Sergei Prokofiev’s ambitious, richly textured War and Peace is less known than it deserves to be. This bold new production, with Catalan iconoclast Calixto Bieito at the helm, takes on the challenge with aplomb. Co-produced with the Grand Théâtre de Genève, first seen there in September 2021, it now appears with an all-new Hungarian cast in its glamorous new setting. The neo-Renaissance finery of the Hungarian State Opera House provides the perfect stage for this vision of Russian decadence, the chandeliers and ornate decorations created in the opera house’s own workshops an echo of the silk hangings, red velvet and gilding that make the Magyar Allami Operaház feel like stepping back a century or two.
Speaking of stepping back in time, Prokofiev’s opera opens partway through Tolstoy’s story, with Andrei Bolkonsky (baritone Csaba Szegedi) heartbroken and disillusioned, in a world whose grandeur is already going out of style; the production conjures this, wonderfully, with the furniture and static singers initially draped in shimmering plastic wrap. The Budapest opera house’s vast stage has been boxed in, jewel-box style, so that when the full cast of singers emerges for the ball – the 28 leads (!) will go on to cover 45 named parts – the event appears crowded and intimate, even stifling. Within these close quarters, everything is intensified, including the story itself. The historical tale of tragic hopes and bittersweet victories has been distilled from more than a thousand pages of prose into a dizzyingly accelerated series of 13 tableaux. Prokofiev takes this challenge in good spirits, whipping the story along like a war horse.
Musically, there is much to enjoy in this lesser-known work, including some lovely two-part harmonies and a handful of big emotional arias. But it is the opera’s sense of rhythm that is really striking, moving from the slightly manic 3/4 energy of Act 1 to the wild battle choruses of Act 2, from an unsettled Peace to an unstoppable War. The Hungarian State Opera Orchestra sounded spectacular under Alan Buribayev’s baton, the hall’s acoustics swelling the sound into something both immersive and feverish.
Unafraid to take risks or take up space onstage, the singers were impressive throughout, with a sense of ease and power as an ensemble that belied the production’s premiere status. (And it’s a premiere in more than one way, this being the opera’s first Hungarian staging.) The huge cast, the opera’s most obvious stumbling block, was consistently used to its full potential, with most of the players remaining onstage for all of Act 1, demanding impressive stamina and flexibility, yielding a visually and musically imposing result.
Szabolcs Brickner made a tremendous Pierre Bezukhov, his tenor strong and perfectly mastered, sinewy rather than muscular – and charming to boot. Andrea Szántó brought an expressive voice to the parts of Maria Dmitrievna Akhrosimova and Mavra Kusminitchna, full of complexity and life. Zsolt Haja was a chillingly smooth Napoleon. In the second half, Péter Fried’s rounded, resonant bass gave General Kutuzov both depth and craftiness.
But this is really Natasha’s story, at least in Prokofiev’s telling – he writes her such beautiful, angular lines! – and Andrea Brassói-Jőrös absolutely shone, her voice at once clear and rich, with a lovely liquid vibrato on high notes and real strength to her lower range. She was a delight to listen to, from start to finish.
But all this beauty must make space for blood as the story charges towards resolution. By the interval, we were teetering on the edge of something nastier, a party that’s gone on for far too long. At the start of the second half, a thin veil of smoke swirls in the air, and the atmosphere has changed. A hole has been punched in the back wall of the palace, the human mess of Act 1 transfigured into the aftermath of war. Or perhaps it is all still a game for the upper crust of Russian high society; a game that only Pierre Bezhukov isn’t playing. Is that a smear of lipstick, or fresh blood? Is it all a game of chess, or are people’s lives at stake? Joy has been twisted into ridicule, fun into grotesquerie. Slowly, as Act 2 progresses, the palace itself – part of Rebecca Ringst’s mind-boggling stage design – begins to come apart at the seams, an impressive bit of technical showmanship that left the whole story feeling as if it were teetering at the edge of collapse.
Does it all tip a bit far into chaos, in the final scenes, with crawling bugs, green neon bars, the palace hanging apart like broken china? Perhaps, but this hallucinogenic, grotesque quality serves the story well, undercutting any trace of triumphalism in the final victorious marches and choruses – which the composer, not quite incidentally, was ordered to add by the Soviet Union’s patriotic Committee on the Arts – even as Prokofiev’s halting, unresolved instrumental underlay darkens the tone. It’s a strange, forceful ending to an impressive production, that's bound to stay with the audience long after the curtain falls.
Elodie's press trip to Budapest was funded by Hungarian State Opera.
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