World premiere: 3 February 1884, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow
Premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre: 6 February 1884
Premiere of this production: 22 February 1950, Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre (Mariinsky Theatre)
Last revival of the production: 15 May 2009
Running time: 3 hours 55 minutes
The performance has two intervals
Pushkin wrote Poltava in two weeks, while it took Tchaikovsky two years to compose Mazepa. Writing a monumental military and historical opera based around Pushkin’s famous poem did not come easily to the lyrical composer. No wonder he began working with Maria and Mazepa’s expansive duet: he was perturbed first and foremost by the psychology rather than the politics. The duet features a soprano and a baritone – a rare case for the genre of opera, where the role of the female protagonist’s beloved is, as a general rule, given to a tenor. Here this is impossible: Maria is young and Mazepa is old. The story seems improbable, though it is historically accurate. The third corner of the love triangle is occupied by Andrei – a figure who with Pushkin is nameless and insignificant, although he is vital in the opera. And yet the fervour of the passions in Mazepa is connected primarily not with a romantic triangle arranged according to the principle “being in love – not being in love” but with the relationship between a young girl and her two fathers – her birth father and her godfather, who sacrilegiously becomes his god-daughter’s lover. In this second much more intense triangle the two older men have clashed for Maria’s soul, one of them loses and pays with his life, while the girl’s mind is touched – this gave Tchaikovsky the opportunity to end the opus with the heroine’s quiet mad scene, typical of romantic opera. The drama of love and treachery unfolds against a backdrop of a broad historic panorama with vivid Ukrainian national colour with which Tchaikovsky was well acquainted: the composer’s sister lived in Ukraine. On the stage there are often a great many people, the folk stroll around, dance, sing and pray. The victorious Battle of Poltava of 1709 is picturesquely depicted by Tchaikovsky in a dazzling symphonic entr’acte to Act III.
The historic scale peculiar to Mazepa is presented at the Mariinsky Theatre in all its grandeur. In 2019 the theatre commemorated a remarkable anniversary: Mazepa was performed for the five hundredth time. The current production is a full revival of the 1950 production. A recipient of the Stalin Prize, stage director Ilya Shlepyanov and the acclaimed Soviet theatre designer Alexander Konstantinovsky created a benchmark of the “grand style” that entirely corresponds with the music of this opera. Here the young maids are black-browed and the Cossacks wear harem pants; their attire is adorned with pearls and trimmed with sable. The powerful operatic empire of Mazepa delights admirers of traditional theatre in particular; although as an authentic and carefully restored historical monument of the mid-20th century, this is a production that is of interest to any audience. Mazepa is a long-lived production which at its venerable age has lost none of its charisma or its power, just like its titular hero. Khristina Batyushina
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