Boris Godunov, Hamburg State Opera, 4 October 2023

Images: Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Boris Godunov (Alexander Tsymbalyuk)

Boris Godunov – Alexander Tsymbalyuk
Andrey Schchelkalov – Alexey Bogdanchikov
Nikitch (Police Officer) – Hubert Kowalczyk
Mityukha – Julian Arsenault
Prince Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky – Matthias Klink
Pimen – Vitalij Kowaljow
Grigory Otrepiev – Dovlet Nurgeldiyev
Hostess of the Inn – Marta Swiderska
Varlaam – Ryan Speedo Green
Missail – Jürgen Sacher
Xenia – Olivia Boen
Xenia’s Nurse – Renate Spingler
Fyodor – Kady Evanyshyn
Boyar – Mateusz Lugowski
Holy Fool – Florian Panzieri

Frank Castorf (director)
Wolfgang Gruber (assistant director)
Aleksandar Denić (set designs)
Adriana Braga Peretzki (costumes)
Rainer Casper (lighting)
Andreas Deinert, Severin Renke (video, live camera)
Maryvonne Riedelsheimer (live editing)
Patric Seibert (dramaturgy)

  
Children’s and Youth Choir of the Hamburg State Opera (director: Luiz de Goday)

Chorus of the Hamburg State Opera (director: Eberhard Friedrich)

Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra

Kent Nagano (conductor)

It is, of course, the opera for our time; arguably, it is for many other times too. Boris Godunov, in whatever incarnation – a more complex question than it is even for a Bruckner symphony – has nonetheless come under attack from some frankly bizarre nationalists who consider it should not currently be performed. The Polish National Opera’s Waldemar Piotr Dąbrowski announced cancellation of a Warsaw staging with a string of non sequiturs he could not possibly have believed. Ukrainian protestors mobbed La Scala to demand cancellation there. The country’s Minister of Culture went further and, incredibly, demanded other countries boycott all Russian culture. What on earth do they think happens in the opera? Boris’s reign is hardly characterised by its success; whatever this opera is concerned with, it is certainly not a ‘how to’ guide. It is rather like those strange people who think Hitler might have been politically inspired by the Ring. We can be fairly certain he noticed what happened to Wotan, Siegfried, and any other hero. And if we are to take the claims made for Russian culture seriously, surely we should seek to understand it, as of course we should Polish, Ukrainian, and any other culture: all part of our world.

Frank Castorf’s new production for the Hamburg State Opera is arguably not so new. It was due to open in September 2020, but was thwarted by coronavirus. Three years later, it has its chance in a very changed Europe. (You will struggle to go far in Germany without seeing a Ukrainian flag.) Layers of resonance, like those in the work, make it more rather than less relevant, and show those who would cancel or ban artworks for the fools, as well as the knaves, that they are. All societies write and rewrite their history. All respond to myth as well as to evidence, to the present as well as to the past. This is what we see here, in a Russian Empire whose costumes (brilliantly designed by Adriana Braga Peretzki) may be of the twentieth century, but also look back all the way to the Time of Troubles and beyond, boyars from before Peter the Great had their beards shorn. (Is that not, after all, what Stalin did with his ‘Great Patriotic War’?) These pasts are, in many ways, now, whether in Pimen’s chronicle or the electronically changing and updating battle maps of Boris’s imperial quarters, whose billiard games afford little relaxation, yet provide plentiful metaphors for surrounding machinations.

The writing and the dramatising are the thing. Many of us have probably fallen into the trap of taking Pimen’s witness for the truth. He seems so plausible. Perhaps Grigory/Dmitri did too; that is left rather more to our imagination. And does not the tragedy make more sense if Boris was guilty? (Yet if he was, why not, as dramaturge Patric Seibert points out in an excellent programme essay, give the people what they want? Confess and crush his enemy, who is nowhere near victory, in any case?) Perhaps it would, if this were a ‘classical’ anything, yet the rough edges of Boris, its very problematical qualities, are itself the grit of its drama and, perhaps, of its truth. In this, the 1868-9 version (speaking of ‘original’ or otherwise only muddies the water further), we see and hear, to quote Richard Taruskin in typically trenchant yet not unpersuasive form: ‘a set of scenes very roughly hewn from Pushkin’s unwieldy block of poetic marble, selected according to diverse and unrelated criteria. … Far from showing how carefully Mussorgsky structured his dramatic conception, the first Boris boldly displays a quintessentially realist disdain for a well-made play.’ 

‘No Polish scene?’ I hear you lament. Well, yes or no. For Castorf, permitted a degree of leeway here in the opera house to draw on his theatrical practice of introduction of other texts, fills in some of the gaps on film between scenes. Avaricious, cynical, lustful, and a great deal more: it is difficult to imagine the Grigory and Marina we see there as offering much of a solution for the ever-suffering Russian people, whose manipulation by church and nobility is clearly signalled. So too is that of Poland and the Roman Catholic Church more generally, as we see in the presence, also on film, of John Paul II and dispersal of propaganda leaflets headed by iconic – for once, surely, the term holds – emblems of ‘Solidarność’. More traditional icons are to be seen amongst flags and other emblems too: here is nothing if not a contested sphere.

This is less a revisionist (or, if you prefer, historically informed) portrayal of Boris and his rule than one which, in Shakespearean style, declines to judge and leaves that to us, should we wish. We may, of course, learn more by similarly declining: a controversial message,’ if message it be, right now. We certainly learn more by being afforded the privilege. As the action progresses, framed by yet another superlative revolving set of contrasts and connections from Castorf’s longstanding collaborator Aleksandar Denić, we head towards more than one tragic denouement. There is that of Boris, and what we might read into him as representing: perhaps a more ideal form of Soviet rule? His concern for the people seems genuine enough and he feeds them: a point made clearly here. One thing, moreover, that differentiates Boris from today’s politicians – those in power, anyway – is, as Seibert notes, his a conscience. His personal tragedy, and that, it seems here, of Russia too, is that that conscience proves his undoing; it kills him. A Gorbachev, perhaps? For there is the greater political tragedy too. What comes of nefarious external interference, aided and abetted by the Shuiskys (and Romanovs) within?

Fool (Florian Panzieri)

Boris dead, the set revolves once more for Fyodor to see what the future holds: the swift substitution for socialist realism of Coca-Cola, in the form of a huge, again ‘iconic’ bottle centre stage, with a straw whose colours are that of Yeltsin’s (and Putin’s) Russia. ‘Flow, flow, bitter tears,’ as the Fool would have sung again in a different version; the words nonetheless ring in our ears and the curtain falls. What we have seen, whether on stage, on live video close-up, or on film, and what we have still not seen, that variety of sources notwithstanding, may have helped us make up our own minds. What does Pimen do when he retreats inside? Who is exploiting whom at the Polish court? To what extent, if you will forgive the school examination format, is Boris the victim of psychological manipulation? Or we may emerge all the more confused at the complications of art and reality. There are far worse lessons than that. 

Kent Nagano’s conducting of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra intrigued me too. On the one hand, some of it sounded what I am tempted to call unidiomatic, though I should not exaggerate: closer to Tchaikovsky (though hardly Rimsky) than to Mussorgsky. Yet if we draw those lessons from the production, what of the musical performance? Should we not beware the idea that there is a correct or true path? If we cannot settle on a text for the work ‘itself’, should we not open that out in other ways? Nowadays, we pride ourselves on appreciating the radicalism of ‘pure’ Mussorgsky, even to the extent of preferring (to my mind, somewhat dubiously) the version heard here. What have we lost in the meantime? And can we seriously maintain that those before did not know what they were doing? For Nagano certainly knew where the music was going and, so it seemed, where it had more broadly come from. It was a reading that complemented and even complicated what we saw in stage, even if sometimes I longed for a little more starkness and bite.

 

Fyodor (Kady Evanyshyn)

In the title role, Alexander Tsymbalyuk offered a similarly thoughtful and complex portrayal: sympathetic yet never banally so. We might trust his witness no more than that of anyone else, but we could certainly trust the alchemy between music, words, and gesture. Matthias Klink’s wheedling Shuisky and Dovlet Nurgeldiyev’s sweet-toned faux-innocence as Grigory made their points in similarly thoughtful ways. Shuisky’s first-hand ‘happening’ to see Boris’s breakdown offered a duly chilling moment. Marta Swiderska presided in colourful, characterful fashion over a raucous hostelry close to the Lithuanian border, Ryan Speedo Green’s Varlaam a properly larger-than-life patron. Vitalij Kowaljow’s Pimen seemed very much the holy man we were given to believe, yet far from ruled out more sinister possibilities. All contributed to the greater whole, as of course did the chorus, whose disappointments, privations, and other sufferings were all too real. Not that they were not in some sense responsible too. Expertly trained by Eberhard Friedrich, with them we knew where we were—or rather, we thought we did.

Boris Godunov, Royal Opera, 19 June 2019

Royal Opera House

Images: (C) ROH 2019/Clive Barda

Boris Godunov – Bryn Terfel
Andrey Schchelkalov – Boris Pinkhasovich

Nikitch – Jeremy White

Mityukha – Adrian Clarke

Prince Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky – Roger Honeywell

Pimen – Matthew Rose

Grigory Otrepiev – David Butt Philip

Hostess of the Inn – Anne Marie Gibbons

Varlaam – John Tomlinson

Missail – Harry Nicoll

Frontier Guard – Alan Ewing

Xenia – Haegee Lee

Xenia’s Nurse – Fiona Kimm

Fyodor – Joshua Abrams

Boyar – Christopher Lemmings

Holy Fool – Sam Furness

Richard Jones (director)

Miriam Buethner (set designs)

Nicky Gillibrand (costumes)

Mimi Jordan Sherin (lighting)

Ben Wright, Danielle Urbas (movement)

Gerard Jones (associate director)

Trinity Boys’ Choir

Royal Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Marc Albrecht (conductor)

Dmitri (David Butt Philip ) and Pimen (Matthew Rose)

Maybe there is something to be said after all for the 1869 version of Boris Godunov. There is obviously a huge amount to be said for what we see and hear, the problem lying in comparisons with later versions. However, unlike 2016, when Richard Jones’s production had its first outing, I actually felt – as opposed to being able to come up with an argument in my head – what particular virtues it might have. It no longer came across as the ‘sketch’ of which I wrote three years ago, so long as one were able to keep 1872, or indeed aspects of Rimsky-Korsakov, out of one’s mind. That I was, more or less, speaks perhaps of still more distinguished performances than last time around – and not only of greater receptivity on my part during Britain’s own, unending Time of Troubles.

Shuisky (Roger Honeywell) and Boris (Bryn Terfel)

That began, I think, at the top – or rather in the pit. Last time around, Antonio Pappano had offered one of his better performances at Covent Garden. Marc Albrecht, however, proved surer, more focused, more grimly fatal, aided by an Orchestra of the Royal Opera House on fine, impressively dark form. Just what this version in particular needs then: almost enough to have one shrug at losing the Polish act, if not quite the clock. The chorus, almost as much the opera’s foundation as the orchestra, was on good form too: the sound of Mother Russia and her tribulations resounding from and through multiple pasts: that of the historical Boris Godunov, nineteenth-century reinventions, and our own. The rawness of its cries certainly brought out that quality in Mussorgsky’s ‘original’ text. One could doubtless pick holes, were one so inclined; I admit my lack of competence to judge the Russian. Neither this chorus nor any non-Slavic one will ever quite attain that ‘Russian’ sound many have in their heads from recordings, some from performances too. But so what? This is an opera for the world; if your sole objection is that it does not sound as you ‘feel’ it should, based upon what you have heard before, then perhaps the fault may lie with you. Nationalism may help to ground nineteenth-century opera; it should have no place in twenty-first-century performance and reception.

Holy Fool (Sam Furness) and children's choir

The same goes for the stage performances too, most highly distinguished on their own terms. Bryn Terfel’s portrayal of Boris seemed to me to have developed considerably from last time, though it had had much to offer then too. In some ways, his facial expressions, his haunted demeanour, their combination with vocal delivery seemed to have drawn closer to a great, non-Russian predecessor in the role, John Tomlinson (seen at Covent Garden under Semyon Bychkov in 2003). Not that this was anything other than Terfel’s own portrayal, of course. As Varlaam, Tomlinson himself proved in finer vocal fettle than I had heard for some time, his as fully committed a performance as we have come to expect over the years. It was, perhaps, Matthew Rose as Pimen who offered the finest vocal performance of all, the monk and chronicler – apparently innocent, but who knows? – brought vividly to life with surpassing vocal radiance. David Butt Philip’s Grigory benefited from a typical detailed, intelligent performance, with Roger Honeywell a properly wheedling Shuisky. This was a Boris with no weak links, cast from depth, other impressive performances coming from Jette Parker Young Artist, Haegee Lee and treble, Joshua Abrams, as the doomed ruler’s children. Sam Furness's Fool rightly held sway in his scene - and perhaps swayed the tsar too.

Boyars, Pimen, and Boris

Jones’s production has much to be said for it, especially when compared to more recent stagings I have seen from him (Katya Kabanova and La Damnation de Faust, for instance). The ritual re-enactment above of Dmitri’s assassination not only chills, but imparts unity and immediacy. That we see the re-enactment re-enacted, or threatened to be, below too heightens the sense of never-ending sorrow, of political and cultural impossibility. The red hair that marks out erstwhile and present Tsarevichi, as well as pretender Grigory, is but the most visible strand that seemingly marks out the fate of all. Lightly nineteenth-century dress reminds us, like Pimen’s chronicle, here literally writ large, that this is a contested history, in which generation after generation, not least those of Pushkin and Mussorgsky, will continue to rewrite to their own purposes. There is no peace in Russia, no peace in the world at large. It is not, perhaps, a production that has a great deal to say in and of itself, but it amply permits us to continue on our sorry path, both as chroniclers and readers.

Murder of Tsarevich Dmitri

With that, it is goodbye to the Royal Opera House for me for a little while. Next month, I shall leave the country again for a while. Will the ‘will of the people’ to which Boris attributes the Tsarevich’s death continue to prevail? As much and as little as ever. Who will be tsar when I return? A Godunov, a Shuisky, a Romanov? May God have mercy on the souls of the crowd, if not those whose Kremlin machinations have done this to us.

Boris Godunov, Royal Opera, 14 March 2016

Royal Opera House

Boris Godunov – Bryn Terfel

Andrey Schchelkalov – Kostas Smoriginas
Nikitch – Jeremy White
Mityukha – Adrian Clarke
Prince Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky – John Graham-Hall
Pimen – Ain Anger
Grigory Otrepiev – David Butt Philip
Hostess of the Inn – Rebecca de Pont Davies
Varlaam – John Tomlinson
Missail – Harry Nicoll
Frontier Guard – James Platt
Xenia – Vlada Borovko
Xenia’s Nurse – Sarah Pring
Fyodor – Ben Knight
Boyar – Nicholas Sales
Holy Fool – Andrew Tortise

Richard Jones (director)

Miriam Buethner (set designs)
Nicky Gillibrand (costumes)
Mimi Jordan Sherin (lighting)
Ben Wright (movement)
Elaine Kidd (associate director)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Antonio Pappano (conductor)

 

I really only have one grumble, so I shall get it out of the way first. Why the original, 1869 version of Boris Godunov? Yes, it was a Royal Opera, although not a Royal Opera House, first? Yes, it has its particular fascinations; one might even argue it more radical or at the very least still less beholden to operatic convention than Mussorgsky’s revised version, first performed long before the original was exhumed. Yes, there is the very real advantage in the theatre of not having the action broken by an interval. But does anyone seriously think we are better off without the Polish act, without Marina? Does anyone seriously think that Mussorgsky’s sometimes drastic reworking of Pushkin is not more successful operatically (however we understand the term)? Does anyone seriously think the grander scale of the opera as a whole and the (still) greater opposition between tsar and people are not more or less unambiguously to the dramatic good? For seasoned opera-goers, one might argue that that is all less of a problem; we shall know the revision anyway. We might even know the Rimsky-Korsakov reorchestration. Indeed, we do, although I have yet, alas, to hear a performance of Rimskyfied Boris, and should like the opportunity to do so before I die. That said, I should hesitate before staging either 1869 or Rimsky in this country, at least, given that performances of any version have been bizarrely infrequent. I cannot imagine anyone would dispute the standing of the work as the greatest of all Russian operas. Perhaps it seemed less so on account of the version to the first-night audience; I cannot be sure. At any rate, I was surprised by the muted reception: quite undeserved. Maybe these were just people who thought they were in for Russian Donizetti.

 

If the 1869 version will always seem more akin to a fascinating draft to me, what a draft it is! This was a strong performance all around. Antonio Pappano sounded far more at home here than he ever has in German repertory. There were some oddities, not least the over-emphatic phrasing of the very opening bars. Even that, though, served to underline its Janáček-like vocal prophecy. More concerning, at times, was a tendency towards smoothing away some of Mussorgsky’s sparest, uncompromising writing, rather at odds with the version but, more importantly, occasionally suggesting a kinship with more conventional, even Italianate, operatic practice which, to my ears at least, should not be there. (Whatever Richard Taruskin might claim, I really do not hear a rapprochement with Verdi in the revised version.) That said, however, there was splendid playing from the orchestra, on as fine form as I have heard in some time. Pappano, moreover, should surely take some, at least, of the credit for the force with which particular musical moments stood out: not like a sore thumb, but with an underlining of a telling shift, harmonically, timbrally, or both. Pacing was sure, too: perhaps still more important in this succession of scenes, whose own formal radicalism – sorry to keep using that word, but it seems so apt in this case! – was enabled thereby truly to make its mark.

 

Bryn Terfel gave one of the finest performances I have seen from him. Truly, he embodied the role; and, in an opera so concerned with succession, it was truly unnerving to witness him grasp John Tomlinson’s mantle, as the latter gave an inimitable performance in the role of Varlaam. Not that Terfel sounded remotely like Tomlinson, of course; if one were expecting, and insisting upon, a ‘traditional’, deep, ‘Russian’, performance, one would doubtless have been disappointed. There is no more reason, though, to insist upon one correct way to perform Mussorgsky than there is with Elgar. Terfel’s care with the text – musical, as well as verbal – was striking; so was its visual incarnation. I had no doubt that this was Boris. As for Tomlinson, his larger-than-life assumption of Varlaam was spot on; the extraordinary double act, spoons and all, with Harry Nicoll’s Missail proved a joy, its grim humour well-nigh Shakespearean. Let us hope we shall one day see Tomlinson’s Lear.

 

David Butt Philip’s intelligent portrayal of the growth of a false Dmitri had one, rightly, both sympathise – why not have a go, in such a world? – with and suspect Grigory. Vocally as well as dramatically, this was a fine performance, which had one all the more regret the loss of the Polish Act. Ain Anger’s Pimen was something no one present is likely to forget, a world-weary yet canny chronicler more in control (perhaps!) than any other of these tormented – and tormenting – characters. This was, surprisingly, his Royal Opera debut; it will surely not be long before we see him at Covent Garden again. Ben Knight gave an astonishingly mature performance as Fyodor; this was the real thing, no doubt. The extraordinary versatility of John Graham-Hall took another turn with his Shuisky: wheedling, yes, but ultimately a sad figure, a more rounded assumption than one generally sees (and hears). Schchelkalov assumed greater, more chilling stature in Kostas Smoriginas’s performance than I can recall. Andrew Tortise’s Fool was, again, the Shakespearean thing; this talented singer deserves greater exposure on our opera stages. Were I to continue, and perhaps I ought to, I should simply be listing the cast and saying ‘well done!’ to each of them, for there was no weak link; there was, indeed, an abundance of fine character-singing and acting from all concerned.

 

Choral singing was excellent, as were Richard Jones’s direction of the chorus and Ben Wright’s movement direction. Here, although there are of course losses with respect to the version, there is arguably considerable gain too. The truly extraordinary prose recitative of the Coronation Scene shocked as it should. In 1869, and indeed in 2016, we stood as distant from Rimskian Technicolor and, so it seemed, not so far from a mix of Monteverdi with Schoenberg – in Russian. It is here, ironically, that one is probably better off either with the original or with Rimsky. Renato Balsadonna will be leaving a chorus in very good shape for his successor, William Spaulding. (As any operagoer knows, Spaulding’s work at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, augurs extremely well for London.)

 

Jones’s production is honest, straightforward, direct, with some of the tell-tale designs we expect, but nothing irritating. The upper, silent level of action in which assassins meet – a disturbingly Orientalist image here, I am afraid, although I doubt it was intended that way, nor is it necessarily intrinsically so – plotters scheme, and, above all, a child meets his cruel death is the realm of memory. We see as well as hear it haunt Boris; we sympathise, as we should, although, as with his would-be usurper, we do not only sympathise. Whether what we see be ‘true’ or no, we cannot know. The more disturbing question, or rather the implicit answer to that question, is: who cares?  Such is a crucial question in the work, and it is vividly, almost ritualistically instantiated here. Otherwise, below, a story is clearly and indeed colourfully told; it is difficult to imagine even the most ‘traditionalist’ of operagoers having any quarrel with Jones’s staging or – and, sadly, this is what such operagoers exclusively seem to mean by ‘productions’ – with the designs by Miriam Buethner and Nicky Gillibrand, all well thought out and finely executed.

I cannot help but wish that the production were a little more daring in its political terms of reference. If ever an opera cried out for a little contemporary or near-contemporary signposting, it is surely Boris. Is there a Russian regime to which the work could not be updated? Gorbachev’s might be trickier than most, although even then, Boris the reformer might intriguingly come into play. By the same token, however, we are free to draw our own comparisons, and anyone with half a brain cell will do so. In some ways, it is not unwelcome to have a construction – and Jones is too clever to approach the opera unmediated, whatever first impressions might suggest – of old Muscovy placed before us; if some silly souls take that as ‘fact’ or, God forbid, as ‘beautiful’, then that ultimately is their problem. At any rate, the evening offered a convincing, powerful musico-dramatic whole.

 

The performance on 21 March will be broadcast live to cinemas worldwide.

 

 

 

When Valery Abisalovich called Vladimir Vladimirovich...

According to The Guardian, Valery Gergiev has called the Russian Prime Minister on his annual 'phone-in'. Luke Harding reports:

Gergiev likens Putin to the composer Sergei Prokoviev "who came up with a lot of different productions". (Is this a way of saying Putin should go on and on?) Russia isn't just an oil and gas country but a country rich in poets and writers, Gergiev says. A classic piece of quality toadying, if you ask me.

Putin is clearly delighted by the question. He says he loves St Petersberg [sic], where Gergiev is general and artistic director of the celebrated Mariinsky Theatre. Putin says he will do his best to support Russian culture.

Gergiev is now praising Putin, comparing him to Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great. Putin chides Gergiev for stealing artists for his theatre from Moscow's famous Bolshoi. This is all very pally.

(I wonder what the original Russian for 'different productions' was; there is always the possibility, doubtless, that something might have been lost in translation.) Click here for a fuller report from The Guardian on the Russian people's audience with its present Tsar.  For a time when Russian rulers - and just maybe, even top-ranking musicians - had a few more scruples, see below:



Valery Gergiev, lest anyone need reminding, is Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. It is difficult to conceive of his predecessor, Sir Colin Davis, having behaved similarly. Imagine Sir Colin, when Music Director of the Royal Opera, calling Margaret Thatcher and likening her to Gloriana...

Boris Godunov, English National Opera, 29 November 2008

London Coliseum

Priest – James Gower
Mityukha – Paul Napier-Burrows
Andrey Schelkalov – David Stephenson
Prince Vasily Shuisky – John Graham-Hall
Boris Godunov – Peter Rose
Simpleton – Robert Murray
Pimen – Brindley Sherratt
Grigory Otrepyev, later Dmitri the Pretender – Gregory Turay
Innkeeper – Yvonne Howard
Varlaam – Jonathan Veira
Missail – Anton Rich
Border guard – Charles Johnston
Xenia – Sophia Bevan
Fyodor – Anna Grevelius
Nurse – Deborah Davison
Boyar-in-attendance – Philip Daggett

Tim Albery (director)
Tobias Heheisel (designer)
Brigitte Reiffenstuel (costumes)
Adam Silverman (lighting)
Philippe Giraudeau (choreographer)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Merry)
Edward Gardner (conductor)

‘Austerity’ seems to be the buzz word of the moment, latched onto by reactionary politicians who would have us return to the stifling societal conformity and bigotry of their beloved 1950s, and also, with more justification, by those who would press for a tiny reduction in the money being squandered upon the 2012 Olympic Games. As is well known, the arts are suffering greatly – and will come to suffer still more – in order that ‘state-of-the-art sporting facilities’ might be built and limousines provided for the leading lights of the supposedly amateur ‘Olympic movement’. Whether by accident, design, or – I fear – necessity, austerity appeared to be a guiding principle in the English National Opera’s Boris Godunov. In some senses, this is far from a bad thing. The sparseness of Tobias Hoheisel’s sets – I should probably employ the singular ‘set’ – and the generally minimalist bent of Tim Albery’s production lent an intensity consonant with the travails of Mother Russia lying at the heart of the work. This might have gone a little far when the Innkeeper was forced to wheel on her miniature inn in a little wagon, but even then it did no particular harm. The single chair for the scene with the boyars was more of a problem – ENO used to have a fetish for chairs, so must surely have a few lying around somewhere – in that the Tsar, most implausibly, had to stand, that the elderly Pimen might be seated. Updating to the last days of Imperial Russia worked well, emphasising the brutality of the state and the deadly consequences for the populace. Dostoevsky was almost a palpable presence.

‘Austerity’, or ‘economy’, was less welcome when it came to the choice of the 1869 ‘original’ version. Whatever arguments might be put in favour of it, none has ever convinced me, and this experience did no more than that of the Mariinsky’s relatively recent visit (with an horrendously unconvincing production) to Covent Garden. That it works well enough and we should still consider Boris to be a great opera, had Mussorgsky never revised it, is to me no argument at all for presenting it as here. In its ‘complete’ glory, Boris is, quite simply, the greatest of all Russian operas and is, to my mind, probably the greatest nineteenth-century opera not written by Beethoven or Wagner. To lose the Polish scenes of the third act is bad enough – as much for the loss of the scheming Jesuit, Rangoni, as for Marina – yet to lose the Kromy Forest scene, with the attendant tragedy for the Russian people, is more than a step too far. The issue of Rimskyfication is an entirely separate one – not that one would know it from the writings of some musical journalists – and it is of course quite right that we should generally hear Mussorgsky himself, even though Rimsky-Korsakov’s Coronation Scene adds something quite splendid, which I should love to hear in the theatre.

Anyway, 1869 was what we had. Edward Gardner steered a generally convincing path through the score, at least following a disturbingly disjointed, indeed barely phrased introduction to the first scene. He seemed more in his element with the crowd scenes, proving a little too ‘supportive’ to the singers and not quite enough of a leader. There was a pervasive melancholy lyricism to much of the orchestral writing, although more bite would not have gone amiss. (Listen to Claudio Abbado to hear how it might be done.) I liked, or rather was properly repelled by, the wheedling quality of the orchestra to match Shuisky’s manœuvrings. Moreover, there was real terror in the discussions of the people outside the cathedral, although, like so much else, a great deal was lost by the frankly inappropriate sound of them being conducted in English. Surtitles should surely by now have signed the death warrant of opera in translation. The bells – electronic, I assume – were simply atrocious, sounding more akin to someone banging together sheets of iron: further evidence of ‘austerity’ measures?*

Peter Rose did well enough in the title role. Boris’s descent into madness was convincingly portrayed. Yet ultimately Rose could not mask the unfortunate truth that he had been miscast. This role needs a deeper, more charismatic bass, from which it had certainly benefited last time around at the Coliseum, in the guise of John Tomlinson. John Graham-Hall presented a Shuisky of such insinuating malevolence that I could not help thinking of Peter Mandelson. Brindley Sherratt was an outstanding Pimen, his aged wisdom palpable in every phrase. Jonathan Veira shone in the wonderful role of Varlaam; he simply was the fraudulent mendicant friar. As Grigory, Gregory Turay convinced: one could well imagine him developing the charisma to rival the Tsar, and not only because this Boris so signally lacked that quality. Utopias may prove false but they may be preferable to more of the same.Yvonne Howard and Robert Murray also impressed. The royal children and nurse were little more than adequate. Nevertheless, there were some very strong individual performances – not inappropriate for an ‘austerity’ Boris, but not in themselves enough to provide an entirely satisfying performance.

[* I am now informed that the bells were real and acquired at considerable expense. The money could certainly have been better spent - or saved.]