Sweet Smell of Shostakovich

Review: The Nose

The Metropolitan Opera, New York

March 11, 2010

I. The Music

Dmitri Shostakovich composed his first opera, The Nose, which made its Met debut this season, when he was 22. Way to overachieve. Based on a short story by Nicolai Gogol, the opera matches its supreme absurdity with savage instrumentation and leaps into atonality. Satirical and unromantic, the scenario follows Major Kovalyov, whose nose becomes detached in a barbershop. He runs to the cathedral the next morning only to behold his own nose, parading about town in the garb of a higher-ranked civil servant. After sinking into despair--and atoning for his lascivious, arrogant ways--he awakes again to find his nose reattached, and bounds back to the streets.

To counter Kovalyov, scored as a baritone, the nose sings (in his few brief solos) punishingly high tenor lines: flares of high Cs. Cashing in on the absurdity, Shostakovich writes the police inspector who seeks out Kovalyov and his nose up to a tenor E-flat. It's a frantic, devious score: bit chorus parts weave in and out, broken by percussion shatters and piercing woodwind pecks and flourishes.

In the midst of the maniacal, overpopulated surge of music, a few semi-Romantic moments emerge. Act II closes with Kovalyov's bedside lament, a lyrical pleading to return to full nasality. In Act III, Kovalyov writes to a woman who may have enchanted him to marry her daughter, against his wishes; after the shouts of men, this impassioned soprano line sounds lush by Shostakovich's standards.

II. The Production

While a minor twentieth-century opera, The Nose entrances with its speed and wit. To complement the musical frenzy, the Met chose South African artist William Kentridge to helm their premiere of this work. Kentridge's style of visual collage is full of punch and humor. Projections cover the proscenium; some supertitles flash in newscript across the backdrop, furthering the sense of alarm that spreads across St. Petersburg at the runaway nostrils. Visually busy, if continually impressive, the production could use a pause in the few lyrical moments from Kentridge's mash-up of posters, processions of caricatures, and propaganda.

Even then, he does merge the sardonic and sneakily emotive sides of The Nose: a ballerina dances gracefully against Kovalyov's Act II soliloquy--though her head is mischievously replaced with a giant nose, blending grace and bathos. Paulo Szot, making an impressive Met debut, possesses a firm, if light, baritone that delivers this solo spot compassionately. His character is a Lothario, a hopeless cad, who deserves his misfortune; yet Szot strikes such a charmingly buoyant, yet grounded, figure, I felt for the guy. It's a thrill to see someone successfully straddle musical theater (Tony-winning for South Pacific) and opera.

The smaller roles teem with first-rate singers, especially the refreshing soprano Erin Morley as the betrothed daughter. All jot off spiky solo lines, close to pitched dialogue, with brio and a wink. Everyone's in on the joke--and still Kentridge jabs us with his art of oppression. Silhouettes overpower the stage; media encircles like a CNN newscast gone cubist. He conjures a Russian society full of character and menace, well-matched to a Shostakovich that sings in sputters and snarls.