A stereotypical opera singer may not look like he'd be very physically active, but Shostakovich's satirical opera "The Nose," presented by Opera Boston, keeps its cast up and running the entire time. From the two-dimensional, animated set pieces to the extreme high and low notes in the music (one tenor actually sings 11 high Cs in one scene), the production at times feels more like a Saturday-morning cartoon than an operatic masterpiece.
"The Nose" is based on a short politically satirical story of the same name written by Nikolai Gogol in 1836. A young bureaucrat named Kovalyov (played by Stephen Salters) in St. Petersburg awakes one morning to find his nose completely gone from his face. His barber finds it in a loaf of bread and, at the urging of his wife, throws it off a bridge during the night. He is then arrested for failing to tell a policeman why he was standing on the bridge.
The nose, however, is not forgotten that easily. Kovalyov discovers it on his way to the police station. It is now the size of a human being and is dressed as a bureaucrat that outranks him. It does not hear his pleas to return to its "proper place," and Kovalyov is left to spend the rest of the production trying to win his nose back again.
The story the opera is based on is fairly old, but the opera itself was not written long ago. It was Shostakovich's first opera, premiering in Leningrad in 1930, but was deemed so controversial that it closed almost immediately. The intensity of the recent backlash to the story proves its continuing applicability to modern politics.
Opera Boston's production is fun to watch. The story is humorous, and jokes such as the newspaper man's offer of snuff to Kovalyov or a Monty Python-esque horse-riding mime scene are definitely exploited by director Julia Pevzner. Though there were a few standout performances (Stephen Salters as Kovalyov and Vladimir Matorin as his barber are particularly dynamic), the ensemble is what really brings the production to life. To portray busy street scenes, the cast energetically bounces across the stage in cartoonish, two-dimensional choreography, and are all so hilarious individually that as a whole they provide a strong wave of slapstick humor. At one point, Kovalyov attempts to place an ad in the newspaper in search of his missing nose, and the men in the news office literally "look down their noses" at him before laughing him out of the building. The cast's commitment to small jokes really boosts the production as a whole.
That said, the show has its setbacks. Hilarious as it is to witness a large opera singer bellowing his high tenor line from inside a full-body nose costume, it is difficult to actually hear Torrance Blaisdell (the Nose)'s voice. This is really a shame, as he is the tenor alluded to earlier with the incredible amount of high Cs. The Police Inspector (Frank Kelley) is also hit with unfortunate costuming as he sings some of his lines through an old speaking trumpet, which somewhat mangles the sound.
The story is absurd, but it is effective nevertheless as it doesn't pretend to be coherent. The cast is entirely committed to the plot's ridiculousness, so the audience has no reason not to laugh along. The comedy is fairly visceral at times, though; no one should go unless he or she is prepared to find pimples and burping funny.
Shostakovich's music is always interesting to listen to, though as this is one of his earliest works there are a few trouble spots. There are extended musical interludes that he appeared to have thrown in for the sole purpose of showing off how young and talented he was. These moments are expertly utilized by Pevzner, however, with energetic ensemble miming and physical comedy.
"The Nose" is currently playing at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, one block from the Boston Common. Take a trip down the red line for a night of unconventional, exuberant opera.
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The Nose
Written by Dmitri Shostakovich
Directed by Julia Pevzner
At the Cutler Majestic Theatre through March 3
Tickets $29 to $119
