Wycombe Swan: The Russian State Opera of Siberia ***

5:15pm Friday 4th April 2008

If one hears that a Russsian State opera company is on a UK tour, it is reasonable to assume that at least one opera will be Russian. Works by Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky would surely fit the bill.

But this is a Raymond Gubbay promotion, and he invariably concentrates on "top of the pop" operas, so we had the Russians offering us two of Puccini's most popular and - it must be said - greatest tear-jerkers.

This places the Siberians in competition with London companies and fine touring companies nearby.

They could probably get away with an old fashioned production of their native works, but top-ranking operas put them under pressure. And in the case of La Boheme, audiences have in mind highlights on CD of the greatest tenors on earth, from Gigli to Pavarotti. Even the major companies have to face this potential "disappointment factor", let alone provincial Russians.

In fact musically they did quite well, and Konstantin Tolstobrov's Rodolfo was more then respectable. So was Larisa Marzoeva's slim Mimi.

But there is more to opera than singing, and this Mimi just refused to engage with her Rodolfo - no eye-contact, no body language, no signs of interest let alone passion between them at all. All she did, except in her unemotional death scene, was to stand and look at the conductor. This sort of approach went out years ago, and resulted in a detached and uninteresting evening.

Next night, Madame Butterfly was a very different matter. Yes, there were still some problems of singers performing in isolation and some of the lesser ladies having difficulties with their Japanese stance.

In Zinaida Mainasheva we had a Cio-Cio-San of real class and credibility. Despite all the evidence that she had been betrayed, her faith in and deep love for her American husband and her new American god remained unmovable - and one believed it. The role of the hapless American Consul, Sharpless (Vladimir Efimov), was crucial to audience belief in the situation.

Decent, well meaning but essentially weak, he could have prevented the tragedy. He knew it and we did too.

This performance was, it seemed, a mixture of the original and revised versions, the first anti-American, the second "cleaned up" by Puccini under pressure.

The Russians opted for the anti-American stance - rightly - it is far superior drama, politics apart.

Lieutenant Pinkerton (Anatoly Pililpemko) is shown as an absolute brute, blandly and uncaringly "marrying" Cio-Cio-San for a dirty few months while simultaneously anticipating a "proper American wife".

Pinkerton was allowed his famous "remorse aria" from the revised version, but this did not alter the impression of a powerful opera denouncing a powerful nation.

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