The Bear, Bronius Kutavičius's opera, which is based on a Gothic fantasy novella by Prosper Mérimée, premièred in 2000 and is now a regular part of the Lithuanian repertoire.
The story, dark, murky and gruesome is set in the 19th century in a remote and wild part of rural Lithuania. A countess on her wedding day was kidnapped by a bear and raped. She has been mad ever since. Her son, Count Šemeta, born shortly afterwards, suffers from hypertrichosis. He is hairy all over his body and to the villagers he seems bearlike.
Šemeta (Andrius Apšega) is a lonely, gloomy soul, who prefers the countryside to people. A warning by a one-eyed old woman, a clairvoyant, that married bliss is not for him goes unheeded. Overcome by his lust for blood, he kills his fiancée (Gunta Gelgotė) on their wedding day. He kills her off-stage, denying the audience the full Gothic horror.
Kutavičius’s music is hypnotic and quite extraordinary. Powerful and disturbing, it constantly creates a weird, eerie, dissonant, folksy sound. Martynas Staškus conducts and Gintaras Varnas directs this expressionistic production in which the only people who seem to be fully sane are a visiting professor (Vladimiras Prudnikovas) and the countess’s doctor (Tadas Jakas) who is in a wheelchair. The wedding guests whoop it up. As for the count’s bride, she comes across as a mature woman trying to be girly and failing.
The Bear is far removed from Jean Cocteau’s romantic and erotic film La Belle et La Bête and the sheer fun of the Disney musical and much nearer in its Grimm tone to the original pre-panto Goldilocks story, which had the little girl impaled on St Paul’s Cathedral for messing about with three bears.
Bronius Kutavičius’s The Bear can be watched free on the OperaVision channel.