As Ukraine once more takes to the streets to protest against its government, WNO’s production of Tchaikovsky’s searing opera takes on a powerful contemporary resonance. Mazepa will open on May 20th at Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, before touring Wales and England. Mazepa is performed as part of WNO’s award-winning Russian Series. The production is supported by the WNO Partnership. At its heart, the near mythical figure of a Cossack rebel called Mazepa who challenged the Russian Tsar of his day and paid a terrible price. Mazepa was a 17th century firebrand who led his supporters in battle to win independence from their Russian overlords. Mazepa’s hopes were dashed, but his legend lives on – in the writings of Lord Byron and Puskin amongst others. (Tchaikovsky’s opera is based on Pushkin’s poem about the romantic outlaw who defied convention). In 1991, Ukraine finally did receive its independence and Mazepa’s portrait was engraved on the country’s coins and an epic film of his life made by the country’s fledgling film industry. The film had a mixed response from Ukraine’s film going public, but the Russian government was less equivocal. They simply banned it. “Tchaikovsky was convinced that opera was the best way to reach the people,” points out WNO’s Music Director Carlo Rizzi. “And this opera is quite extraordinary, both in the story it tells and the way it is told by the singers on stage and the musicians playing in the orchestra pit. Unusually for an opera, it centres on a love affair between a young woman and a much older man. Mazepa defies convention in more ways than one.” Robert Hayward will sing the title role, whilst the impressive Moscow-born soprano Tatiana Monogarova will sing the role of Mazepa’s young lover Maria. Robert has appeared many times with WNO in the past; over the coming year, he will be returning to sing key roles in productions that form part of the Russian Series, Mazepa in 2006 and Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina in Spring, 2007. Joining them will be Gidon Saks, who sang with such impressive force the role of Daland in WNO’s The Flying Dutchman in the 2006 Spring season, Marianna Tarasova who sang in the company’s production of Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci last year and American tenor Hugh Smith. The artistic team includes acclaimed Russian conductor Alexander Polianichko and directors Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser whose production of La traviata was the first performance WNO gave in its new home at Wales Millennium Centre. “We have decided to set this production in the late 1980’s, early 1990’s, at a time of the collapse of the former Soviet Union,” explains Moshe Leiser. “The opera’s themes of violence and terror and of a satellite country trying to find its independence from a larger neighbour has a contemporary resonance when you reflect on the situation in today’s Ukraine, or Belarus. We are not going to be rigid in this in our interpretation, but at the same time we remember vividly the television footage of those troubled times and it’s something that will be visible in our production. “But it’s also Shakespearian in its feel – we never lose sight of the fact that this is also a story of how a passionate affair between two people is crushed: the old man Mazepa and his young lover Maria. It is an extraordinary opera with many challenges. There is an execution, a war and at the very end a young woman goes quietly insane. It will really have a powerful impact on all those who see it.” Mazepa is performed at the Wales Millennium Centre on May 20 and 27, before touring to Birmingham, Southampton, Plymouth, Oxford, Bristol and Llandudno. Further tour information from: www.wno.org.uk |
| Welsh National Opera web site: www.wno.org.uk |
| Penny Simpson e-mail: penny.simpson@wno.org.uk |
Wednesday, April 19, 2006 |
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