23 October 2010: Mussorgsky, Boris Godunov
Metropolitan Opera, broadcasting live in HD. Conductor, Valery Gergiev; production, Stephen Wadsworth; set designer, Ferdinand Wögerbauer; Marina, Ekaterina Semenchuk; Grigory, Aleksandrs Antonenko; Shiusky, Oleg Balashov; Rangoni, Evgeny Nikitin; Boris Godunov, René Pape; Pimen, Mikhail Petrenko; Varlaam, Vladimir Ognovenko; Shchelkalov, Alexey Markov; Holy Fool, Andrey Popov
An opera on an epic scale, this Metropolitan Opera production of Boris Godunov, indicated in the Met Opera guide as lasting 4 hours 25 minutes, timed out at 5 hours 10 minutes. It has something of the real distance, the long perspective that we tend to associate with epic drama and epic narration in general. Sheer length is a dominant factor. Over the five hours that Mussorgsky devotes to this large-scale story, we are vastly well entertained musically and dramatically by what might be described as two quite different kinds of opera, were it not for the additional fact that Mussorgsky distinguishes his work as much by what it does not contain as by what it does. The closest he comes to another composer’s style and approach is in the third act, set in a castle in Poland, which introduces a ravishing redheaded woman, a scheming, voluptuous, ambitious woman with an eye on the throne of Russia, whose love for the pretender to the throne, Grigory, is simultaneously a bid for political power — a perfect opportunity to compose an act fully in the manner of Tchaikovsky as in his Eugene Onegin, in which the hero and the heroine are passionately in love and hopelessly at odds. Mussorgsky being Mussorgsky, however, he fully adapts the more romantic Russian composer to his own style and purposes. Verdi would not know what to make of this, nor would any of the other grand Italian opera composers. There is not an aria to be found in this five-hour work. Nor do there seem to be motifs in the style of Wagner. What we have are constantly varying, self-renewing, fully expressive melodies that move in constantly shifting directions, as if they are being generated by the constantly progressive dialogue itself, which they convert into stirring, ever-modulating, richly orchestrated music.
Much of this music is choral music, sung by the Met Opera chorus, 150 strong, augmented by 40 extra singers hired for this one opera. It is truly magnificent choral music. In an interview between acts, the director of the chorus was asked what it was like to prepare his singers for this opera. He replied that it was the most difficult of all operas for which to prepare a chorus, partly because it is sung in Russian and also because there are so many singers that his work is not done once the curtain has risen; he must stand backstage, or just off in the wings, and conduct them himself. He did not specify how he coordinated this directing with the conductor of the Met orchestra, but one can imagine a TV monitor sequestered backstage which allows him to see Valery Gergie