In Russia, a Modern Theater Is the Star

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/arts/music/iolanta-at-the-new-mariinsky-ii-in-russia.html

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ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Let no one say Valery Gergiev doesn’t know how to give a party.

The artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater here since 1988, Mr. Gergiev opened his $700 million new opera house, Mariinsky II, last week in festive, even freewheeling, style. A revealing moment came Thursday afternoon, when a calm, grinning Mr. Gergiev greeted applauding onlookers as he walked toward the theater to conduct Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta” — five minutes after the performance was supposed to begin.

The whole week felt something like a carnival. The bash after the gala opening concert on Thursday evening, which coincided with Mr. Gergiev’s 60th birthday, continued, by one report, until 7 a.m.

After beginning with a barnstorming rendition of Brahms’s Violin Concerto with Leonidas Kavakos, Mr. Gergiev’s concert with the lively Mariinsky Orchestra late Friday lasted until 1:30 a.m. The pianist Denis Matsuev dazzled with jazz encores and Plácido Domingo took the podium well after midnight to lead a Verdi overture.

The audience seemed to catch the sense of occasion. Fans of the soprano Anna Netrebko, the star of “Iolanta,” and the ballerina Diana Vishneva, who danced Maurice Béjart’s “Boléro” on Saturday afternoon, wouldn’t stop cheering at either performance, making the curtain rise once more after the house lights had gone up.

Mariinsky II is certainly something to celebrate. Added to the old, 1,600-seat Mariinsky, which opened in 1860, and a terrific, cozy 1,200-seat concert hall from 2006, the technologically advanced, 2,000-seat new theater completes a powerful trifecta, putting Mr. Gergiev at the helm of a genuine arts complex with ample room for ballet, opera and orchestral performances. (This month features an impressive number of days in which performances are scheduled for all three spaces, but it remains to be seen how the whole company sustains these suddenly increased possibilities.)

The new theater, while generic from the street, has a restrained glamour in its public spaces, dominated by the glowing onyx exterior wall of the auditorium. Inside the mood is coolly elegant, the theater’s blond wood far simpler than the opulent old Mariinsky without seeming plain.

It seems to have, as Mr. Gergiev predicted before the opening, acoustics that are more platinum in color than the warm, immediate gold of the old house. The sound in Mariinsky II can seem a bit distant, but it is clear and well blended, with prominent winds and brasses that manage not to swamp the strings.

The new theater is a far better fit than the old for the sleek, modern productions that dominate today’s international opera scene, which Mariinsky II intends fully to join. In Mariusz Trelinski’s stark production, “Iolanta” felt at home there, particularly with Ms. Netrebko, perhaps the Mariinsky’s biggest and most beloved opera star, near the height of her powers in the title role.

The opera, a dreamy one-act gem that had its premiere at the theater in 1892, tells the story of a princess whose blindness is cured by love. The fairy-tale plot is slight but the music is sumptuous, and Ms. Netrebko — who recently added Tatyana in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” to her repertory — was born to sing these impassioned lyrical lines. (There are plans to eventually bring this production of “Iolanta” to the Metropolitan Opera, apparently on a tantalizing double bill with Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle.”)

Her voice expansive and penetrating, as if pressing through a cloud, Ms. Netrebko was in her element for the duet between Iolanta and her future husband, Vaudémont (the ringing tenor Sergei Semishkur), and she soared above the choral finale. The rest of the cast, including the bass Sergei Aleksashkin and the baritone Edem Umerov, was excellent, particularly the baritone Alexei Markov, stirring as Vaudémont’s friend Robert.

Mr. Gergiev’s pace was ideal in the Tchaikovsky, luxuriantly slow but never sluggish. He achieved the same balance in an inexorably building account of Ravel’s “Boléro,” which was first staged by Béjart in 1960 as an entertaining if overwrought scene — part circus, part orgy — in which a soloist dances on a large tabletop as a crowd of shirtless men gradually surrounds her. (Versions of the ballet exist with different gender configurations.)

Ms. Vishneva was in fine form in that solo part, with her sinuously expressive long arms, but there is little to the Béjart work here besides a passing frisson. Far richer was Balanchine’s noble “Symphony in C,” its Bizet score conducted with intense emotion by Gianandrea Noseda, and Ekaterina Kondaurova, a soloist of heartbreaking delicacy, dancing in the slow movement.

If anything could prove the necessity of the expensive new Mariinsky II and the forward thinking it represents, it was the stodgy performance of Verdi’s “Nabucco” at the old theater on Saturday evening, starring Mr. Domingo and the soprano Maria Guleghina and conducted by Mr. Gergiev with some propulsion but little sensitivity.

While Dmitry Bertman’s production is just a few years old, it looks and feels creaky. Even a vibrant performer like the mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk, as Fenena, seemed lost.

Mr. Domingo’s road to the Verdi baritone repertory is paved with good intentions and some lovely singing, but his Nabucco was less compelling than his Giorgio Germont or Simon Boccanegra. He found his way to the paternal concern in those characters, but Nabucco’s madness and grandeur eluded him. He had the notes but not the weight.

Only Ms. Guleghina livened things up. As the malicious Abigaille, her diva act was as delicious as it was in the role at the Met recently, and on Saturday she was in even better voice, some passages worn but others — including many of the high notes and softer, gentler lines — secure.

Stalking the stage with a whip, Ms. Guleghina was having a ball. She, at least, seemed keen to join Mr. Gergiev’s delirious party.