Swan Lake. In the second act of Beethoven’s only opera “Fidelio”, Leonore and Florestan, who she rescued, come together and sing of their “nameless joy”, after which the plot is interrupted in many performances and the “Leonore Overture” number 3 follows. There is an interruption here too, but there is no music by Beethoven. But by Tchaikovsky. From the ballet “Swan Lake”. At a time when people in Germany are considering whether they should still be allowed to read Dostoyevsky or listen to Tchaikovsky, the Ukrainian director Andrey Maslakov incorporated “Swan Lake” into his production of Beethoven’s “Fidelio”. And he has good reasons for it.
The fact that the production of the “Modern Music Theater” Kyiv can be a guest at the Meiningen State Theater is adventure enough. The staging itself is even more so. And yet it wasn’t so much the political implications of the February 12 Kyiv premiere that caused uproar as the fact that there was a toilet bowl on stage, as Oleksandr Kharlamov, singer of prison warden Rocco, recounts.
The drunken putschists ran “Swan Lake” on state television when they, the communist hardliners, arrested Mikhail Gorbachev in his vacation home in the Crimea in 1991. After three days the spook was over, “Swan Lake” became the swan song of the Soviet Union. Now in Meiningen you can see the film of a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet, interrupted by disturbances, you can see Gorbachev in the Duma, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, beating parliamentarians there, potentates in Africa, massacres in Rwanda, Lenin in the original and in the feature film . One sees many glimmers of hope and the gloom that follows, one sees political dreams shattered.
Democracy is not possible with these people, so she mows them down with the Kalashnikov
Maslakov builds a production around the central dystopia of this film, the theatrical concreteness of which is sometimes reminiscent of peasant theater, but which is witty and always driven by a statement. One is vaguely at the end of the Stalin era, the likeness of the dictator is only good enough to thwart the prisoner’s choir’s dream of freedom, the soldiers no longer have uniforms, everything has gone to the dogs.
The overture is preceded by a film, rather Soviet, then you stare at a strangely surreal circular prospectus of a sore landscape painted by Maslakov himself, and Don Fernando comes to the rescue as a Bolshevik agitator at the end. But there is no revolution. The people are a stupid bunch who also cheer the execution of Pizarro. This isn’t a crowd pushing for change, they’re just cheering for the next ruler. The sturdy Marzelline gives Leonore an apron and a pan, making her the housewife. But Leonore, embodied by Yuliia Alieksieieva, visually an East style icon and vocally outstanding, did not free her Florestan. Democracy is not possible with these people, so she mows them down with the Kalashnikov. Five blind people remain, reading books.
Well, it’s rough and hopeless. Meanwhile, Maslakov says in an interview that he is not a pessimist, he is a realist. He studied in Augsburg, knows the German opera scene as a heroic baritone, is a permanent soloist at the National Opera in Kyiv, like many of his independent opera troupe. After the premiere – the very first performance of “Fidelio” in Ukraine – war broke out, Maslakov activated his contacts to Germany and finally ended up in Jens Neundorff von Enzberg, the fearless director of Meiningen. He has too Markus Lupertz brought to Thuringia for staging. Now he got the Ukrainians.
Some musicians won’t have a home when they return, it’s bombed out
A plethora of diplomatic actions followed so that the men could leave the country – if they returned, they were threatened with military service. Maslakow vacuumed the costumes, packed them together with the stage set in a large Sprinter, had it driven to Chernivtsi, there, near the Romanian border, there is currently a duty-free transshipment point, but the handover went wrong, and after many attempts and payment in advance the transport finally arrived in Meiningen, four days before the premiere.
The soloists were already here, practicing German for the dialogues (in Kyiv they sang German but spoke Ukrainian), choir and orchestra could not come anyway, after the outbreak of war they were scattered in Ukraine and neighboring countries. To realize an opera guest performance that has to be fitted into the existing program in four days is a coup de grace. The Staatskapelle Meiningen will play, the first part will be conducted by Sergii Golubnychyi from the Ukraine, the second by Meiningen GMD Philippe Bach – an artistically necessary signal of international understanding. The majority of the choir comes from Coburg, where they had the piece on it, in Meiningen the choir got stuck in “Lohengrin”, but a few members still sing in “Fidelio”.
Oleksandr Kharlamov says some of his colleagues won’t have a home when they return, it’s bombed out. “Everyone knows people who are now dead.” He himself has a child, wife and mother with him and hopes that they can stay in Germany. For him the only option: a victory for Ukraine. Andrey Maslakov sees it differently. In the hail of bombs, he took the scenery out of the theater himself. Because he wants to show his production. Because he wants an exchange. It’s bizarre: He knows that without the war his “Fidelio” would never have made it to Germany. After Meiningen, the production is traveling to Coburg, Heidelberg and Siegen, and further appearances are being planned. But above all, he wants peace. In the Meiningen newspaper he was previously quoted. That he wanted reconciliation, also between Russians and Ukrainians. Then came calls from Ukraine, from very high up. Maslakov is a “meritorious artist of Ukraine”, so every statement is checked. What should one fight for if one is not allowed to have one’s own mild opinion? He doesn’t want to say more about politics.