(Note: I've coined SN@TO as shorthand for Saturday night at the Opera.)
Last Saturday I wrote a diary recording my impressions of the Metropolitan Opera's HD presentation of Wagner's Das Rheingold that drew a lot of interest. So, it encouraged me to maybe make it a weekly event– the general topic being opera with a special focus on current events and performances.
The next Met HD transmission is a week from today, Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, Saturday October 23rd at 12 pm EDT in movie theaters around the country.
What's the big deal?
It's one of the great operas, and while not exactly a rarity, requires such a commitment from the company presenting it to make it only worth attempting on special occasions. Avid operagoer though I am with more than 40 years' exposure to leading international stages, I have only seen Boris live twice (San Francisco in '83 and '92). Decent as those performances were, I'm still looking forward to a peak Boris experience.
On this occasion the Met has taken pains to provide 'the goods'. Above all we're getting René Pape in the title role. He is, IMO, one of the very greatest singers (irrespective of voice range) active on our stages today. The rest of the principals are Russian singers. I love the sound of the Russian language (I even love Russian accent in English) and, more than any other operatic language, I greatly appreciate the added flavor that native speakers bring to their parts. And with the esteemed Valery Gergiev leading the musical forces, we're almost certain to get an idiomatic and provocative reading.
The last new production of Boris at the Met was in 1974. So, the sense of occasion coming from the Met itself is considerable here.
The Story
The Met has a fine, 800-word plot synopsis if you're new to the piece.
The subject is political. Boris himself is a historical figure. He was the brother-in-law of the czar Fyodor, son of Ivan the Terrible. Fyodor's son Dmitri died under mysterious circumstances and Boris himself came to the throne in 1598. A Pretender claiming to be Dmitri raised a force to try to take the throne. When Boris died suddenly in 1603, the way was clear for Dmitri to take the throne. The events of the opera span this period from Boris' coronation to his death.
As a historical postscript, this Dmitri was murdered in 1606 and succeeded by Shuisky, himself another character in the opera, though somewhat a background figure.
The character Boris is a familiar dramatic type, the monarch troubled by the crimes he committed to gain a throne (cf. Claudius in Hamlet and Macbeth). But Boris himself is presented as a sympathetic figure, though troubled by hallucinations.
Versions of the Work
Mussorgsky (like Wagner and Berlioz) wrote his own libretto. The first version of the piece was completed in 1869. It was eventually rejected by the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, so he revised it in 1872. This was also rejected, but eventually enough buzz was created through the performance of excerpts that it finally reached the stage in January, 1874 and remained in repertory until 1882.
After that Rimsky-Korsakov undertook a wholesale revision of the piece, not only re-orchestrating it, but even changing the harmonies and rewriting the vocal lines. The overall effect in slangy terms is much more 'glossy'.
Mussorgsky's original version had seven scenes:
- The people 'pleading' with an 'unwilling' Boris to take the throne
- The coronation scene
- The monastery scene (Dmitri's plot hatched)
- The inn at the Lithuanian border (Dmitri's escape to Poland)
- Boris at home with his children and learning of Dmitri's plot
- Boris meets the holy simpleton outside St. Basil's cathedral
- The death of Boris
For the revision, Mussorgsky:
- Made cuts in Scenes 1 and 3
- Expanded scene 5
- Eliminated Scene 6
- Added two new scenes introducing a female character, Marina Mniszek, a Polish noblewoman who agrees to become Dmitri's wife– the 'Polish Act'
- Added the Kromy forest scene with Dmitri's forces advancing on Moscow and providing a place for the holy simpleton
The new package was a Prologue and Four Acts. The Polish Act comes after scene 5 of the original. And the Kromy forest scene ends the opera.
The preference nowadays as in this new production is to use 'what musicologist Richard Taruskin calls the "supersaturated" Boris text', i.e., the longer versions of each scene whether from original or revised version and restoring Boris's meeting with the holy simpleton. This is the best approach, I think, though it does introduce the dramaturgically odd note of the Simpleton appearing both in Moscow to meet Boris and then several hundred miles away to see Dmitri's forces. But this is a quibble.
Note that the antagonists, Boris and Dmitri never meet in the opera.
The Music
Though the music was considered quirky in its day, it's plenty accessible to modern ears. The 'weirdest' stuff is Boris's hallucination music, but it was long since assimilated into the emotional conventions of 20th-century America film music.
Mussorgsky is also employs a naive, folksy or childish idiom without irony where dramatically appropriate.
And he's completely up to the grandeur of the biggest scenes, especially:
- The coronation scene whose main theme may be familiar to some listeners otherwise unacquainted with the opera
- The Polish Act. Despite the funny-sounding nickname, the music is full of perfume and elegance culminating in the famous Polonaise that separates the two scenes. There are two great Polonaises in the opera repertory: one in Chaikovskii's Eugene Onegin and this one.
And I can't help but think the Mussorgsky's was in some way a homage to Chaikovskii's. (h/t to Boris Godunov (yes!) who points out that Mussorgsky's opera antedates Chaikovskii's)
- And for you Mahler devotees, pay attention to the opening of the monastery scene. Doesn't it remind you of Der Einsame in Herbst from Das Lied von der Erde? Again I have to think that Mahler had this forerunner in mind.
But it's so long!
The site for tickets to the HD event lists the Expected Running Time at 5 hours! I know that's daunting to some, but I have a few comments:
First, the time is overstated. The Met's own website lists the running time as 4 hours 20 minutes. They're in a position to know.
But, even more importantly, a lot of the best operas are the longest ones. It's at these extended lengths (4+ hours including intermissions) that opera most fully presents itself as an alternate reality. That is, to me, the essence of the magic of opera. Of course, with second-rate forces or on an off night, such a long show is the definition of tedium. But I have a high level of confidence in the forces being brought together here, and recommend that you overcome your doubts if that's the sticking point.