Final Words from Tchaikovsky

Wow, this is one sweet little opera.  Tchaikovsky was getting on in years, winding down the music business, and maybe thinking about his fate.  The story is relatively simple, and the ending is happy, with the composer using the full choir to sing hymns of thanks to his god.

At 1 hour 45, Iolanta is much shorter than his previous two operas, the dense plot extravaganzas of The Enchantress and Queen of Spades.  (For those two, you have to watch carefully and listen for the arias and choruses, because if you don’t, you could be completely sidetracked by the wild story lines.) 

Iolanta is one of those operas that is so short, it is often presented with another piece.  In 1892, Tchaikovsky was being paid to come up with a ballet along with his concise little opera, and what he came up with was The Nutcracker, just in time for the holidays.  For The Nutcracker, the rest is history.  For Iolanta, that was just about it.

Seeing in the Dark

With Madrid’s 2012 production (and there are hardly any others on video with English), you have to watch carefully to see what everyone is doing up there in the shadows.  Light and darkness matter a lot in this plot – the poor princess is blind and does not understand that – so there’s a lot of mystery and very weak lighting, punctuated with narrow-beam lights they carry here and there to specific spots on the stage, often to light up a single face.

It’s not bright enough for me to figure out what the set construction really represents.  Are these Viking ships on poles?  Skulls from huge prehistoric birds?  I get that the right side of the stage is where Iolanta lives with her caregivers.  Everything else happens on the left.  Good enough for me.

What are we Missing?

Tchaikovsky sets it up with some very pleasant music, starting in the first scenes: the lullaby, the flower song, the sleeping song.  All very peaceful, all very hopeful, rather spiritual.  Nicely done, Pyotr and the crew from Madrid!  Ekaterina Scherbachenko is Iolanta, quite young, very pretty, not really blind, but performing convincingly.

So the poor princess is not being told the whole story about her condition, because her dad thinks that information might make her unhappy.   But it imposes quite a task on her nurses and everyone around, to keep Iolanta in the dark, so to speak.

Iolanta’s marriage plans have been on the books since she was born, so there’s a foreign fellow, Robert the Duke of Burgundy, who is expected to come down to Provence and marry Iolanta. 

We can see that he’s in for a surprise.  There’s no clear plan for notifying Robert that his wife-to-be is completely blind, or discussing in advance how this might impact their relationship.  In those days, couples were simply committed, no questions.

Strong Medicine

First, though, the king wants a solution for his daughter, and he summons no less than “a doctor from Mauritania”.   (I think the subtitle said he was “Mauritian” but that does not seem right; Mauritius is not close to France, and not “Moorish”, a key credential.)

Here, King René explains his own perspective in two powerful bass/baritone arias.  To me, they are not so much melodic, as enormous and assertive, rather common characteristics of Tchaikovsky, it appears.

The Moorish doctor steps in and, when he understands what he’s up against, he immediately invokes God as an alternative to 15th century eye surgery.  He makes some strong and hopeful pronouncements, including:

“When the knowledge of the truth awakes our minds, then it is possible for desire to cause light to shine in the darkness of the flesh.”

Can desire of the patient solve this sort of ophthalmic problem?

Let’s Sort This Out

Getting to a cure matters a lot, because the Duke of Burgundy, traveling with his friend Vaudemont, stumbles upon Iolanta’s hideout.  Worse, they have found Iolanta and explained to her that she is missing the big picture.  This level of interference is not what the king ordered. 

The king’s tough, and he’s not blind but he is short-sighted.  He says he’ll spare these two intruders, but only if the doctor succeeds in getting Iolanta to see things as they are.

Here, again, are some very sweet and romantic songs, with Vaudemont and Iolanta totally in love from the start.

Robert the Duke points out that he’s fine with that; the fact is, he’s only in love with his girl Matilde back home.  Vaudemont jumps at the opportunity with Iolanta, because he doesn’t care whether she can see or not.  Even Iolanta is starting to feel like, the real deal here is how much she loves Vaudemont. 

An Ending for the Gods

It ends up very nice – Iolanta does in fact come to see everything in a new light, and Tchaikovsky uses the last 15 minutes for some excellent and touching hymns of praise and thanks, very spiritual, with a full choir arrayed across the stage.

This is an opera with a very good feeling; most of the music is appealing, and expressing the right sentiments all around.  Tchaikovsky’s sharing a heavenly perspective on gifts and justice for humans, and for once in the world of opera we have the right couple ending up together, secure and content.