The Virtue of Small

When in Rīga, I attended a performance of Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro; Figaro Kāzas in Latvian) with the Latvian National Opera at the National Opera House. Roughly resembling Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, it was built in the 1860s and is a gem of a house -- not too cavernous so that you don't have to be Birgit Nilsson to fill the place with sound, packed with three tiers, boxes, lots of gilt trim, a wonderful chandelier, and fine acoustics. My friend Svetlana, who is a classical music buff, is keeping me apprised of the goings-on in Latvia because I can't always read or figure out what's on the many performance posters hung around town. When I mentioned that I liked opera, she contacted me to say that she had acquired two tickets because she knows some of the singers, and maybe I would like to ask someone to go with me? I told her that she should join me, and so there we were. Here's the opera house itself.

Svetlana and I met at the Laima clock in front of the house. (Laima, as you now know if you've been reading this blog, is Latvia's chocolatier. Its clock on the street is a famous meeting place, much like the clock at the former Marshall Field's in Chicago.) We had dinner and then proceeded to get flowers for her friend Ilona Bagele, who sang the role of Marcellina, to be given to her at the curtain call. The theater thoughtfully provides vases filled with water at the coast check for flowers that are to be given to the musicians. I thought this was very smart and very Latvian.

As it turns out, Ilona lives in Daugavpils, teaches voice at Daugavpils University in the music program, and goes to Rīga, where she maintains a flat, to stay there as she needs to when she is cast in an opera. Because Svetlana knows Ilona -- they were neighbors once -- we got to go backstage and see her after the peformance. I did not expect this special treat, but Svetlana had arranged this because this is What is Done. There was the usual flurry of photo taking, so here we are! The first is me, Ilona, and Svetlana. The second is with Inga Šļubovska-Kancēviča, who sang the role of Susanna.

(If you're wondering about the palm trees, this production was set in a small Central American village, which worked beautifully. Count Almaviva was a sort of petty Central American dictator, all bluster in his military uniform, and Susanna and Figaro were the servants that any self-respecting Central American landed gentry would have had as a matter of course. The setting played up the complicated gender politics of the opera extremely well.) 

What struck me about the production is how very Latvian it was. I don't mean in the sense of the setting of the opera, but rather in how opera seems to be done here. Clearly Rīga is not New York's Metropolitan Opera; this is not a major house on the world scene (even if Mikhail Baryshnikov did in fact get his start here in the Latvian National Ballet). But this is why it works so very well. All of the cast was Latvian, and my guess is that they all know each other and have sung together in various works over the years. This might be why the ensemble singing in Figaro was so good, and in Mozart the ensemble pieces are everything. This system is also why Ilona can live and work in Daugavpils, three hours away, and sing regularly in the national opera house, as she has for the past ten years in a number of productions: Carmen, Rusalka, and a number of others. It's why one doesn't have to have an international career to have a career here. The opera house is three hours from any point in the country, basically, and while I'm sure that all the singers must teach and do other musical things to make a living, the fact that they can sing regularly in this house means that it's perfectly possible to be an opera singer here, no matter where one lives. It also means that productions have some cohesion because pulling singers and players together for a rehearsal is far easier than at the international opera house where the superstars are flown in for a few days, and then jet off to Madrid or St. Petersburg or Buenos Aires for another performance. The fact that the house itself is small means that one can have a smaller voice and still sing regularly in productions. The fact that it's easy to be known as a singer here means that it might be easier to get cast here. The fact that there must be some kind of underwriting for the house means that ticket prices are low (5 to 20 euros), which means people can actually go to the opera, and they do. The house was packed with everybody from 10-year-olds to devoted older couples to college students out on dates. (The repertoire of the house is impressive; there is a production of opera or dance nearly every night of the year, most of them in repertory. How the National Opera manages to pull this off is a mystery to me, but I'm glad it does it.) And the fact that everybody knows everybody means that an average Joe like me gets his photo taken with Susanna and Marcellina.

I have heard repeatedly from Latvians that "We are a small country," and it's usually given a self-deprecating spin. I'm skeptical that this is a bad thing, now having lived in Maine, a small state that doesn't figure much on the national American scene, for over a decade -- the same way Latvians feel that Latvia doesn't figure much on the European scene. But the Latvian National Opera shows just how to make enormous virtues out of being a small place. Big doesn't automatically mean excellent.

For the record, the production was lovely. The orchestra, led by Andris Veismanis, was nimble as quicksilver, as it needs to be for this opera. I would single out Figaro, as performed by Rihards Mačanovskis, for the excellence of his singing, but the entire cast was very good, and the ensemble work was exemplary. Now Svetlana and I are deciding what we will see next. Because, in a small place, it's so easy to do.