Oh, Lo, Lo, Lo, theyʼve gone and made an opera about you. Itʼs a tawdry affair, too, with bondage, orgasm, rape and murder presented explicitly onstage, no holds barred, no taboo left untouched. But the music is fantastic and the new production in Prague is a beauty, dark and foreboding, a noir nightmare brought to vivid, disturbing life by a first-rate team.
Of all people, it was the incomparable cellist Mstislav Rostropovich who suggested to his friend, Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, that he set Vladimir Nabokovʼs sensational novel to music. Though the 1994 premiere in Stockholm was a success, as were subsequent debuts in Russia and Germany, this is the only the fourth full production of a work that presents serious challenges beyond its controversial subject matter.
Nabokovʼs novel may be about forbidden love, but at its core it is still a love story. There is nothing redeeming or uplifting about Shchedrinʼs opera, for which he also wrote the libretto; the characters are all bad people who come to bad ends. Even Lolita admits itʼs not her first time when Humbert Humbert finally beds her. How to hold the audienceʼs attention for a three-hour wallow through depravity?
Slovak director Sláva Daubnerová doesnʼt back off the characterizations – from the opening notes, Humbert is a ruthless sexual predator with no grey shadings, thoroughly amoral and filled with loathsome self-pity. But she places him in a morally ambiguous universe. The rotating stage spins almost constantly, scenes melt and divide, video images add layers of fantasy and guilt to the narrative, Humbert lumbers around the stage off-balance – all creating a powerful sense of vertigo, a world unmoored from conventional notions of right and wrong. The question is, how far can it go?
In the atmosphere that Daubnerová creates, anything seems possible. The stage is perpetually dark, giving the few points of light – living room lamps, car headlights, traffic signals, a motel sign – unusual impact and ominous connotations. Even the chorus that appears on stage periodically as Humbertʼs judges seems swallowed by the void. Boris Kudličkaʼs ingenious set shows the action unfolding in several places simultaneously, and with an almost constant barrage of video projections, the overall visual effect is unsettling – confusing at times, but imbued with a sense of dread and unpredictability.
This reinforces Shchedrinʼs brilliant score, a modern masterwork that almost precludes the need for clear dialogue and titles. Motifs define the characters, abrupt changes in mood and tone propel the story, inventive instrumentation (tenor saxophone, celesta and harpsichord, chimes, rattles, bongo drums) lends a fresh burnish, and occasional sonic effects, like a phone ringing, add moments of unexpected humor.