Courtly Love

by Peter Burwasser

Tchaikovsky's final opera, Iolanta, is intimate and even reflective in the same way that late Strauss operas are. These autumnal works do not seem to reach for the broad public so much as the connoisseur. In Iolanta, Tchaikovsky boldly flaunts convention by not using a male voice for nearly the first third of the one-act opera. This allows him to indulge in a gorgeous display of solo and ensemble female voices, conjuring a dreamlike state that reflects the fairy tale story about a blind young princess torn between two suitors. In all of Iolanta, Tchaikovsky displays an utterly self-assured ability to match musical lines to character, finding subtle differences, for example, in the regal bearings of the mature King and the fervid young nobleman Vaudemont. An Arabian doctor is introduced by whole tone scales evoking Asian mystery.

Indeed, there is so much that is fine about this opera, especially when performed so vibrantly, that it is probably wise to simply ignore the glaring weakness of the sappy libretto, which is replete with clumsy structure and preachy religiosity. It is something of a wonder that Tchaikovsky, who so brilliantly set the words of Russian poet Pushkin to music, would end his career with such mush, but this was the same man, after all, who created sprawling never-never lands in the ballets Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty.

We are left, then, with the sheer loveliness of the music and the strengths of the AVA production, but this turns out to be quite a plateful. The tiny Helen Corning Warden Theater is normally a third filled with musicians, but as this was a piano-accompanied production (with the superb Ghenady Meirson at the keyboard), AVA's directors and designers actually had a stage to work with, inventing an elegant, flower-strewn faraway place that seemed to radiate a saffron glow. Some of the young voices rang out too stridently in this intimate space, but this only added to the sizzle. Individually, the voices were well-matched to the roles, with the central pairing of Ariya Sawadivong's Iolanta and the Vaudemont of Jeffrey Halili particularly touching. Baritone Eric T. Dubin deserves special praise for filling in for the role of the doctor, Ibn-Hakia, learning the music within hours of the performance (he sang from the side while a nonsinging actor worked the boards).

It was in the ensembles, from the all-female groupings at the beginning through the ecstatic final paeans, that both the music and the performance went over the top. The silliness of the story was swept away by the ardor and magnificence of these voices, along with the chill damp of a February evening.

IOLANTA Through March 6, Helen Corning Warden Theater, The Academy of Vocal Arts