Magnificent re-stitch of flawed opera
War and Peace Welsh National Opera/wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff ★★★★★
In the melancholy catalogue of heroic failures, Prokofiev’s wildly ambitious attempt to translate Tolstoy’s epic into opera merits a noble place. Overshadowed by the horrors of war and the menace of Stalinist despotism, it’s a project he grappled with throughout the decade before his death in 1953, and as material was continually cut, spliced, revised and added, the score now survives in a variety of versions. Welsh National Opera’s (WNO) new production presents a re-stitched edition, in a fluent English translation.
The narrative divides squarely into 90 minutes of Peace, focused on Natasha and Andrei, followed by 100 minutes of War, embracing the events of 1812 that culminated in Napoleon’s retreat. The central character of Nikolai Rostov is eliminated, and Pierre Bezukhov only becomes prominent in the second half. It’s an efficient but brutal piece of butchery.
The best music is at the beginning; a thrillingly barbaric chorus of defiance, followed by a lovely lyrical nocturne for Andrei (beautifully sung here by Jonathan Mcgovern) and a ball scene that plays to Prokofiev’s strengths as a composer for ballet. Subsequently, it meanders and loses impetus: in brief, the orchestral writing is far more interesting than the vocal line and there’s too much Soviet tub-thumping, often distressingly crude and aggressive. Of Tolstoy’s wisdom and sensitivity, there is nothing: this is a cartoon strip of a great novel.
WNO makes the best possible case for the work’s virtues, in an energetic and resourceful staging by David Pountney that sticks broadly to the historical period. A cast of what seems like hundreds works hard throughout, with the chorus taking multiple small roles, and notable cameos from Leah-marian Jones as Marie, Adrian Dwyer as Kuragin, and David Stout as Dolokhov and Napoleon. Lauren Michelle is an intermittently shrill but nonetheless engaging Natasha, Mark Le Brocq a sympathetic Pierre: one wishes they had more chance to shine.
Tomas Hanus, WNO’S masterful music director, does all he can to keep this lumbering behemoth of a score on its toes, and the orchestra rewards him with unfailing verve and edge. It’s a magnificent company effort: I just wish that the music delivered more expressive lyricism and less crude propaganda.