The season at the National Theatre in Košice will be closed by the premiere of the opera Anna Bolena.
Dramaturg Stanislav Trnovský spoke with soloist Lucia Kaňková.
The 2022/2023 theatre season will culminate at the National Theatre in Košice on Thursday, June 22, with the premiere of a semi-staged performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s opera ANNA BOLENA, with which the NDKE Opera, after the great success of Roberto Devereux’s opera production about the English Queen Elizabeth I (three awards at the “OPERA 2022” Music Theatre Festival in Prague), will conclude Gaetano Donizetti’s magnificent Tudor trilogy with the captivating story of her mother, Anne Boleyn. Dramaturg Stanislav Trnovský also spoke about the long-awaited premiere with the guest Czech soprano Lucia Kaňková, who will perform in the role of Anna Bolena.
You made your debut in Košice as the Queen of the Night, in the premiere of The Magic Flute in February of this year, you have performed in reprises several times, and most recently you even sang part of the part of Pamina, when you very promptly filled in for a sick colleague. In addition, we heard you the other day as Violetta in La Traviata. These are all slightly different styles than bel canto, such as Donizetti’s Anna Bolena. How do you sing bel canto and is this your first experience with bel canto and Donizetti?
As for the voice, is this role more dramatic for you compared to, for example, Mozart and then Verdi? What does it mean for your voice, for your fach, or for the period in which your voice is currently located?
Of course, I have to work with my voice a little differently. It is a more dramatic role than, for example, the aforementioned Queen of the Night or Pamina. With Violetta, I would rather say that it is a different kind of singing. It is not explicitly about the drama, it is about working with muscles, with the voice.
How do you see Queen Anne Boleyn? For you, is she this fragile woman who is humble and in some way submits to the blow of fate that will come? Or is she a self-confident woman? What will your Bolena be like, how do you feel about her?
I think that Donizetti portrayed her a little differently than how it was in history. That is why I am still struggling with how to interpret the role. In Donizetti’s music, she is portrayed more as a suffering woman who is trying to make Henry love her again, forgive her. I think that historically it was not like that, that she was a very self-confident woman, she had a very good education not only from the French court, but also from England. I’m trying to find a middle ground so that she’s not a suffering woman, but the confident, purposeful Anne Boleyn we know from history, but so that it also fits into Donizetti’s music.
I have to say that I am a bit of a tourist between styles, I like to do it, I always sing something a little different, so that my voice fits into a certain period, into a certain style, into a certain type of singing. I think that this is beneficial for the voice in its development. As for bel canto, for me it is the absolute peak for a singer in that we have enormous freedom to create beautiful music, even to rewrite certain notes, which in this case Gaetano Donizetti wrote. More or less everything that fits into this style is allowed. Now I have verified that I probably prefer to sing bel canto, precisely because of that freedom. But at the same time, it is also good for the singer to devote himself to, for example, the aforementioned Mozart in the meantime. Then the voice will settle into that pure form again.
Foto: Joseph Marčisnký
