Joep Stapel about Maxim Shalygin’s opera:
Maxim Shalygin wrote an opera about love, based on Plato’s ‘Symposium’. Is ‘Amandante’ even an opera? What does it matter: the world premiere at the Muziekgebouw was an unforgettable experience.
Ukrainian-Dutch composer Maxim Shalygin (b. 1985) had no intention of ever making an opera, and those familiar with his work understand. Opera demands action and fast switching, while Shalygin’s music is characterised by slowly unfolding forms, coupled with almost obsessive depth.But it has come anyway: on Wednesday night, Shalygin’s opera Amandante was premiered in Amsterdam at the Muziekgebouw by the Athens-based Ukrainian opera company-in-balliance Nova Opera.
Amandante did, of course, become an extremely atypical opera. The subject is operatesque enough: love and lust. But the starting point for Paul van der Woerd’s libretto is Plato’s dialogue Symposium, a joust of ideas: lots of talk, zero action. Shalygin is one of the most interesting composers of his generation, but would it go down well?
That thought was not immediately dispelled by the wavering opening. The stage setting was intriguing: dark and empty, with the performers draped around a sofa set like piles of human wreckage. Accompanied by an electronic drone, the musicians tigered in slow-motion to their instruments, where pianist Antonii Baryshevskyi deployed a constantly repeated descending scale motif.
That somewhat predictable ‘minimal’ beginning went on for a very long time. The quartet of vocal soloists, in tight black jumpsuits with red and green floral shapes, fell in, still drooping on the bench. It remained sweet, on the handbrake, despite an occasional brilliantly surprising note. Next scene: Puccini-esque chinoiserie, a touch of Kate Bush’s ‘The man with the child in his eyes’. But then. It seemed as if Shalygin was using the above caveat as a springboard for an unforgettable musical theatre experience. The brave accompanying orchestra of string quintet and piano broke out of its straitjacket and began to derail dramatically, as it often does in Schnittke’s music. When the heart collectively pounded in the throat, everything fell silent and baritone Ruslan Kirsh sang a cappella a stunning song full of alienating gliding tones, ending in rarefied whistling: breathtaking.
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention