Is Moscow burning?(production of 'War and Peace' opera by Prokofiev)

In Tolstoy's "War and Peace," the burning of Moscow after Napoleon's forces invaded it, in 1812, is attributed to a panicky exodus of Muscovites. In Prokofiev's opera "War and Peace," which was composed after Germany invaded Russia, in 1941, the event becomes an act of heroic self-sacrifice: the citizens torch the city while singing "Moscow will not bow before the enemy!" The other morning at the Metropolitan Opera House, where the opera is having its Met premiere, on February 14th, a hundred and twenty members of the company's chorus arrivedto receive their torching orders.

Dressed in sweatshirts, jeans, and sneakers, the Met's Muscovites milled around a steeply raked mound of mud, on which a nineteenth-century-style street lamp perched crookedly. Behind the set loomed a white backdrop that flickered with images of Moscow's onion-domed skyline.

A scholarly-looking man in black observed the preparations with a thoughtful expression. This was the Russian film and theatre director Andrei Konchalovsky, who is making his Met debut, after staging the gargantuan opera to great acclaim in St. Petersburg. (Perhaps the most populous production in the Met's history, the staging employs, in addition to the chorus, two hundred and twenty-seven supernumeraries, sixty-eight named characters, four chickens, a horse, a goat, and a Maltese lapdog.)

At a signal from Konchalovsky, Joel Revzen, an assistant conductor, raised his arms, and the Muscovites began rushing around the mound, shaking their fists and singing -- in Russian -- "Burn! Burn!" An assistant stage director named Irkin Gabitov called out something in Russian. Next to him, an assistant stage director named Peter McClintock translated: "Ladies and gentlemen, don't run!" The Muscovites stopped, then started again, more slowly. Some of them put on expressions of desperation. Others looked staunchly defiant. As they moved, the lighting changed to crimson, and smoky clouds raced across the backdrop. Gabitov shouted something. McClintock ...