In its issue No. 7 of February 29, The Day carried an interview with Olha Mykytenko, a National Opera soloist, under the Culture rubric. The title itself perhaps suggested that the interview aimed to trigger a certain debate. So I will dare to challenge one of her opinions.
Speaking about the probable extension of her not terribly wide repertoire on the domestic stage, Ms. Mykytenko says she will ask the theater management to allow her to sing the part of Rosina (The Barber of Seville) in Italian. Let me explain to the poorly-informed readers that the question is about one of the two or three classical operas still shown in Kyiv in Ukrainian translation, not in the original language.
About two years ago, I debated in The Day with Anatoly Mokrenko, the then National Opera director, on the language of Kyiv opera performances. Singing in Ukrainian is an old tradition of this music and drama theater, created by Mykola Voronyi, Maksym Rylsky, Mykola Bazhan, Mykola Lukash, and other luminaries of Ukrainian literature who presented us brilliant translations of classic opera librettos. Singing in the original language proceeds from the commercial requirements of impresarios who invite actors to certain foreign tours and are used to being oriented toward some averaged standards, including those in the language.
I stress that this is a question of customary averaged standards rather than that of “loyalty to the composer’s idea,” which singers and musicians attempt to cloak themselves in. For these same loyal advocates of singing “only and always in the original language” perform for some reason, Verdi’s Don Carlos in Italian translation (although the original libretto is in French) and Rubinstein’s Persian Songs in Russian (although the original here is German). Moreover, they become so surprised when told of these and other such lapses.
Conversely, great opera producers knew very well that only if sung in a language the audience understands can an opera strike a chord and reveal the composer’s concept. It is no accident that the legendary Boris Pokrovsky is putting up so stiff a resistance to switching over to “original languages” at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater. Nor is it accidental that the late Iryna Molostova staged her last production on the Kyiv stage, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, later in 1998 again in Ukrainian (although both the singers and the management expressed a desire that the opera be performed in Italian).
The tragedy of the Ukrainian opera in the last few years is that it has failed to find a figure of Boris Pokrovsky’s magnitude. So national traditions were sacrificed for the expedient commercial gain.
But even those who prefer singing “in the original” usually make an exception for comic operas (like the same Barber of Seville), where perception is mostly based on the understanding of brilliant and witty rejoinders (so adequately matched by Maksym Rylsky who translated The Barber of Seville libretto). I remember how sometime at “the dawn of independence” Roman Maiboroda drew applause not only with his brilliant high C at the end of the famous cavatina of Figaro but also with the spontaneously improvised “three coupons” instead of the required “three doubloons.”
I have no doubts that Olha Mykytenko will get the desired permission to sing Italian in a Ukrainian ensemble (we have long been completely liberal in this respect). But I will not go see it, surrendering this honor to those for whom it makes no major difference which Barber to see, whether of Seville or Siberia. For I seek in the theater only a theatrical event, where the music, word, and drama all merge. As to Italian vocal exercises, I would rather listen to them on one of my four or five La Scala or Metropolitan Opera records from my music library, where the voices of singers sound, at any rate, as strong as that of the young Kyiv prima donna.
