Sergei Prokofiev, War and Peace (1946)

Guess what? With this, I have now seen every opera on that Guardian list. And guess what else? It's my two-hundred-fiftieth opera. Yeah! The question I have is: will I theoretically be able to hit a thousand? Is that a realistic possibility? It's so hard to judge these things, but even though that is a lot of operas, my feeling is, yeah, probably so. I just keep discovering new (as in, new-to-me, not contemporary, although contemporary also) composers who have operas which have indeed been produced and made available via digital media--far more than I'm actually able to watch. Maybe this'll slack off at a certain point, but it shows no signs. And of course always new operas from Operavision, although now, of course, Coronavirus is playing merry hell with their schedule. It's actually sort of funny (hey, you've got to find humor in these times): for the months of March and April, they had an all-Mozart schedule planned, but what with everything being cancelled, they are furiously changing the schedule, adding and subtracting things in a desperate effort to hit on something that'll actually be performed.

Have I read War and Peace? Yes, I have, in college, half a lifetime ago, though I definitely gave up on the massive epilogue about Russian history and whatnot. Do I remember it? Not particularly! Any criticism that I have of War and Peace the opera is concerned with the opera alone. If something works it works, if it doesn't it doesn't, with no reference to the novel. That is all I can do!

That said, I did sort of wonder how such a famously massive book could be made into an opera. It's long, four hours, but...even so. Ol' Sergei had his work cut out for him! It turns out that the answer is: by ruthlessly paring down and streamlining the story. So, the first act is called "Peace." It centers around Natasha Rostova, who is engaged to Prince Andrei but who allows herself to be seduced by Prince Anatole and plans to elope with him even though he's secretly already married. The cad! The second half, "War" (betcha didn't see that coming) is of course about Napoleon's efforts to take Moscow and the resistance thereto, featuring Andrei and Anatole's brother-in-law Pierre, who feels stifled in his life of meaningless luxury until he learns that war is a force that gives him meaning. He lives, Andrei dies, Russia is saved, and that's that.

I like Prokofiev's music a lot. The first half of the opera has a lot of dances in it, as you'd expect, and the second is dominated by rousing, patriotic choruses, as mandated by the Committee on the Arts. I can imagine their thinking: well, it's Tolstoy, a canonical part of our literature that we want to embrace, but boy, we sure aren't in love with the fact that all the heroes are Princes and Counts. Well, maybe it'll be okay if it just demonstrates enough musical patriotism. Clearly a very artificial part of the opera, but hey, they are rousing, admittedly.

Still, there are decidedly issues here. The only other opera I've seen as bifurcated as this one is Les Troyens. As I recall, the novel more or less alternated between the two, but here it's all peace and then all war. I do clearly remember when reading it that the peace parts were entertaining but then the war parts...a bit of a slog. And whaddaya know, that impression carries over to the opera! I seriously got into the human drama in the first part, and Natasha's anguish at the end is very compelling. I wanted more! But I didn't get it. She only appears in one scene in the second half, at Andrei's deathbed, and her story is over. Instead, well, we get a lot of patriotic choruses, which is well and good to a certain extent, but a little of that goes a long way. It doesn't help that this half also involves a lot of characters we've never seen before and don't really care about (and neither Andrei's nor Pierre's dramas were very well-developed or of any great interest to me). There are scenes of both Russian and French soldiers discussing strategy. Overall: not super-riveting. This second part is some thirty minutes longer than the first, and I really started to feel the weight of those minutes. In the end, I was impressed by the musicality, but beaten down by the story.

This Mariinsky Theatre production from 1991 is supposedly the first time the whole thing was performed uncut. It's a surprisingly subdued production by Mariinsky standards, with minimalistic sets, although the costuming is elaborate. Maybe I didn't emphasize enough just how big the production is, with dozens of singing roles and extras; it might be better to keep it relatively simple, just so everything doesn't get completely bogged down. The production does feature, in two scenes, a borzoi wandering around the stage, who is, it goes without saying, a Very Good Dog. Also, a guy riding a horse.

I dunno. I like Prokofiev, yet now I've seen four of his operas, and none of them have wholly satisfied. The only other one that's performed with any regularity is The Fiery Angel, so I guess I should try that one. There's going to be a new production at the Met next year (assuming Coronavirus doesn't mean the cancelation of all performing arts ever), but to everyone's dismay, it's not being done Live in HD, possibly because it's supposed to be somewhat R-rated. Still, it's easily available elsewhere. What I really want to see is Semyon Kotko, which is apparently about a wealthy landowner who is heroically executed by the Red Army, but for some inexplicable reason, it doesn't seem to get much play these days. Well, someday, we can only hope!