News
24.04.2019
Iolanta: Unusual, lonely, closed-off
Andriy Zholdak’s staging of Iolanta needs an inquisitive and independent-minded audience. This much-discussed premiere will be performed for the last time this season on 7 May. Here are a few hints for the audience from the performers as they try to answer a seemingly simple question: What is this production about?Natalya Mironova, playing Brigitta, Iolanta’s friend.
„So much goes on in the human soul. Everyone knows the saying ‘You can’t see into another man’s soul’, and it’s true. I think this production is a kind of attempt to look into a person’s soul, into every last corner of it — although there’s a lot that you simply can’t see. That’s what’s so interesting about the production, and why it might seem so unpredictable and illogical. But, as it happens, there’s an awful lot that’s illogical in our lives. And that’s exactly the kind of disconnect we see here, when you don’t know where you are or where to draw the line between reality and stories.“
Irina Mikhailova, playing Marta, Iolanta’s wet nurse.
„I think that this is primarily a show about loneliness. It’s about how hard it is for a person who lives differently and has a different perception of themselves, who isn’t like the others. We feel a sense of duality: there’s Iolanta, and there are the people around her. We, the people around her, are lively, real, happy, very simple-hearted, in the best sense of the phrase, while she’s different: unusual, lonely, closed-off. Things are much harder for her: she can’t see, so it’s extremely difficult for her to understand things that a sighted person understands at first glance. She feels the love and warmth emanating from us, but we come across her at a time when our love isn’t enough for her. We have the whole spectrum of our own feelings to offer her, but that’s not enough.“
Damir Zakirov, playing Almerique, the king’s weapon-bearer
„In the world Iolanta sees with her own internal vision, everything is more full of wonder than it is in reality. People are different, elevated; there’s less of the hustle and bustle of daily life. My character appears in the opera all of a sudden. Someone had been doing the job, something bad happened to him, so they sent someone else to take his place. So I arrive, and hear this horrifying story about a person who can’t see, but whose blindness is carefully hidden from them by everyone around them. I’m a little shocked by what I’ve heard, and by the cries I hear at night. I try and get to the bottom of it, but I’m not supposed to ask questions, because I’m the King’s new assistant and should just be following his orders. I try and just privately think over everything I see.
I feel as if I’m in some sort of film. Everything is so detailed, like individual shots following one after the other. I’m not sure that the audience catches everything. I personally find it very interesting; one of my dreams is to act in a film. I’m living and breathing it, trying to puzzle out the tasks the director has set us. It’s also like cinema in that there are lots of special effects. The director wanted everything to be indicated very clearly; we can’t just follow the principle of ‘stand here and improvise’, as often happens in opera. The performers have been given strictly defined tasks and precise movements to make. ‘You sit here and smoke, nothing else. Now you pick up the remote and turn off the TV.’ Everything’s very precise, like in a film. I’ve never been in a film, but that’s exactly how I imagine things working.“
Daria Sergeeva, playing Laura, Iolanta’s friend.
„It’s a show about two worlds. There’s the world Iolanta lives in, and the other world, and the producer makes that immediately clear to the audience by dividing the stage in half. I think the producer is getting the audience and performers to reflect on how the same things can be perceived very differently. The character I’m playing doesn’t really perceive Iolanta’s world. She’s a friend who helps Iolanta in her daily life, who’s been beside her since they were little and gone through life by her side, but doesn’t understand her; she just has the vague sense that Iolanta sees things that other people don’t. At one point, my character also wants to see and feel this „other“ world, to understand Iolanta and help her. Does she succeed? No, she doesn’t.“
Alexander Kuznetsov, playing Ibn-Hakkia
„My character is an expensive German doctor of Turkish descent, or at least that’s what the director told me. He’s a doctor, but also maybe something of a charlatan. He knows what the problem is, but he’s happy in this house. He gets paid, he’s comfortable — he’s a bit like Rasputin living with the Tsar’s family. So there’s an illness, and there’s a way of curing the illness, but there’s no need to rush. When Vaudémont appears, he’s actually a little flustered, because now the illness has to be cured, and he’ll have to actually do something and then look for a new client. That’s the general idea, but for me, there’s a new context underpinning each production. Anyway, the opera’s not really about an optician. The problem is elsewhere: a girl lives in her own world and likes it there, but people want to bring her into this world. Should she let that happen, or should she not? She eventually decides for herself.“