A debut in the opera The Nose

Artyom Melikhov

“In this opera, the music does not play a self-sufficient role,” Shostakovich once commented, “Here the accent lies on the delivery of the text. I would add that the music has no stressed parody quality. No! Despite the comedy of everything taking place on the stage, the music does not poke fun. I think that’s as it should be, as Gogol presents all of his comic incidents in a serious manner. That is where the power and merit of Gogol’s humour lie. He doesn’t make wisecracks.

Yuri Alexandrov’s production conveys the essence of the grotesque and phantasmagorical quality of Shostakovich’s music. “In this opera, I sense some tremendous psychological pressure,” the stage director says, “In a way, nothing happens. A typical delayed-action plot. And then suddenly Shostakovich makes his move and the stage begins to spin in a totally different and phantasmagorical way; this is when a completely new concept of the stage space comes about. The system of impersonally humiliating someone leads to his being nothing other than a trained pet.

It should be noted that the opera The Nose was the first disc released by the Mariinsky label, winning a prestigious MIDEM Classical Award in the “Opera” recording category (2010).

Artyom Melikhov who is making his debut as Major Kovalev’s rebellious Nose will be faced not just with one of the most demanding roles in the tenor repertoire but also with the task of embodying the stage director’s ideas, in this production requiring excellent acting skills as well as brilliant vocals of the performer. The young singer has a “powerful, expressive and beautifully timbre of voice and an appearance that are ideally suited to the image of the heroic tenor.”