The Chicago Opera Theater COT) has a mission to produce new and rarely produced work. Dmitri Shostakovich was 22 years old when he wrote The Nose adapted from the short story of the same name by Nikolai Gogol. It is a brilliant satire of life and social mores in Tsarist Russia. The Nose was conducted by Lidiya Yankovskaya, who is ending her tenure as music director. She and general director Lawrence Edelson had a pre-performance talk about the nuances of Slavic music and language and how Shostakovich created a masterpiece that was banned for 50 years after its premiere in 1930. Yankovskaya also conducted the intense and emotional Soldier Songs as the COT season opener at Epiphany Center for the Arts. She has a masterful command of scores with different structures and instrumentation and has a devotion to music in Slavic languages.
Gogol's story skewers the class distinctions and rabid social climbing in 19th-century Russia. Titles were given out like the Catholic church dispensed indulgences in the 16th century. Major Kovalyov (Aleksey Bogdanov) peacocks about St. Petersburg looking down his nose at the proletariat. He enters the barber shop of Ivan Yakolevich (Wilbur Pauley) demanding a shave and complaining about how Ivan's hands stink. The barber exacts a bit of revenge with a rough trimming of Kovalyov's nose hair.
When Ivan sits down for a meal served by his wife (Michelle Johnson), he discovers that a nose has been baked into the bread. The mania and absurdist comedy begins. Conductor Yankovskaya previously detailed how Shostakovich wrote every shriek, grunt, and even flatulence into the music. The cast of The Nose is extraordinary in producing the high notes with perfect timing—in Russian of which few singers have a command. Johnson possesses a silky voice and immaculate articulation. Johnson' notes are pristine and she is a fine comic actor as she beats Ivan with a rolling pin kicking him out and taking the butchered nose with him.
Meanwhile, at Major Kovalyov's home, he is awakened by his Lackey Ivan (David Cangelosi) to find that he is missing his nose. Bogdanov is brilliant as the aggrieved victim. His singing is perfect with sublime comic chops. Director Francesca Zambello brilliantly pulls the elements of absurdism and satire, with the pacing of a farce. It falls into Monty Python meets Bugs Bunny and Ernie Kovacs. It is a gargantuan task that is beautifully done and immensely enjoyable.
The cast for The Nose is tremendous and in some productions has had over 80 people on the stage. The actors play several roles taking on different singing styles to go with the characters with the orchestra filling in as a character as well. There are entire passages that are only percussion and the aforementioned body sounds. Ivan the Lackey is comically mute with a sly glue-sniffing moment and then fills the theater with a magnificent tenor exclamation. Shostakovich took the subtleties of Gogol's story and created a subversive and hilarious opera that was a thrill to watch.
Set designer Marcus Doshi created a world on a tilt with upstage slanted like a villain's lair on the television show Batman. The costume director is Brenda Winstead who coordinated an army of coordinators, drapers, and wardrobe stitchers to create an off-kilter world of hoops without the skirt and over-the-top officer uniforms. Costume designer Erik Teague added the perfect amount of absurdity to the whimsical attire of the cast. The giant nose costume is an entity unto itself. My brain went to Parliament Funkadelic's Sir Nose Devoid of Funk and The Great Leader's Nose in Woody Allen's science fiction comedy Sleeper (1973). The Nose is a comedy with many layers and Shostakovich's music sounds like the punk/New Wave of the early 20th century. It's fantastic. Four Stars.
The Nose played two shows on December 8 and 10. It runs for 2 hours with a 15-minute intermission and was staged at the Harris Theater at Millennium Park, 205 E. Randolph St. Both shows were sold out so keep an eye on the COT website for other performances or (fingers crossed) streaming possibilities. Check out www.cot.org and www.harristheater.org for future events and more information.
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