Aleksey Bogdanov in “The Nose.” (Michael Brosilow)
Call “The Nose” the quintessential opera of the absurd. It’s a laugh-inducing social satire based on a short story by Nikolai Gogol written in 1835 and composed by Dmitri Shostakovich between 1927 and 1928 (when he was just in his early 20s). Both these Russian artists were not only clearly ahead of their particular time, but each had a keen sense of the warped obsession with status in Russian society, particularly as exemplified by the governing military. The Chicago Opera Theater (COT) is putting on an elaborate production of “The Nose” that opened Friday evening in a wildly zany, two-performance-only run at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance.
The show features a large, multitalented cast exuberantly directed by Francesca Zambello and zanily choreographed by Kia S. Smith (with six excellent dancers drawn from the South Chicago Dance Theatre), plus a superb orchestra led by Lidiya Yankovskaya in her final performances as COT’s excellent music director, a position she has held since 2018. The production was an ideal way to celebrate the notable 50th anniversary season of Chicago Opera Theater, a company that invariably produces rarely seen works.
Set in St. Petersburg, Russia, “The Nose” (with a libretto by Shostakovich and three other Russians), takes the form of a crazy nightmare that comes vividly to life for Kovalyov, a bureaucratic state councillor of rather low status (played and sung ideally by Aleksey Bogdanov, a Ukrainian-American baritone) who is watched over by his rather timid valet, Ivan (in a deft turn by tenor David Cangelosi).
As the opera begins, we see Kovalyov with his alcoholic barber (bass Wilbur Pauley), with whom he has an unhappy relationship. It is later that the barber discovers a nose inside a loaf of bread, and his shrewish wife (soprano Michelle Johnson) demands that he gets rid of it. He is unsuccessful and gets caught by a policeman (tenor Justin Berkowitz).
The cast of Chicago Opera Theater’s “The Nose.” (Michael Brosilow)
Meanwhile, Kovalyov, who perceives himself as something of a ladies’ man, wakes up and realizes, to great despair, that his nose is missing. He heads out from home to find it. But by this time his nose has taken on a larger-than-life existence of its own (winningly embodied by tenor Curtis Bannister), with the giant nose that hangs from the actor’s neck subtly shaped to suggest another male organ.
Desperate to track down his nose, Kovalyov heads to a newspaper office and tries to place an ad for his lost appendage, but he is denied. However, the nose is finally beaten down to size by the police and returned to Kovalyov, who tries desperately to reattach it to his face even with the help of a doctor. And there is more before he wakes up and find that his nose is back where it belongs.
Does it all sound wonderfully absurd and clearly meant to be a madhouse-like commentary on Imperial Russia (by way of Gogol), and then, in the early years of the Communist regime, by way of Shostakovich? Absolutely. “The Nose” knows.
Note: The final performance of “The Nose” is at 3 p.m. Sunday (Dec. 10) at the Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph St. For tickets, visit chicagooperatheater.org.
Follow Hedy Weiss on Twitter: @HedyWeissCritic
