Ukraine matters: Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa at Grange Park Opera

Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa is a rare sighting in this country, even perhaps outside Russia, unless a Russian company tours with it. So a new production from Grange Park Opera is welcome, especially when as successfully staged as David Pountney’s account is here. The Cossack leader Mazeppa is not portrayed in his heroic younger days, as depicted by Byron and Liszt, but is now the ageing Hetman trusted by Tsar Peter the Great, but secretly plotting Ukraine’s independence from Russia. Yes, the contemporary parallels are clear, but are not the focus of this production.

The tale, drawn from Pushkin’s poem Poltava, concerns the personal rather than the political, especially the relationship between Mazeppa and his much younger goddaughter, Mariya. Her father Kochubey opposes their proposed match, but Mariya willingly leaves with her lover, preferring him to young Andrei, whose affections she does not return. When Kochubey vengefully seeks to turn the Tsar against Mazeppa, he is rejected and handed over to the Cossack instead, who has him tortured and executed. Mariya and her mother, Lyubov, arrive too late to prevent the execution, and witnessing her father’s death drives Mariya into madness. After the Cossacks’ defeat at the battle of Poltava, Mazeppa is confronted by Andrei, who is shot. Mazeppa escapes, and the tragically insane Mariya sings a lullaby to the corpse of Andrei. 

The setting and costumes here are later 20th-century, and Mazeppa is a biker with long grey hair – a rebellious type. The location is initially on Kochubey’s estate, a wooden fortress whose tall watchtowers are moved around in subsequent scenes to reconfigure the stage space effectively. Later on, the nose of a jet fighter and a howitzer are added for a more military atmosphere. The best stroke of Francis O’ Connor’s staging is populating the final scene with nine coffins wheeled in on trolleys. There is a persistently morbid atmosphere in this work, in which almost each major character, provoked by various unhappy circumstances, at some point expresses the wish to die. Ghoulish gas-masked dancers emerge from some of these coffins.

David Stout sang an imposing Mazeppa, whose stage demeanour made his character a not implausible figure to attract a much younger woman. His voice is in impressive condition too, sonorous and well-centred, with some ring in the upper register. His singing of his love music with Mariya was especially fine. Similar vocal accomplishment was heard from Luciano Batinić as Kochubey, seemingly untroubled vocally by having to witness his colleague tortured by having his teeth pulled out without benefit of anaesthetic, but then Batinić trained first as a dentist! He also coped well with singing a long number in the torture chamber with this arms aloft, chained above his head. Quite a voice and quite a performance. 

The unlucky-in-love Andrei was sung by Grange Park debutant John Findon, whose tenor enables him to play Britten’s Peter Grimes and Bizet’s Don José, two others whose amorous ambitions are thwarted. He brought ardour to his anguished character in his two duets, early and late in the opera, with Mariya. 

Mariya was Rachel Nicholls, well known at Grange Park Opera and at many other venues for her Isolde. The large size of her voice, produced it seems without special effort, is the first thing one notices, followed by its attractive basic timbre. There was a hint of spread when the role got higher and louder, but it was always well under control and allied to a moving expressiveness. The amazing quiet ending to the opera, singing her lullaby to the dead Andrei, was gently sung with much tonal allure, bringing great pathos to that highly original close. Sara Fulgoni, a GPO regular, sang Lyubov well, although the role offers too little opportunity to one of Fulgoni’s pedigree. All the singers’ Russian sounded good, as far as we non-natives can ever tell (credit to language coach Arina Mkrtchian). 

Conductor Mark Shanahan directed the Orchestra of English National Opera – one of the best pit bands around and very welcome visitors to Grange Park. Both performed very well indeed in illuminating a colourful score they cannot have encountered often. This work and this production are well worth an excursion to West Horsley.