It was set in Ukraine in 1986, at the time of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station disaster. Pripyat is the small town nearby that the workers and their families lived in, and that was evacuated in less than an hour the following day – with the residents never returning to their town again. Librettist Jim Knable created a range of different cameo characters (all played by just three singers) to establish the community before the disaster, with lots of pride-swelling Soviet propaganda and people respectfully addressing each other as “Comrade”, and then went through the destruction of that community using the same techniques: small stories, character sketches, flashes of humour to do with vodka-drinking and forgetful stubborn grandmothers. No big Hollywood special effects.
Composer Sunny Knable used an eclectic score, based on just three voices, a live piano, and a pre-recorded synthesiser. Very effective were the instrumental passages on the synthesiser, evoking a retro Sputnik sound of optimistic technology that would solve all of humanity’s problems. The vocal sections were accompanied by the piano and didn’t settle on one voice: sometimes there was abstraction and atonality, sometimes traditional recitative, sometimes jolly children’s songs about the success of Soviet tractors. It would have been nice to have heard either a more strongly Slavic sound, or a more strongly technological sound, or even both. As it was, the score did little snippets without fully developing into something more distinctively individual to the composer and the story.
The staging was very simple, but effective. The singers wore their blacks, and sometimes added a hat or a shawl or a hospital gown. They were good actors too: even though I did not have a programme in front of me (please do not assume all audience members have a smartphone and can scan a QR code during the performance!), I could follow who everybody was and what they were doing. The opera was sung in English, and the clarity and diction of the singers was exemplary.
Mezzo-soprano Rachael Basescu had a rich warm voice that curled around the music. Her main characters were Maria Protsenko, the chief architect of Pripyat and the sort of hard-working heroine celebrated in the Soviet regime; and a cackling Babushka who wasn’t going anywhere when the evacuation order was announced. She was also very fetching as a little girl in the school singing class.
Baritone Grant Mech’s golden voice poured like toffee onto the score. As the local Intendant, striking the balance between positive propaganda and announcing a nuclear accident at the power station, his singing became crisp and metallic. As the Patient in hospital dying of radiation poisoning, he gave a delivery that was mellow yet vulnerable.
Soprano Erin Brittain had a silver voice, and was particularly expressive with her characters. Sharp comedy as the neighbour Svetlana, desperate smiles as the Schoolteacher, and another cackling yet stubborn Babushka, she gave a series of delightful performances.
Pianist Patrick Fink brought light and shade to the instrumental accompaniment.
Reviewer - Thalia Terpsichore
on - 1.7.23
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