Opera: Bolshoi in Milan

When Milan’s La Scala Opera invaded Moscow en masse two months ago, it brought along a boxcarful of spaghetti and enough red wine to float the Russian navy. Last week, as part of a home-and-home series, Moscow’s Bolshoi Opera was in Milan. It was the Bolshoi’s first excursion outside Russia in its 189-year history, and the company came 450 strong, with 40 wagonloads of scenery and costumes. But, as one Mos-covite explained, “we didn’t bring any special food. We don’t need it. We are drunk with joy to be in the country of bel canto.” The Italians were equally enraptured, awarded each of the Bolshoi’s first ten performances a minimum of 30 curtain calls.

Caught Up. In Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, a sumptuously staged and dramatically taut production that cast La Scala’s badly mangled version into lasting shade, the dark, ringing voice of Georgian Tenor Zurab Angia-paridze dazzled the critical Italians.

But the opera La Scala audiences most anticipated was Prokofiev’s rarely seen War and Peace, a musical epic in thirteen scenes, which even in its condensed version ran for nearly five hours.

The music, brilliantly conducted by 33-year-old Gennadij Rozsdgestvenski and sung by no fewer than 54 soloists, was Prokofiev at his melodic best. The spectacle crackled with the sights and sounds of war-roaring cannons, flapping battle flags, and rank upon rank of charging soldiers. The Italians were so caught up in the drama that they burst into cheers at the entrance of the victorious Russian General Kutuzov.

Oddly enough, the only critical sniping came from the local Communists. “All the Bolshoi operas are full of pre-revolutionary aristocrats, most of whom are depicted as good men and friends of the people,” said one comrade. And the Communist daily L’Unita spotted a change in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. One of the aristocrats, who is beaten up by an angry mob of peasants in the fourth act, is a character called Khrushchev. In the program, however, the minor tenor role was listed simply as “A Boyar [nobleman] of Kromy.” Taunted L’Unita: “They had to do some last-minute updating.”