08 Mar 2006

Mazeppa at the Met — Three Reviews

This season the Metropolitan Opera presents Tchaikovsky's infrequently performed opera, Mazeppa. Acording to the Met, "[a]lthough Tchaikovsky is best known for Eugene Onegin and several great ballet scores, he wrote many other wonderful operas including Mazeppa, which receives its premiere at The Met this season. Premiered in Moscow in 1884, it was first seen in St Petersburg just three days later, and has remained in the repertoire of The Mariinsky Theatre from that time. Based on a poem by Pushkin, it tells the story of a 17th century Ukrainian separatist, who falls in love with a friend’s daughter. The opera is full of tuneful episodes (similar to those in The Queen of Spades) and this is a very rare chance to see the opera in New York." Here are three reviews.

A Met Premiere With a Russian Twist

By FRED KIRSHNIT [NY Sun, 8 March 2006]

The last time anything called "Mazeppa" was performed at the Metropolitan Opera was in 1894, when listeners heard a Franz Liszt tone poem of the same name. As for the Tchaikovsky opera, it didn't receive its official Met debut until Monday evening, when it took the stage under the watchful ear of the Kirov's Valery Gergiev.

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From a Galaxy Far Far Away, Tchaikovsky's Ivan the Rebel

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI [NY Times, 8 March 2006]

Though Tchaikovsky's "Mazeppa" is a staple of the Kirov Opera at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, it has made it only to the periphery of opera companies outside Russia. When the Kirov came to the Metropolitan Opera House in the spring of 1998 to present four Russian operas, "Mazeppa," the least well known, proved a stunning revelation. Conducted by Valery Gergiev, Tchaikovsky's epic about the 17th-century Ukrainian separatist Ivan Mazeppa seemed an anguished, probing and noble work.

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Mazeppa, Metropolitan Opera, New York

By Martin Bernheimer [Financial Times, 7 March 2006]

Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa abounds in glorious melodies, thoughtful characterisations, rousing set-pieces, wrenching choruses and wondrous orchestral interludes, both snazzy and sombre. The ending, a mad scene for the gentle heroine culminating in a haunting lullaby, must rank among the composer’s finest inspirations. Still, US performances have been exceedingly rare (the first occurred in 1925), audiences scant. What do we know, after all, about Ukrainian separatists fighting Cossack landowners in the realm of Peter the Great?

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