The New York Times Essential Library by Anthony Tommasini

Author:Anthony Tommasini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2011-07-13T04:00:00+00:00

First performance of the full-evening version with thirteen scenes: Moscow, Bolshoi Theater, December 15, 1959 (though this production made cuts in the score)

As befits the epic Tolstoy novel that is its source, Prokofiev’s War and Peace is a sprawling opera, nearly four hours of music with thirteen scenes that move from mansions and ballrooms in Moscow and St. Petersburg to battlefields during Napoleon’s failed Russian campaign in 1812. The opera, which Prokofiev composed in the early 1940s and revised several times before his death, calls for a large chorus (one hundred or more is typical), a sizeable orchestra, and enough singers to cover sixty-eight roles (some doublings are possible).

The idea of creating an opera from Tolstoy’s monumental novel, with its hundreds of characters, complex subplots, frequent sermonizing, and historical tracts, might have seemed foolhardy. But Prokofiev, who wrote the libretto with Mira Alexandrovna Mendelson (at the time his common-law wife), assumed that his audience knew the novel intimately. In a way, he conceived of his opera as a series of musical dramatizations of key scenes and characters.

The pacing is at times intentionally deliberate. Prokofiev tries to emulate the rambling conversations that are the essence of the novel’s aristocratic scenes by giving his characters time to gossip, exchange confidences, and voice asides. The ingenious qualities of the music come through in the subtle details. The orchestra enshrouds the vocal lines with harmonically pungent commentary. The score abounds in elusive tunes like the insinuating waltz that Natasha and Prince Andrei first dance to, tunes that you can’t quite get out of your head but can’t quite get straight in your memory.

Tolstoy’s philosophical ruminations are replaced by stirring patriotic choruses for the defiant Russian people. While composing the opera, Prokofiev came under pressure from Stalin’s All-Union Committee on Arts Affairs to turn it into a propaganda vehicle for the Soviet war effort. If those brassy choruses are somewhat bombastic, there is a subtext of foreboding in Prokofiev’s clashing harmonies and asymmetrical phrases.

Though the opera of necessity does only a glancing job of telling Tolstoy’s story, the essence of the novel comes through palpably. This is due, I think, to the slightly bitter, at times ironic tone of Prokofiev’s music, which eerily captures the detached, wry, and ironic tone of Tolstoy’s narrative voice. Both works present epic events with a sardonic attitude that paradoxically makes the human tragedies all the more poignant.

Among conductors on the scene today, Valery Gergiev owns this work, and his recording, taken from live performances in 1991 with the Kirov Opera at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, is the one to have. Though War and Peace abounds in stirring choral scenes and tumultuous battle reenactments, Gergiev never goes for superficial excitement. Instead he emphasizes the music’s bittersweet elegance and harmonic richness, lending the opera an affecting gravity. He draws luminous yet incisive playing from the orchestra, and husky, robust singing from the chorus.

The excellent cast brings stylistic authority and arresting involvement to its work. There are consistently impressive performances

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