Keto and Kote

This story has been sitting in my drafts for a long time because I didn't have good pictures for it. Murphy's law: I went to the performance with my phone discharged. But then I found the entire performance on YouTube and am now delightfully happy to share it with you.

This beloved Georgian comic opera was written in 1919 by the famous composer Victor Dolidze, who adapted it from a popular theater play titled Khanuma. Dolidze also wrote a libretto to it. At the heart of the play and opera is a 19th century romantic story of young lovers - Keto, a beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant Makar, and Kote, a nephew of Prince Levan, a kind but impoverished Georgian nobleman. Levan, in need of improving his financial situation, hires a matchmaker named Babusi to arrange for his marriage to Keto. Keto's father Makar agrees because while he is wealthy he is craving a noble title for himself and his daughter. Kote enlists the help of another matchmaker Barbale, Babusi's competitor, to trick Levan into rejecting Keto. Keto and Kote ultimately get married in secret and everyone is happy (well, except for Babusi). You can read the entire plot here.

This three-act opera is one of the longest running performances at the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Opera that has been revived at different times by different choreographers. It is so popular that it sells out in hours after the ticket release. I was lucky enough to get three tickets online for my son, my niece and myself in the orchestra section, even though only two seats were together. When I checked a couple of hours later for a friend, they were all sold out.

When we came to the theater, we realized that we were in for a treat. People really dressed up for it into tuxes and ball gowns, and there was not a single empty seat in the entire beautiful theater. We sat close, to the stage, in the 4th and 5th row, so we saw everything well and even interacted with the actors when they got the audiences involved. It was such a delight to watch the performance!

It was of course in Georgian, but the theater has a jumbotron above the stage with the running English translation. So we were able to understand everything even without the libretto. It was an absolute delight. Here are the things I was impressed with the most:

1. The opera was a perfect snapshot of its time. At the turn of the 20th century, Georgia was a part of the Russian empire and it is reflected in the stylized European imperial clothing of the characters and the sets designed by Georgi Alexi-Meskhishvili. The entire plot, with the matchmakers among the main characters, was also the sign of the times where most of the nobility had their marriages arranged for financial and status reasons.

2. The opera includes traditional Georgian dances that were choreographed by Iliko Sukhishvili of the famous Sukhishvili National Ballet. You can see how incredibly sophisticated and difficult the traditional Georgian dances are, especially men's foot work where they dance on the bent front of their feet. Not on tiptoes like in the classical ballet but on the entire front part of the foot, without specially molded shoes, which requires incredibly fast movement to avoid injuries.

3. The Opera and Ballet Orchestra was absolutely superb and perfectly conducted by one of the most experienced conductors of the theater, 86-year-young Revaz Takidze. You can read about him here on the Theater page. He is so revered in Georgia that after each performance he conducts he is called on stage for the standing ovation. A true legend. In the performance I link here you can see at the very end the singer playing Keto leading him out to the center of the stage for the ovation.

4. The most important thing, of course, is signing. Georgian voices are famous all over the world for their polyphonic singing, and the singers in this performance could easily compete with performers from La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera. My favorite were Barbale and Keto who were performed by the same singers in the 2017 performance below. But the male voices were powerful as well.

Here is the entire performance you can enjoy on YouTube. If are not in the mood to watch the whole thing, at least fast forward to the dances and solo singing by the lead characters.

I am also going to link the 1948 Soviet movie that used the ballet dancers and singers at the time. It was banned for several years because the Soviet bureaucrats were afraid it was glorifying the Russian imperial past and the dubious matchmakers. It took Stalin's direct order to release the movie. It has the option for English subtitles as well.

I hope you will find this opera as fun and enjoyable as I did. Thank you for reading!