Even though Dmitri Shostakovich wrote nine operas and operettas, his work in this form wasn’t given much attention until a few decades ago, when the often tough music of this 20th-century Russian composer began moving more and more into the mainstream.
His searing expressionist opera, “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” which was banned in the Soviet Union for nearly 30 years, is now unequivocally part of the standard repertoire, and “The Nose” is getting ever-increasing attention.
Indeed, the Chicago Opera Theater opened the much-belated Chicago premiere of this latter work Friday evening at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, with a smart, winning new production take makes clear the work’s appeal.
This opera, which received its first staged production in 1930 and was not revived until 1974, does not have the depth, sweep or intensity of the slightly later “Lady Macbeth,” and it was never intended to.
Instead, as the opera’s unusual title suggests, it is a light, whacky, absurdist comedy that does raise issues about class, identity and social mores but is as much about having fun as it about making grand statements. At one point, the Chief of Police asks, “Has anyone here just lost your nose?” — surely one of the best comic lines in all opera.
Based on Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 tale of the same name, “The Nose” tells the story of Kovalyov (baritone Aleksey Bogdanov), a government functionary, who wakes up one morning to find his nose missing and embarks on a wonderfully ridiculous odyssey to find it.
Along the way he encounters an unhelpful group of green-visored newspapermen, a team of Keystone Kops-like police officers in elaborate blue and red uniforms, and even a saleswoman with bagels on a stick and draped across her (soprano Corinne Costell).
At one point, he discovers his nose has turned into a well-dressed state councillor (tenor Curtis Bannister), a higher-ranking official than he is, prancing in self-satisfied fashion around the city and drawing admiring looks from all the women.
Francesca Zambello, one of the top operatic stage directors of our time, staged “The Nose” at Bard College’s SummerScape in 2004, and she returns to it here. Rather than imposing some unnecessary artistic conceit, she simply leans into the absurdity and tells the story earnestly with an angled, Constructivist set designed by Marcus Doshi.
Zambello maximizes the laughs, nicely matching visual gags with the innate comedy in the libretto, and infuses the big crowd scenes with zany pandemonium. One of her best ideas is the addition of six talented, white-garbed dancers who move set pieces, provide a connecting line between scenes and sometimes even interact with the main players, notably a funny dance scene with the Nose.
Shostakovich put together a wonderfully varied score that draws on multiple sources ranging from Russian folk music to elements from Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck.” At some points, the pit orchestra sounds like a drunken town band, providing, for example, sound effects early on that suggest Kovalyov’s snoring. At other times, the score is more aggressive and discordant, with mocking brass, sneering strings and growling basses and contrabassoon.
This is Lidiya Yankovskaya’s final time in the pit as Chicago Opera Theater’s music director. A conductor very much on the way up, she is stepping down at the end of the 2023-24 season after seven years in the position, and she will be missed.
During her tenure, she has led the commissioning and development of 11 new one-act and full-length operas and introduced more than 25 works to Chicago audiences, including nearly a dozen world premieres.
The Russian-American conductor was very much at home in Shostakovich’s score, adroitly capturing both its idiomatic flavor and its harder edges, propelling the action forward and holding all the varied, sometimes competing forces together.
This production brings together a large cast, 11 principals and 29 ensemble members, and, though Shostakovich’s challenging score pushed some of these singers to their vocal limits, virtually everyone was up to the task.
With a forceful, easy vocal style and a winning comic sense, Bogdanov strongly anchored the production. He was nicely matched by tenor David Cangelosi, who is a natural comedian and made the most of his role as Kovalyov’s lackey, Ivan. Also notable are tenor Justin Berkowitz as the Chief of Police and Bannister as the Nose.
“The Nose” is an important work that one could easily have imagined the Lyric Opera of Chicago debuting locally. But much as it did in 2019 with Jake Heggie’s “Moby-Dick,” Chicago Opera Theater grabbed the opportunity for this premiere and deserves kudos for both its initiative and this first-rate result.
