This Welsh National Opera production of the full 13 act Prokofiev telling of Tolstoy's story was, for me, a pleasurable marathon. The first half is devoted to Natasha and the three men who fall in love (or is it lustful infatuation) with her. It is OK to sit through but, at heart, we are witnessing the story of an immature girl and three men, one of whom (Anatole) just wants to give her one, another (Andrei) who is more genuinely infatuated and the third (Pierre) who is married but falls under her spell.
In the second half, we are at war with Napoleon. The male characters from the first half are in uniform and Andrei ends up dying in the arms of Natasha. It seemed the stronger half, well-supported by a backdrop of clips from Sergei Bondarchuk's film of the story. Ending with a rousing epilogue, this half had plenty of Russian patriotism as well as dealing with such harsh realities of war as prisoners being shot rather than taken.
The singing and orchestra under Tomas Hanus were good and the one-set production seemed to work well with the addition of the backdrop of pictures and film. However, the opera itself is a bit odd. There is something of an imbalance of the characters narrating as opposed to acting out. We seem to have a succession of people coming on to tell us how they feel and what is happening rather than scenes of the happening itself. Of course, in the 'war' part this is often necessary but in the first half I felt there might have been more action.
Overall, I found this an evening that passed quickly enough but not really one that I would want to repeat immediately.
No comments:
Post a Comment