Nabokov called Dead Souls a grandiose dream through which an idea of Russia is drawn – the “lyrical note” of Gogol’s poem.

“The idea of the composer was aimed at producing a vocal rethinking of Gogol’s prose,” Rodion Shchedrin wrote in an explanatory note to the opera Dead Souls. With unusual sensitivity the composer responded to everything that can be heard in Gogol’s great poem, and he laid this bare in the voluminous musical images, first and foremost the vocal parts. With Gogol, Selifan the coachman is given a “subtle and melodious voice” – in the opera this is a high tenor, moreover singing in the folk style. The sweet tenor bel canto comes with Manilov, whose voice Gogol described as “touchingly tender” (Lizanka Manilova, the female double of her husband, repeats him in the tones of a lyrical coloratura soprano). On reading a description of the gambler and layabout Nozdryov as a “man of great height and a somewhat narrow face”, and also blond, and taking into account the character’s fiery temperament, Shchedrin decided to make him, too, a tenor – a dramatic one. Nozdryov’s son-in-law Mizhuyev appears with Gogol as having a “lazy and lethargic” voice – in the opera this role is awarded to a low bass, in essence a voice that is not too flexible; when the hero falls into a drunken dream, his voice also reaches the lower depths of the range. Sobakevich, too, sings as a bass: only the mighty bogatyr voice with a broad range is suitable for a man who wears boots “of such a gigantic size that legs to match could hardly be found anywhere”. The club-headed widow Korobochka is a mezzo, as is Plyushkin, who is performed by a woman in men’s clothing. When Plyushkin first starts to sing, the audience shudders: “Oh, a woman” – exactly repeating the thought of Chichikov, taken up by Gogol, when he meets the degraded miser: “Oh, woman” (and a second later “Oh, no”). Moreover, the role of the old hoarder is markedly anti-vocal, as the author described his voice as “hoarse”.

Nabokov called Dead Souls a grandiose dream through which an idea of Russia is drawn – the “lyrical note” of Gogol’s poem. Thus, too, Shchedrin’s opera is structured. Its lyrical notes are focussed in the “road” scenes, which with their refrain are interwoven with caricature episodes. The composer has contrasted the living with the dead; he has rendered faces from among the people alive – a grieving soldier’s wife, and a bearded peasant at the roadside. In these scenes the singing is peasant-like rather than operatic; the author was assisted by aural experiences from his childhood, spent on the banks of the River Oka, where the composer-to-be heard shepherds, mourners and drunken songs. Gogol referred to a folk song by name – The Snows Are Not White; Shchedrin composed a refrain to these words, and it sounds like archaic Russian folklore, moreover a musical and theoretical analysis here highlights the links with composition techniques of the 20th century. Recurring many times throughout the opera, it is also folk singing that brings it to its conclusion. “Do not weep, do not weep, do not be sad” – the female voices sing, though the listener does indeed wish to cry, repeating after Pushkin: “My God, how sad our Russia is!”

Being, it would seem, fleeting intermedia links, the “road” scenes in the opera carry the main burden of the drama and the meaning. These were first of all dispensed with by Zinovy Margolin, designer of the production, who conceived a key visual symbol for Dead Souls in 2011 – two immense and slowly-turning wheels. Stage director Vasily Barkhatov narrates the story of the luckless affair of Chichikov, not tying it down to any specific era: the audience will recognise realities of the age of serfdom and of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. In 2012 the dynamic, vivid, witty and bitter production by Barkhatov and Margolin was nominated for the Golden Mask award in a whole seven categories, and in that of “Best work by a designer in musical theatre” it won Russia’s most prestigious theatre prize.

Khristina Batyushina