Solo with Good Intentions

The Ivan Franko National Drama Theater recently premiered Solo Mea, a production staged by Oleksandr Bilozub and based on his vision of the life and work of Solomiya Krushelnytska. According to the program booklet, the new production is “a poetic tribute to the talent of the great Ukrainian singer.”

The title, a play on the words Solomiya and solomea, can be translated as “My Solo.” Fausta Cresti, Krushelnytska’s professor in Milan, used to address the pretty Galician girl with the fantastic voice as solo mea, most likely never suspecting that this combination of words would be adopted by the singer’s friends and colleagues as her nickname. Could the girl’s parents have known that the name Solomiya, which they gave to their baby at baptism, would signify her destiny, and that arias from world- famous operas would make her famous as well? We know this now and can pretend to read the mark of destiny in simple past events and mourn a genius who, although she won international acclaim and was loved by thousands of admirers, was never duly acknowledged by her contemporaries, and was thus denied her full measure of glory that we, ever enslaved by our thirst for earthly pleasures, believe that she deserved.

As though emphasizing our resentment at her lot in life, which was relatively happy and graced by international success and the adoration of thousands of music lovers, the program brochure quotes another brilliant operatic star, the Russian Leonid Sobinov, who blamed supernatural forces for human sufferings: “The gods hate to see strong and brilliant mortals, who are happy.” The singer apparently believed that he was superior to the gods, accusing them of instilling envy in the human race. Meanwhile, our troubles and misfortunes are mostly explained by our own envy of the gods, our desire to take their place (the theme of envy of someone else’s success runs through the play). If we are raised by fate above others even a little, we’re in seventh heaven with our thoughts and emotions, and when it’s time to return to earth, we mourn the loss of paradise.

Perhaps the most striking pages in Solomiya Krushelnytska’s life story are those that concern her return to Lviv in 1939, after which she never set foot again on any prestigious stage — after decades of world operatic stardom. Instead, she taught at the Lviv Conservatory and was content with the title “Merited Worker of Art of Ukraine” magnanimously conferred on her by the party and government in 1950, two years before her death. She seemed content with censorship, the absence of human liberties, with colleagues and neighbors spying and reporting on each other to the secret police, the whole dullness and wretchedness of Soviet life. Krushelnytska voluntarily exchanged her fame and spectacular operatic career in the West for all those “social achievements” of her enslaved homeland.

In his productions Oleksandr Bilozub examines the collision between greatness and mastery of the operatic summits, and the daily grind, meanness, and mediocrity that causes envy of those who are “chosen by God.” In The Divine Solitude, a play about the ordeals of Taras Shevchenko, the poet and artist who later became our national god, he tells the story of a brilliant creative personality doomed to suffer amidst a crowd gripped by consumer instincts. Solo Mea is the sequel to the stage director’s reflections on the theme of divine solitude and the restlessness of geniuses. The perception of a genius as a demigod determines the genre and style of Bilozub’s new production in which he has attempted something along the lines of a ballet drama choreographed by Natalia Osypenko. The cast is silent and speaks only in a few scenes. The rest of the time everybody dances to the constant accompaniment of classical and modern music, focusing on the themes of exhausting singing classes, work on the title role in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly (which was a fiasco before Krushelnytska performed it), and the singer’s attitude toward her talent and relations with her sister Nusia.

Following the opera-and-ballet tradition, the Franko Theater published a libretto for the program brochure. Without it, probably only conservatory teachers and students familiar with Krushelnytska’s biography could understand what was happening on stage. But even they would be hard put to understand the first scene. Polina Lazova’s heroine darts like a wounded bird between banks of tape recorders and stacks of reels in a sound studio before she meets a young man who accompanies her throughout the play. According to the program notes, this character is Holos (Voice). Played by newcomer Oleksandr Formanchuk, this character is perhaps even more important than Solomiya’s.

Not coincidentally, at the aesthetic center of the plot is Puccini’s opera, which paved Solomiya’s way to success in Milan. In addition to the excellent music, it allows for experimentation with exotic forms of Oriental art. The Franko Theater’s chief set designer Andriy Dochevsky created a screen on which all the passions on stage look like phantoms, with chiaroscuro effects on the screen of life. Costume designer Tetiana Soloviova’s refined costumes heighten the effect. Together this makes up for the cast’s choreographic flaws in certain scenes. Apart from the dramatic relationships between the genius, her stage characters, and her muse (Holos), the authors of the choreographic drama about Krushelnytska’s life introduce the character of the sister Nusia, played by Larysa Rusnak. Nusia is also a singer, who goes mad trying to take Holos away from Solomiya.

Besides my fellow critics, quite a few audience members were probably asking themselves what made Ukraine’s leading Franko drama company take a gamble on a ballet production. They were expecting to see a play about Solomiya Krushelnytska’s life, with dialogue and without too many vague metaphors. Several explanations are possible. To begin with, Oleksandr Bilozub, after his creative involvement with Andriy Zholdak’s metaphor-heavy productions, feels bored and ill at ease with traditional dramatic forms. Second, guided by a sincere and praiseworthy desire to wipe the museum dust off our national geniuses, to situate them in a contemporary avant-garde context, and to try to bring them to life for the younger generation in an interesting way, the stage director consciously avoids everything associated with tradition, with those orthodox forms of the Ukrainian theater that were established more than a hundred years ago. Third, even though he is trying to actualize the creative legacy of Krushelnytska and Shevchenko (there will be more attempts, as the stage director won’t be content with a diptych on the geniuses of Ukraine), Bilozub still belongs to a creative generation that is focused on its own reflections and personal relations with the world, so he stages plays not so much about specific historical personalities as about himself and others like him. His personal reflections seem so complicated and elevated that they do not fit the format of so-called realistic art. The confrontation between an inspired creative individual who is unrecognized by the crowd and the mercantile world appears so implacable and destructive that it requires altogether modern forms.

It is possible that the Ivan Franko National Drama Theater’s premiere will spark complaints that it is catering to a handful of aesthetes rather than the people, who require simple and understandable productions. Of course, the national theater must cater to varying intellectual and cultural tastes, without lowering itself to the level of kitsch, but also without snobbish pretentiousness and claims to sophistication. Even if the latest Franko production gives cause for criticism, I personally regard its flaws as growing pains, which are inevitable, given our lack of professional stage directors, let alone gifted ones. This also applies to new, gifted actors. Under the circumstances, groping in the dark and encountering failures and disillusionments are more important than enjoying constant success by means of not so clever craftsmanship.