Spring Break
Operatic version of Gogol's 'The Nose' nothing to sneeze at
by Hannah Kirsch
Deputy Editor
Arts | 3/3/09
Posted online at 7:51 PM EST on 3/2/09
/ Last updated at 4:15 AM EST on 3/2/09
The world of opera has its iconic settings and moods: the consumptive, romantic Paris of La Bohème; the sexy, dangerous Seville of Carmen; the jolly and quirky Italy of The Marriage of Figaro. But in Opera Boston's performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's The Nose, staged last Friday at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, precedent is tossed aside. Instead of a world of family, love and war, we are shown a Moscow in which the police force is too busy fondling a pretzel salesgirl to arrest the giant anthropomorphic nose strolling across the road.
The plot of The Nose, drawn from the Gogol short story of the same name, goes something like this: Minor bureaucrat Kovalyov awakens one day to find his nose has vanished from his face. After discovering the nose in his morning bread, the barber Ivan Yakovlevich attempts to dispose of it by flinging it into the river, but the nose returns as a bureaucrat of a higher level than Kovalyov himself. What follows is a delightfully surreal romp through the city as Kovalyov tries to find his nose and reattach it to his face, abetted and thwarted all the way by fools of every social class.
Opera Boston's directors, designers and choreographers made certain from the first that the audience would be totally immersed in the grotesquerie that is Gogol's vision of 19th-century Moscow. The production opened with cleverly lit "rain" on a stage bare but for screen buildings and streets in various stages of gray decay, and the first movement on stage is of the Russian golden double-headed eagle flapping onstage with the giant nose held in its claws. The introductory scenes that follow-the corpulent, foul barber, the hip-thrusting succubi and the raunchy timpani and brass of Kovalyov's dreams-did not so much set the stage for the narrative as characterize it, throw us into the absurdity to come rather than allow us to dip our toes in.
Stephen Salters proved adept as the mostly noseless Kovalyov with his rich voice and properly blustering manner. While Salters could have more effectively brought out the self-importance that is so important to Kovalyov's character, his skill at navigating Shostakovich's thorny score offset any thespian weaknesses.
The plot of The Nose, drawn from the Gogol short story of the same name, goes something like this: Minor bureaucrat Kovalyov awakens one day to find his nose has vanished from his face. After discovering the nose in his morning bread, the barber Ivan Yakovlevich attempts to dispose of it by flinging it into the river, but the nose returns as a bureaucrat of a higher level than Kovalyov himself. What follows is a delightfully surreal romp through the city as Kovalyov tries to find his nose and reattach it to his face, abetted and thwarted all the way by fools of every social class.
Opera Boston's directors, designers and choreographers made certain from the first that the audience would be totally immersed in the grotesquerie that is Gogol's vision of 19th-century Moscow. The production opened with cleverly lit "rain" on a stage bare but for screen buildings and streets in various stages of gray decay, and the first movement on stage is of the Russian golden double-headed eagle flapping onstage with the giant nose held in its claws. The introductory scenes that follow-the corpulent, foul barber, the hip-thrusting succubi and the raunchy timpani and brass of Kovalyov's dreams-did not so much set the stage for the narrative as characterize it, throw us into the absurdity to come rather than allow us to dip our toes in.
Stephen Salters proved adept as the mostly noseless Kovalyov with his rich voice and properly blustering manner. While Salters could have more effectively brought out the self-importance that is so important to Kovalyov's character, his skill at navigating Shostakovich's thorny score offset any thespian weaknesses.
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