Last month’s new production première of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich at the Bolshoi Opera garnered several favourable notices.
In Kommersant, Ilya Ovchinnikov considers that “one of the stars of this production is the orchestra under the direction of Solzhenitsyn, an orchestra that has not sounded this confident in a long time”.
In Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Irina Muravyova writes that “Aleksandr Tchaikovsky’s music sets the measured rhythm of this daily hell, the horror of its routine and endlessness […] Under Ignat Solzhenitsyn the orchestra sounds grander and even more close-knit than in the original Perm production [of 2009]. The conductor brings forward those aspects of the score that lead to Shostakovich, to the burning tragic atmosphere of his symphonies and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk […] Out of the complex textures of the orchestral tutti the conductor also manages to extract all the purposeful allusions to Mussorgsky operas, Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible, polyphonic Bach-like textures, and Orthodox church music.
In Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Vladimir Dudin opines that “in Isaakyan’s staging there is nothing extreme or intolerant, and he has found so subtle a key to the music that the production impacts the listener without needing to explain itself, especially when on the podium stands the son of the writer, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, who did not allow a single note to escape from view, seeing in each one compelling resonances with his father’s text.”
