Pop goes the weasel

By David Blake
Igor Stravinsky, Mavra; Cairo Opera Company and Cairo Opera Orchestra; Abdel-Moneim Mubarak (sets and costumes); Teimuraz Abashidze (director); Ivan Filev (conductor); Gomhouriya Theatre: 9 February
Why oh why Mavra? Stravinsky takes his time, failing to learn lessons from his own works, the ones he and his faithful henchmen preached to the patient hordes who listened to the Stravinsky doctrinaire. He alone was the one possessed of the key to the musical future, not the wicked Teutons who had dominated it for centuries.
All this doctrinaire talk was a load of twaddle, and so is Mavra. Later, with his last operatic nut to crack, The Rake's Progress, he was still indulging in the same mannerisms evident in Mavra. Russia, for all its splendours, has no musical tradition unless it be the splendid ruined carpet of Boris Godounov. One exception, Tchaikovsky, who operatically speaking was a Zeus: he made a tradition out of chaos.
Today it is Schubert who is the mad, fiery modern, not Stravinsky. Stravinsky had a long, troubled journey until ironically he ended in the enemy camp; the Viennese period of serialism confronted him, but he was too late, the bus was going in the opposite direction.
The Cairo Opera Company, having started Mavra, a non-operatic thing, did a good job with it. It was always clear. Stravinsky was to blame when anything went wrong. It is a bent butterfly's journey to nowhere, not even to childhood. A cracked nut is not enough for an evening in the opera house.
Curtain up on a highly-coloured postcard vision of Petrushka: snow-covered Easter-egg domes, spangled icy flowers, and when Neveen Allouba bounces on stage as heroine Parasha, the doll from the great ballet Petrushka appears. We are in a Never-Never fairy tale.
This doll is one of Allouba's inspirations. Her acting was cute, perky, spicy, and very prickly. She looked and moved like an automaton, though an automaton with a heart. Her love, the hussar Mavra, sung by tenor Mohamed Abul-Kheir, likewise found a heart in the strange, chilly Stravinsky music. Cruelly difficult, he managed to make more than was offered him. Mavra was a nice kind boy, not a madman. The family grandmother and friend were not a couple of frowsty crones, but well brought up, bien placée Russian dames who added to the fun, what little there was. The entire cast of which they were part tactfully made what atmosphere there was with no help from Stravinsky.
So the opening looked and sounded hopeful as Allouba went straight into a beautiful Russian type melody. Cherish it, this was the one authentic operatic musical moment of the 25-minute performance.
Mavra gets into his girlfriend Parasha's house to tell her some secrets which he cannot yell at full tenor robusto level for he is disguised as a female servant. In an off moment, when he is caught shaving, the entire cast, that is, the family, go into a freak-out fuss, and he rushes off into the snow, followed by soprano Parasha. Stop. Curtain. That's Mavra.
The Cairo Opera management has a penchant for one-act operas. Here's hoping Mavra never joins the exclusive little gang of four that at present make up the yearly demonstration of what a thrill one-act operas can be. Always remember Strauss's Salome is waiting at the door for admission. No real opera house has refused her.
The most hopeful aspects of this staging of Stravinsky's Mavra were the costumes and general production tactics, which were first rate. The piece looked charming, but not fancy, infantile or vulgar. It had a Slav feeling and the cast never played down, always up.
At one point the composer must have chosen a spot at which to relax from being the clever astounder, and there comes a trio for the two elderly women, grandma and friend, and the listening Parasha, breath-catching for its sheer virtuosity of construction. It slipped and slid along, small apertures opening and closing, letting loose tunes warm, comfortable and Russian. This was the Stravinsky that could have been.
The playing of the sadly-depleted Cairo Opera Orchestra went well. At the spots where Stravinsky felt something approaching good humour towards bourgeois kindness, the dry sticks flew up and out of the orchestra, sprouting green buds. Something would come out of such a talent. It did of course, but never into the vocal theatre. There are often touching moments in Stravinsky's big, successful things like Apollon Musegetes, when he smiles ingratiatingly: I'm not so awful, just listen to this bit of polyphony, it's an outfit for the gods. And it always is. And so is the sound of Mavra's brief trio. It is like a butterfly wing flashing in the sun.
And then we went back to the clatter of the hurdy-gurdy tunes, full of hopes that one day the opera might use the newly refurbished Gomhouriya Theatre for something suitable like Giordano's Fedora or Szymanawski's King Roger.
The Russian schoolmaster cracking his nuts and raising that ever-admonishing forefinger gave Cairo Opera at least the chance to show that they could get away with Mavra. They did, and they might well go on to something better.
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