Art in movement

Who does not remember the names Kai and Gerda from the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale “The Snow Queen”? This story of the relationship and privations of two young people has shaped our notions of friendship and love from childhood. It taught us about overcoming obstacles, helping each other, the strength of fragility and the weakness of brutish, wicked force, and the character traits, and life choices, of warmth and coldness. This children’s tale also brought us face to face with the unambiguous choice between good and evil.

On the small stage of the theater the tale of the Snow Queen comes alive amid the wonderful decorations of set designer Liudmyla Nahorna. The scope of the artist’s mastery shows in the lifelike illusion of perspective and depth that she succeeded in creating. Looking at the painted canvas, you find yourself staring into a boundless distance. Through the window of the old house where Gerda lives with her grandmother you can see the limitless expanses all the way to Lapland — a real or imaginary country that strikes fear into every person’s soul. This country symbolizes forced separation from a loved one.

Nothing is happening yet, and life is fine in this warm and cozy corner, but clouds are already gathering on the horizon, painting ghostly images of imminent changes. A mobile construction of two pedestals easily converts from an island of happiness into two halves of an ice floe resembling splinters of glass, the Evil Mirror. The two halves are carried apart by the ocean of life, separating our heroes. Once the Snow Queen appears, the half on which Kai remains with his frozen heart turns into a grand sleigh that carries the boy away from the girl. But she is prepared to overcome the icy absence of love — the evil that “kills us more effectively than hardship and despair.”

The show’s beauty is created by the harmony achieved through the creative concepts of the set designer and stage director, who collaborated closely with the conductor, choreographer, stage lighting designer, and choirmaster. The dramatic music of contemporary Russian composer Sergey Banevich sets the rhythm for the events unfolding onstage. Production director Larysa Mospan- Shulha manages to stage each episode in such a way that the play has virtually no superfluous scenes. The musical score uses a minimum of music to convey Gerda’s long journey through forests, fields, cities, and kingdoms in search of Kai.

To convey the illusion of a long and exhausting quest, the heroine dashes between two curtains — an interlude curtain and a semi-transparent one. She meets different people and asks them the same question about Kai’s whereabouts. It is increasingly obvious that she is very tired and has covered a long distance. Then she encounters a group of robbers. This scene is so emotionally charged by the music and stage direction that it becomes a turning point in the show: in an unequal fight between the delicate girl and the robbers, good inevitably triumphs over evil thanks to the strength of the very notion of love penetrating their empty hearts.

The melodics of the opera make it very similar to a musical, which require each character to make special, dance-like moves. The opera has virtually no static scenes: the main heroes, secondary characters, and the chorus are in constant flux. This is due in no small part to choreographer Viktor Lytvynov, played a key role in staging the opera. Last March he was appointed the theater’s chief ballet-master. This experienced choreographer enriched this operatic play with action that similar stage productions often lack. This applies not only to the ballet scenes, of which there are not many, but to the entire spectacle.

Collaborating creatively with the stage director, Viktor Lytvynov plastically portrayed most of the performers, devising characteristic moves and gestures for each of them. His Trolls (brilliantly played by Liubov Kaniuka and Anatoliy Hurin) are more amusing than hideous; more annoying and even somewhat dimwitted than truly evil. A solution like that is justified and fully in keeping with the costumes designed by Liudmyla Nahorna. In this white fairytale everything is outwardly beautiful, which is why overtly hideous action coupled with external appeal would create too much discordance and would be too much like real life. A fairytale should remain a fairytale.

The brilliant and somewhat melancholy ice skating scene, which serves as a background to a dramatic episode in which Kai is transformed and then disappears, is created by professional dancers dancing at center stage, while the members of the chorus slowly move in couples on the fringes of the stage. This resembles a skating rink, in the middle of which children are skating, while the grownups are closer to the fence. You can also sense the choreographer’s touch in a scene in which the Snow Queen carries Kai away in her sleigh, a massive structure designed to convey the speed and strength of the wintry snow that swoops up the queen and her entourage.

The production team uses the cinematographic effect of slow motion to create the illusion of rapid movement that changes into flight, when a transparent curtain descends behind the Queen’s cavalcade. The lower edge of the curtain resembles clouds beneath the sleigh’s runners. In a different scene the same hem represents snow mounds.

The scene in the robbers’ camp is magnificent. Dynamic and colorful, it is an alluring blend of costumes, props, and a fluid combination of musical and vocal backgrounds. The subtle humor in the author’s musical score mitigates the cruelty of the robbers’ environment, and it is strengthened by the plastic movements of the riotous outlaws, who are toying with life and emotions. The composer wrote the part of the Robber Hag, the female leader of the robbers, for a bass voice. This incongruity creates an additional comical effect designed by the producers and conveyed by the performers (Roman Smoliar, who combines vocal artistry with originality). The robber girl, daughter of the Robber Hag, is played by Viktoria Chenska. She resembles a modern street child, a teenage girl who has not experienced enough genuine love and attention but has not yet lost the ability to feel deeply. After all, beautiful feelings can shatter the shaky wall of lovelessness, erected by force of circumstance. When this happens, kindness and nobility, with which God invests every child, gain the upper hand.

Arguably the most impressive part of this scene is the appearance of Bae, the reindeer. This proud inhabitant of the land of permafrost is very lifelike thanks to the prodigious talents of the costume artist. The reindeer is probably the only static character in the opera. However, his immovable state, harmoniously combined with the reserved and emotional bass part performed by Yuriy Kovalenko, endow him with grandeur and majesty.

Swiftly the plot takes us to the realm of the Snow Queen, played convincingly by Tetiana Stranchenko. The luxurious blue, white, and silver decorations and costumes of the mistress of the ice kingdom are mesmerizing. It seems that nothing can defeat such frozen beauty. Eternity itself rules the small stage until the delicate, brave girl with her passionate and loving heart breaks the white spell with the warmth and strength of her feelings. Played by Iryna Ladina, Gerda is so charismatic that she arouses boundless sympathy in both young and old spectators. Her gentle ringing voice, coupled with her impressive dramatic skills, convey the play’s main idea: love is a life-giving force capable of resisting the murderous force of lovelessness and indifference, a world that threatens our real lives and the lives of our children, a world in which it is not easy to find the right way without the help of the wise Lamplighter (Vitaliy Zhmudenko is a veritable guide for the audience).

Of course, this wonderful production with its sumptuous decorations and costumes would not have been possible without funding provided by the Main Administration of Culture and Arts in Kyiv and the city fathers. One month before the premiere in Kyiv the same opera was staged in Vladikavkaz, the capital of Northern Ossetia, by performers of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, thanks to the enthusiasm of Larisa Gergieva. With the help of her famous husband, conductor Valeriy Gergiev, she found sponsors outside of Russia, mostly in England, who presented a true New Year’s fairytale to the children of Beslan, where the wounds from numerous acts of terror have still not healed.

Ukrainian children are blessed in that they have never experienced such horror. We live in a beautiful city that can (and must) invest in its future, rearing new generations by introducing them to the best examples of high operatic art and ballet.