<I>Mavra</I>, Phantom of the New Opera

Igor Stravinsky’s comic opera Mavra was the diploma project of Yuliya Dudina in her fifth year at the Peter Tchaikovsky National Opera Academy of Ukraine [formerly the Tchaikovsky Music Conservatory], staged on October 5, received by the audience with utmost interest.

“The young people ventured Stravinsky, quite an attainment,” their teacher and celebrated Ukrainian prima donna Yevheniya Miroshnychenko said after the performance, adding, “His music is extremely complicated and can be risked only by a cast sure of their vocal and dramatic skill. I think that Igor Stravinsky went far a head of his age with his compositions, meaning that his heritage is still to be fully perceived by our descendants. He was a composer of the future.”

Stravinsky wrote Mavra in 1922, and the premier took place at the Paris Opera. The story is based on Aleksandr Pushkin’s House in Kolomna (libretto by Kokhno). The ballet was performed in Moscow in the late 1920s, so that Dudina’s production in Ukraine was the first of its kind. UNESCO has dedicated 2002 to Igor Stravinsky and the Inter Producers Center (inter.media.com) is planning a series of commemorative concerts and festivals. However, referring to this production as a Dutch one seems a bit irrelevant. Yuliya Dudina admits that Igor Stravinsky is close to her creatively. Even as a small girl, sorting through the LPs in her family library, she spotted a studio recording of his Mavra. She played it and was captivated. As a conservatory student, she swore she would someday stage it. Now she has kept her promise.

The story is typical vaudeville reflecting the patriarchal life of provincial Russia. A young girl named Parasha, confined to her family abode, is spending endless torturous days with her widowed mother, doing needlework and household chores. Somewhere outside, life is in full glorious progress, and she is cast unjustly aside. She dreams of her Prince Charming. In fact she has one, the brave Hussar Vassili, but they can meet very seldom and only in strict secrecy. But then she is lucky. Their old woman cook dies and the Hussar, disguised as a new cook, enters the household. The young people rejoice at having so skillfully deceived Parasha’s ever vigilant mother, but then the old woman returns home unexpected and discovers what she had supposed was her woman cook shaving! She is aghast; she starts shouting, attracting the lady living next door. The brave young man has no choice and jumps out the window.

Mavra is a one-act opera lasting half an hour, yet Stravinsky designed it as fertile ground for the cast and stage director, offering a wealth of creative opportunities. Quite often modern renditions of the comic opera lack dramatic effects, action, the characters are stiff, with the singers concentrating on their vocal technique, letting dramatic identification fade in the background. Yevheniya Miroshnychenko is a severe critic. Even though two of her pupils — Oksana Tereshchenko, National Opera soloist, fresh from Miroshnychenko’s classes, currently one of her graduate students, and Iryna Bielova who undertook an on-the- job training under the professor’s able guidance — were in the cast, she merely said that the team did a fine job, and that their venture had proven successful. She noted, however, that the overall artistic impression was dampened by the absence of an orchestra; the short opera was performed to the accompaniment of the grand piano that could not convey Stravinsky’s whole excellent musical range. Accompanist Oleh Zhebrunov, did his best, acting also as a stage director, “covering up” for those in the cast who got carried away.

Originally meant as a chamber performance, Yuliya Dudina turned it into one for a public square. A platform was erected on the National Music Academy stage. Stage props were scarce: a table, two armchairs, and an imitation window. Dudinova was careful about the original score and script, editing out nothing, yet her approach was that of a street show with masks a la Petrushka, fitting all operatic scenes into a single entertaining whole. She heard in Stravinsky’s music elements of the traditional marketplace show, and this triggered her creative imagination. The result was a dynamic performance. Good casting is among the indisputable advantages: the coquettish and somewhat manneristic Parasha (soprano Oksana Tereshchenko), her mother (contralto Iryna Bielova), nosy neighbor lady (mezzo-soprano Viktoriya Osadchuk), the ever- enticing and vigilant mime Petrushka (Valery Bozhenko), and with Hussar-cum-cook Vassili (tenor Yury Lukyanenko) proving especially funny in drag. Indeed, the team spirit was very evident; everyone, cast and stage hands alike, forgot all about time and fatigue in order to make the performance a success. And they were pressed for time with only five rehearsals on the National Music Academy stage. They collected costumes and stage props by literally passing the hat, getting bits and pieces from various drama companies and making quick adjustments. Yury Lukyanenko was unlucky with his Hussar jackboots, one size smaller than his. Then there was the idler from the Khreshchatyk underpass. They agreed that he would loan them his wheelchair and would sit in the audience, but he forget and appeared at the very last moment, greeted by the team almost as a savior. Yuliya made the masks, the telescope, and the mime’s wings of cardboard single-handedly. She was like Figaro, always managing to appear at the right place and time. Her energy and enthusiasm left one dazed with envy. She is completing her studies in the music direction faculty, attending Valery Kurbanov’s classes. Two years ago she gave Mavra a first try, as scenes from the opera, doing them together with fellow conservatory student Yury Lukyanenko (then in the fourth year at the vocal department). Oksana Tereshchenko believes that Mavra is a turning point in her career. She tried “The Maiden’s Song” in her third year, but it failed to turn out quite right, perhaps because it takes maturity in terms of both vocalism and life experience. In 1997, preparing for the First Patorzhynsky International Vocal Contest, she returned to Stravinsky and placed second. In Dudina’s Mavra she literally basked in Parasha’s role, singing her vocal part easily, as though she had never experienced any problems whatever. The premiere will be telecast by UT-1 as part of the channel’s Classical Premiere series.

Yuliya Dudina makes no secret that her Mavra became reality largely owing to the Inter Media Producers Center (inter.media.com). They met by chance, but as is often the case, this meeting might well turn into lasting fruitful cooperation. Young as she is, Yuliya is certainly a gifted, energetic, and demanding stage director; she knows what she is after. In fact, her cast would later admit that she, after assigning them the parts and telling what she expected from each, allowed each and everyone inner freedom and a chance to experiment. Further short opera renditions are being negotiated, and there is a good chance that a prestigious operatic company will show an interest. Yuliya is looking for an orchestra and conductor to make the performance worthy of being included in the repertory and start tours in Ukraine and abroad. Yevheniya Miroshnychenko believes it is time the Ukrainian capital had its own chamber opera house to accommodate renditions like Stravinsky’s Mavra .