Man, woman, and eternity

Virko Baley is an American composer, conductor, and pianist of Ukrainian origin, whose creative work is closely connected with the Ukrainian culture and history. Red Earth. Hunger was performed by the Symphony Orchestra of the National Philharmonic Society of Ukraine (conductor: Vitalii Protasov) and two soloists, soprano Tamara Khodakova (Woman) and US tenor John Duykers (Man). The audience heard the introduction to the opera (the instrumental part) and fragments of the work, “Lullaby,” “The Time of the Wolf,” and “Eternal Shining.”

We familiarized ourselves with the foreign artistic view of the Holodomor events (the opera’s libretto was written by Ukrainian poet Bohdan Boichuk before he returned to homeland). The philharmonic society orchestra and conductor put much effort to present the work on stage in a decent way. There were some organization difficulties: a few days before the concert it became known that the American singer Laura D. Bohn, who was supposed to take part in the performance, could not come to the festival. Therefore Kyivite Tamara Khodakova, who practically saved the performance, when she substituted the American and learned the quite complicated part in a very short time, deserves a special mentioning. The second soloist, the outstanding American singer John Duykers, has rehearsed with Ukrainian musicians for a week. The appearance of a star of Duykers’ level on our stage is an extraordinary event in a sense, and the fact that the American singer performed in a work that interprets our history, gives a reason for special attention.

I have talked to Virko Baley and John Duykers after the Kyiv premiere of Red Earth, which is apparently the only opera dedicated to Ukrainian Holodomor.

Virko, every opera always starts from choosing a literary original. How did it happen with you?

“Bohdan Boichuk has a play Famine, which I liked very much, and I saw in it a good potential for an opera. It has two leading characters, Man and Woman, and there are no mass scenes, which is important from practical side, because there are few professional opera theaters in America which can stage a large modern opera. It requires about 500,000-dollar budget, which is big money that is impossible to compensate by ticket sales. At the same time, the university theaters have more freedom in choosing a repertoire. In the early 1990s the theater department of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where I teach decided to stage my opera, and Yurii Illienko was supposed to direct it. However, nothing came out of this idea at that time, because the university refused from the project in a short while.”

Was the music for the opera completely finished then?

“Not completely, but most of it. I came back to this work only 15 years later, in the mid-2000s, and changed a lot in the music. I worked not only at home, in Las Vegas, but partially in the state of Arizona. There is a place there where the soil is red and landscapes are amazingly beautiful. Namely then I came up with the title Red Earth. Hunger.”

So, the image of red earth came from Arizona. What kind of place was that?

“It is a high mountainous plateau covered with vegetation and located at the height of nearly 2,000 meters. Approximately at that time the Harvard University promised me a fellowship. In Harvard I almost completed the opera and it was launched in the year that followed, in 2008 (it was not accompanied by an orchestra however, only by piano) within the framework of a grand conference dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor. Several days later we performed it again in the UN premises in New York. That helped to get it moving, the Boston Opera took interest in the piece, we held talks with several funds, but life brought its own corrections. I fell gravely ill, and the following three years went in vain. In 2012 I restarted the work, making at first the version with a chamber orchestra and soon with a full-size orchestra.”

For now only fragments from the opera have been performed, with an orchestra in the chamber version in Las Vegas and now in Kyiv, with a full-size symphony orchestra. Are the preparations taking place to perform the opera in full?

“After the premiere of the fragments in Las Vegas singer John Duykers said it was a phenomenal work, which should be further advanced. We started to look for a small opera company, where we could make a trial concert performance and understand what the possible flaws of the work are. It often happens so that before bringing the work to the Broadway stage, one shows it for several weeks in other cities, makes finishing touches and improves it. We decided to do the same. The Las Vegas University has given the money and we have scheduled the complete concert performance of the opera in January 2012, to be repeated in New York in February.”

Do you expect to get funding from the Ukrainian institutions in America?

“They express their interest with this project. These organizations mostly support the language, literary, and historical projects. They are less inclined to art, but I am trying to convince them that this approach is wrong. Some common idea connected with Ukraine should be emotionally reinforced, and this is already the sphere of art. For example, after the State of Israel was founded in the late 1940s, a competition was announced for the best book about the Jews’ return to Palestine. This is how Leon Uris’s book Exodus appeared, and based on this book, a movie was shot, which won incredible popularity. Owing to this millions of people learned about Jews’ return to their native land, even those who had never heard of it. Something of this kind needs to be done about the Ukrainian topics, means should be found to present them in theater and in cinema.”

It seems to me you sought not only to tell about the Holodomor or show it on stage. Your opera is much more complicated and versatile. It tells about the all-human moral problems which have effect in any circumstances. It tells about good and evil, mercy, forgiveness, disappointment, soul emptiness and soul power, the strength and weakness of a man. Therefore your characters are rather symbols, generalized figures, aren’t they?

“You are completely right. To bring common ideas, I needed to create a kind of a plot line. Without it the opera would become a scenic cantata or an oratorio. For example, the second scene shows the violence over the village. The singers do not sing, and the scene is staged with the help of the ballet, pantomime and orchestra. I am going to apply there a broad usage of multimedia effects, translation of the fragments from the movies of the 1930s, movie chronicles, radio programs, authentic recordings of the then music, speeches of the chiefs, etc., a grandiose collage made up by the documents from that epoch.”

The opera’s leading characters are Man and Woman, and the main psychological line is the conflict between them. We know hardly anything about them, but what we know for sure is that they are starving. You have written that you were enchanted by somewhat Becket-style atmosphere of Boichuk’s opera and its expressionistic features. Whereas the figure of the Woman is embodiment of high moral virtues, the Man at first strikes with his cynicism, disappointment, but with time good features awaken in his heart and in the end he tries to rescue a child at the cost of his life – he feeds the child with his blood. Who is that Man?

“I cannot give a definite answer. Probably at first he was one of the small government officials who brought to life the idea of pacifying the village by way of the Holodomor. Later he refused from that and became one of those who were starving. In our production this Man will be among those who hang the peasant, the husband of the Woman, for resistance to dekulakization. When they eventually meet each other during the famine, both extremely exhausted, they don’t recognize each other.”

The image of the Man radically changes throughout the play, however, the Woman remains the figure that radiates the good. How is this realized in terms of music?

“In the model operas each of the characters has different individual music characteristics. Mozart was the first to do this. In Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes the vocal parts for the duo of antagonists are written in two different tonalities, they are based on two different gammas which have a common sound between them as a sign of attraction between the heroes. This is an example of how a dramatic idea can be realized by way of music means. When I was pondering over what was my character like, I though he could come out of the village, but later moved to town, received education and returned to village, considering he’s a new man now. But the Woman is a typical peasant. Her music has more folk motives, whereas the music of the Man parodies popular songs. Their parts are very different at the beginning of the opera, but they unite in the end, and one melodic line comes to the Woman from Man and vice versa. At this moment the Man understands that the Woman is right.”

What makes the Man change so radically, covering the way from aggression and mocking at the Woman to self-sacrifice?

“What he acquired during his life was not his essence. That was a superficial layer, and in the end he comes back to real himself, to what was being preserved on the bottom of his soul. I have discussed these things with my father. In the wartime he spent three years in Oswiecim as a Ukrainian nationalist. There he saw the best and the worst manifestations of human nature, and you could never know beforehand how the person would behave. It could happen so that a priest collapsed completely, selling himself and the rest, whereas a simple guy who could not read well stood firm till the end as a moral person. There the prisoners experienced a momentum transformation, like Saint Paul, who was Saul yet. There could be no apparent reason to transform, but when you looked frankly, you saw that a kind of inner crisis that prompted this transformation has taken place. My hero became greatly disappointed with the ideas he believed in. The same happened to Khvyliovy and Skrypnyk who believed in Communism, but when they saw what the new system was like, they simply could not live on and look at themselves in the mirror. At first there are no sacred things for my hero, he mocks at those who remain faithful, sees their firmness and starts out of anger to break the crucifix and wounds his hands to blood. Catharsis takes place at this moment. He understands he will die and decides to die in some other way. Then he starts feeding a little child with his blood to save him. I think most people want their life not to come in vain. The Man asks himself in the end: ‘Where am I going to? It is hard to go to an unknown room,’ and when he enters this imaginary ‘room,’ the music changes and becomes childishly simple and naive.”

Does the image of the Woman remain unchanged?

“Yes. There is no good around her, she is carrying this good in herself and sees it in the others, that is why she does not feel lonely. She forgives everything to the Man and wishes him good and happiness, so that in the place he was heading to he got milk, bread, and warmth, things he lacked when he was dying. Therefore at the moment of catharsis the changed melody of the Woman is performed. The Woman and the child proceed, and a small hope remains that they would survive. If it happens, the Woman will change, too, because she has finally found good in people, in the worst situation.”

“My father told me that in Oswiecim every prisoner was supposed to get a ticket in a while, to appear on certain day in a certain place. They did not say why, but everyone knew from there the person would be brought to a gas chamber. My father had a Pole friend in the concentration camp. One day he came and showed the ticket he had received shortly before than. They spent the whole night talking about philosophy, literature, and poetry. That is the way his friend wanted to live through the last day of his life. Not in apathy, neither did he go to the women’s part of the camp, nor did he drink vodka. He wanted to stay with his friend and talk about things he cared for in his life. This kind of turning points in a human destiny is what interested me in this opera.”

The Day’s FACT FILE

John Duykers is an American opera singer. He started to perform in the mid-1960s, singing the leading parts in the productions of the opera theaters in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, etc., as well as on European stages, in particular in London’s Covent-Garden. He has worked with the outstanding figures of the modern opera world, composer Philip Glass, directors Robert Wilson and Peter Sellars. In 1987 the role of Mao Zedong in the premiere production of John Adams’s opera Nixon in China brought him world recognition. The singer’s repertoire includes a number of roles in the operas of the 21st century, but he mostly specializes in the 20th century music, like Strauss, Berg, and modern American authors.

Virko Baley (Viroslav Petrovych Baley) was born in Western Ukraine on October 21, 1938. After the war he found himself in Germany, where he started his studies. Since 1949 he has been residing in the US. He has established and for many years headed the Symphony Orchestra of Las Vegas, as well as other orchestras and opera theater in this city. He is a winner of a number of prestigious awards, including the Grammy Award, and the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has visited Ukraine back in the Soviet time, maintaining creative contacts with the leading Ukrainian figures of art. His contribution as a conductor to promotion of Ukrainian music in the US is hard to overestimate. He has organized and realized dozens of American premieres of the works of Ukrainian composers and established the CD discs publishing company TNC, whose production is mostly made up by Ukrainian music. Since 1988 he has toured Ukraine many times. Baley is a laureate of Shevchenko Prize (1996), he was the first American to win this award. The maestro is a foreign member of the NSKU. In 1989 he wrote music and was one of the producers of the film Swan Lake. The Zone (director: Yurii Illienko, script by Serhii Parajanov, which won the FIPRESCI prize at the Cannes film Festival in 1990. Later Baley wrote music to another film by Illienko, Prayer for Hetman Mazepa (2002). He has published a number of articles about Ukrainian composers (Sylvestrov, Zahortsev, Bibik, Dychko, Hrabovsky, etc.).