Sergei Prokofiev spent much of the last decade of his life preoccupied with his operatic version of War and Peace. He made substantial revisions and additions to it, but failed to obtain the Soviet seal of approval – the complete opera was not performed until after his death. In its final version, it is a sprawling four-and-a-half-hour epic – part character study, part bombastic propaganda piece. Prokofiev conceived it on a small scale, focusing on a handful of characters rather than the vast historical aspect, an approach at odds with the demands of the wartime Soviet authorities. Through successive revisions, it accrued more and more bombast until the scale of his original vision was obscured from sight.
In creating a new performing version for the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Dr Rita McAllister has gone back to Prokofiev's original conception and scores. Stripped of its ballast, what emerges is leaner and more muted, with some 90 minutes shorn off. This goes some way towards redressing the imbalance between the intimate Peace and grandiose War sections. The problem is that Prokofiev is often a good deal more convincing in hand-on-sleeve patriotic mode than he is trying to portray the inner lives of his protagonists, none of whom emerge as fully fleshed characters. Cast as a series of fragmentary scenes rather than a continuous narrative, the first part is slow-moving and episodic; it is the choruses and patriotic moments of the War section that hold the attention.
Even with its reduced scale, this is a still a hugely ambitious undertaking from the RSAMD in collaboration with Scottish Opera and the Rostov State Rachmaninov Conservatoire, which brings native Russian singers in the cast. Irina Brown's economical staging portrays both the interiors of the aristocratic houses and the battlefield with few changes but imaginative lighting.
This is not an opera for star performances, though Diana Harutyunyan's Natasha and Michel de Souza's Andrei are both attractively lyrical. There is also a charismatic cameo from Aleksey Gusev as Napoleon, more sympathetic here than as the caricature of Hitler in the final version. In the pit, the Orchestra of Scottish Opera with student additions conducted by Tim Dean gives an energetic account of the score.
Prokofiev considered War and Peace to be his masterpiece and while this version doesn't enhance the case for its greatness, it does offer a glimpse into a very different conception of it.
Festival theatre, Edinburgh, Thursday and Saturday. Box office: 0131-529 6000.
