National Opera Hopes to Catch the Firebird

The maiden night of Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird is scheduled for January 21 at the National Opera. The ballet is being staged in record time: 20 days. Not because the company wants to show how good it is or there are strict orders from on high to time the performance with an official red-letter day. It is just one of the demanding realities of the market economy. The ballet is commissioned by Germany’s prominent Landgraf Concert Agency. Its tour will start toward the end of January to last into February and The Firebird tops the list. A contract was signed, and the capital’s leading company has to oblige. In fact, the stage director and his assistants believe that such short notice will not affect the quality of the performance. And the team is highly professional: Viktor Lytvynov, choreographer; Volodymyr Kozhukhar, orchestra conductor; Mariya Levytska, production designer, with the leading parts danced by Olena Filipyeva, Tetiana Holiakova, Dmytro Kliavin, Denys Matviyenko, Artem Datsyshyn, and Leonid Sarafanov.

“We do hope that our production will not be worse than the original classical rendition by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in June 1910, in Paris,” stresses ballet master Viktor Lytvynov. “And I’ll let you in on a secret. Our Koshchey the Deathless treats the Beautiful Maiden as though she were Nabokov’s Lolita. We are trying to stage a beautiful tale and lend it a true Slavic coloration.” The orchestra also has its problems. They had to dig in the archives to get the unabridged original score. In addition, only half of the hundred musicians will join the tour, meaning that adjustments will have to be made in the score, along with sound recording, because Western audiences are very demanding.

Despite the tight schedule, there is a festive atmosphere. The impression is that the team has got a second wind; the people do not seem to mind the great strain. In fact, the company staged The Vikings on New Year’s Eve, meaning that no one has had time to rest. According to the National Opera’s Director General Petro Chupryna, the company is reorganizing its work; from now own contract will be the watchword, rather than all those plans worked out by bureaucrats from on high. Mr. Chupryna hopes that such a flexible repertoire policy will allow the National Opera to retain good performers and administrators, giving each enough work, solving financial problems, and most importantly gladdening the audience with new interesting performances.