymn and a liturgical excerpt, was played on wind instruments by a phalanx of musicians in red and blue uniforms and tri-cornered hats, standing on stage in front of a huge tapestry emblazoned with the tsar's double-headed eagle emblem.

The solo and choral singing was excellent, as one would expect from a Slavic troupe - particularly one whose principal singers bore such Ukrainian-sounding names as Shevchenko, Kasianenko, Zastavny, Shemchuk, Kit, Netrebko and Lutsiuk.

The Metropolitan Opera press department informed me later that the Kirov Opera's company manager checked with the translators and found that "Victor Lutsiuk was the only singer among the ones you mentioned who speaks Ukrainian" - a fact that does not exclude the existence of other Ukrainians in the company. There were many Ukrainian names in the roster of 300 signers, dancers and musicians, suggesting that Ukrainian artists still continue to be dazzled by the lure of fame and fortune in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in the same way that Canadian entertainers are drawn to Hollywood and New York.

A note to readers: While the world spells the name of the Ukrainian hetman as "Mazeppa" with a double letter "p," Ukrainians transliterate directly from Ukrainian orthography of the name, which carries a single letter "p."

A glitzy "Prince Igor"

Borodin's "Prince Igor," another Kirov production based on a character from early Ukrainian history, did not fare as well with critics and public. A chemist who composed in his off-hours, Borodin based this 1890 work on the life of the 12th century Kyivan-Rus' ruler who mobilized an army for a campaign against the marauding Polovtsians. Still unfinished when the composer died at an early age, the opera was revised, edited and rearranged by Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov, becoming a series of tableaux or a mosaic, its glory mainly in the Act II scenes and most of all in the wonderful imagery and bursting energy of the famous Polovtsian dances.

The New York Times' critic Bernard Holland, who called the Kirov's brand-new production "exceedingly ugly," pointed out its glaring faults - "wide backdrops textured in shreds, giant tubular bolsters, gaudy sequins and spangles dancing in reflected light, looping strands of aluminum foil, violent reds against a sickly set of bruised-flesh blues and purples."

It was indeed a glitz production that would not do justice to any ruler of Rus', so there is little point in taking issue here with the Russians over Igor's ancestry or the spelling of his name. We know Igor as Ihor Sviatoslavych, prince of Novhrod-Siverskyi and Chernihiv, whose military campaign against the Polovtsians in 1185 is described in the epic tale "Slovo o Polku Ihorevi" (The Tale of Ihor's Campaign).

Because the "Slovo" tale is a literary masterpiece of Kyivan Rus', to which Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians lay claim, all three East Slavic nations consider that it belongs to their own literature. According to the Encyclopedia of Ukraine (University of Toronto Press, 1993), no serious scholar has disputed that "Slovo" was written in Ukraine and that much of its semantic and poetic usage is characteristically Ukrainian.