May 20, 2004

Can’t read music! Can’t speak Russian! It’s time for a Tchaikovsky opera

When some 45 Northwestern undergraduates signed up for legendary Professor Irwin Weil’s “Russian Folklore” class this spring, most had heard through the grapevine that they might wind up singing opera in Russian before a public audience.

Last year’s class was not quite as prepared. “I thought I had a Bolshevik Revolution on my hands when I told my students that they would be in the chorus singing Musorgsky’s Boris Gudunov,” Weil recalls. We don’t speak Russian and we don’t read music, his initially rebellious students told him.

No matter. This year’s non-Russian speaking, non-music reading students will sing in Tchaikovsky’s native tongue when they perform music from his famed opera “Eugene Onegin” and from Borodin’s “Prince Igor.” The free, public concert takes place at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 26, at Alice Millar Chapel. A Russian-style reception will follow.

Voice students from the School of Music will perform the lead roles. Some 20 Russian speakers from the community also will participate.

Contributing to the magic of this event is Natalia Lyashenko, former choral conductor of the Novosibirsk State Opera House and a lecturer at the School of Music. Lyashenko, says Weil, is “an incredible musical talent, rigorously trained in the Russian tradition.

“She can get the best amateur performance out of her non-professional students,” Weil adds. And judging from the weekly Tuesday rehearsals, the emeritus professor of Slavic languages and literatures predicts that Lyashenko will again extract another wonderful performance.

“Eugene Onegin is a complicated work, and it is amazing what Natalia gets out of us,” says one non-Russian speaking participant. “It’s just so much fun working hard at the emotions and mechanics of singing in a language with words chocked full of consonants.”

“The class requires a lot of extra time outside class with rehearsals, but it is lots of fun,” says freshman Yunji Kim. “In other literature classes you just read and talk in class. In this one you get to really feel the rhythm and power, as Professor Weil likes to say, of Russian poetry and music.”

Lyashenko, says Weil, understands her American students well. “She has a sensitivity combined with magnificent musicianship that makes her a one in a million conductor. The wonderful results of our collaboration – the concert — are purely hers.”