Barritone Dmitrii Hvorostovsky (Dmitrii) died at 55 on November 22, 2017
This note is not suitable for the attention span and interest level of FB readership, but I write this down so i won't forget, as I want to document some of the relevant facts about Russia and its artistic traditions as may be relevant to the career of Dmitrii Hvorostovsky.
ABOUT DMITRII:
I did not follow his career, nor the news of his brain cancer announced in 2015, due to my family tragedy which shut my life off then. So, when i received news of his death yesterday Nov. 22, originally I thought it was hoax.
Since then, upon seeing some of his performances on youtube, I saw clearly kindness in his eyes. In one of his recitals, perhaps the one below with co-singer Elina Garanca (mezzo soprano), he received flowers and passed them on to members of the orchestra behind him. Upon his death, notes from admirers, colleagues, and coworkers showed a man of dignity, generosity, positive attitude, courage, honesty, and kindness. Commentators described him in the following terms: "peerless artistry" "Herculean physique" "virility" "commanding stage presence" "devilish eyes" "Siberian express," etc. (I did not see these myriads of phraseology until after his death, so my impression about the singer formed long before his death was not influenced by these 'on-line" phrases.)
His bio showed a young rebellious man who had fought street gangs in early life, a passionate artist who conquered alcoholism to reach the height of his art, who decided to raise a family after his first failed marriage to a ballerina, who then had to conquer his fatal illness to make some of his last memorable performances and recordings (invoking tears from the audience), and who in his short life declared his love for, and attachment to, his country and its cultural heritage.
His voice showed both lyric tenor quality and the unique dark timbre of a barritone, both powerful and delicate. It is velvety smooth bel canto of Italy at its best, no doubt, in a vessel of physique that, to me, encompasses the paradoxical beauty of the Russian culture and its complex history. (I had direct contact with the people of Russia in my personal academic experience and artistic pursuit. I talked to them, socialized with them, attended their recitals, listened to their accounts of history, hopes and dreams, and participated in their daily lives. The people of Russia suffered and went through heart-wrenching transformation and transitions just like the people of Vietnam, with the same sense of fierce patriotism.)
Initially, one look at Dmitrii, and I felt this was the man who could play humanity in God-image, as well as the highly seductive anti-God. So I concluded that in him, the artist, i also saw the "strait gate" -- that narrow passage which separates good from evil, leading us to choices that become our moral fabric.
The precision yet ambivalence of music represents such gate.
I believe that our beloved "beau laid" Dmitri has passed such gait and is now with the beauty of God.
I did not know the following facts, which, as I looked into them following his death, confirmed my instinctive reaction to his strong presence, larger-than-life voice, and masculinity:
You see, God gives humankind the gift of art or beauty to remind us of our need to reach out to beauty as goodness. Yet, Beauty is also used by the anti-God to seduce. Is it possible therefore that beauty can become an independent entity which houses both the gift of God and the seductive tool of the Anti-God? Goodness and evil, God and the anti-God, co-exist in humans, so beauty is ugliness itself. The most beautiful is therefore the "beau laid" or "belle laide" that chooses to be true and good. Hence, in the image of beauty is always the strait gate that represents our choice.
ABOUT DMITRII'S ROLES IN 'THE DEMON" AND AS EUGENE ONEGIN:
In Russia, Dmitri's most notable performances were the title roles in the following two highly acclaimed yet controversial operas, not popular in the West:
1) HIS TITLE ROLE IN "The Demon," an opera by Anton Rubinstein based on a famous and controversial poem by Mikhail Lermontov, which was banned as sacrilegious in its time and beyond. Lermontov was a writer, poet, and painter, recognized as the founder of the Russian psychological novel. Influenced by Pushkin, Lermontov suffered a nervous breakdown after Pushkin's death, which was the victimization of the writer by Russia's high society.
In the poem, the Demon decided to destroy God's creation of goodness. He fell in love with a mortal woman and hoped that with love, he could strike a deal with "goodness" and redeem himself. To win her, he seduced her with promises of everlasting life and power, and her fiance the Prince was killed before the wedding. The Prince left words to have his body delivered to the woman he loved. In grief, the woman was seduced by the Demon, but at the last moment, the angel came and with him was the ghost of her fiance. The woman came to her sense, rejecting the Demon, and hence died. The Demon failed in his quest for love, and was then cast back to where he... permanently resided!
2) HIS TITLE ROLE IN "Eugene Onegin," an opera by Pyotr Tchaikovsky based on Pushkin's novel about a doomed man who rejected the love of a poor young girl, and who got involved in a senseless duel with his best friend.
Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin was a novel in verse set to opera by Tchaikovsky, whose libretto followed passages from the novel, and whose melodic motif allegedly was inspired by Lermontov's poem The Demon.
Pushkin was a poet, writer, playwright, founder of modern Russian literature, social activist, and a FreeMason. He died from a bullet in a duel against a Frenchman who pursued his wife in public.
NOTE FOR VIET READERS: The whole chronology of Vietnamese ancient narrative literature consisted of novels in verse, starting with the anonymous Ban Nu Than (lament of a poor woman), and peaking with Truyen Kieu. by Nguyen Du. So novels in verse such as Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and operas with libretto as poetry should be a familiar concept to learned Vietnamese! (Of course, the Vietnamese "novels in verse" in ancient days were not developed in style or structure as in the West's or Russian novelistic or dramatic art.)
SEE DMITRII AND ELINA GARANCA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6OIuvNK_xs
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