The Perils of Power

By Raymond Stults,
The Moscow Times

Like nearly all of director Dmitry Bertman's many stagings for Helikon Opera, his new production of Modest Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov" - which premiered last week at the theater's temporary home on Novy Arbat - has its puzzling and even irritating aspects. Nevertheless, it adds up in the end to a thoroughly engrossing piece of high musical drama.

The action takes place on and underneath a raked metalwork platform, covered with tiered steps, that extends across the entire stage and nearly to its top. Aided by superb lighting effects, the setting provides a serviceable background for playing out all but two of the opera's nine diverse scenes. Costumes are an eclectic mix, ranging from historically accurate to modern dress.

At a preview performance on Oct. 18, Helikon fielded a cast of unusual strength. Heading it was Alexei Tikhomirov in the role of Boris. Tikhomirov gave as authoritative an account of the title role as is likely to be seen and heard anywhere, one that combined a towering stage presence with a lyric bass voice capable of producing with equal clarity both the low notes of the part and the many more that fall into the higher baritone register. (Four days after the performance, it should be noted, Tikhomirov went on to take first prize in the Galina Vishnevskaya International Competition of Operatic Artists.)

The scheming Prince Vasily Shuisky, a role normally assigned to singers of limited vocal means, was luxuriously cast with Helikon's finest tenor, Vadim Zaplechny, who not only sang wonderfully well, but also accomplished the rare feat of turning Shuisky into a real flesh-and-blood figure. Bass Dmitry Skorikov injected considerable drama into the often monotonously delivered passages of the old monk Pimen. Larisa Kostyuk sang the Polish noblewoman Marina Mnishek with her customary sumptuous mezzo-soprano. And Sergei Toptygin brought a solid baritone and nice touch of lechery to role of the Jesuit priest, Rangoni.

The acoustics of Helikon on the Arbat are less than kind to its orchestra, causing the strings, in particular, to become nearly inaudible at times. But from what could be heard, Helikon's orchestra seemed to play quite competently, with the theater's music director, Vladimir Ponkin, providing his usual firm leadership on the podium.

Mussorgsky based "Boris Godunov" on actual events that took place between 1598 and 1605, as interpreted in a tragedy by Alexander Pushkin. He first submitted his score to St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater in 1869, where it was rejected. Revising the work, he added two scenes set in Poland for color and romance, omitted the penultimate scene on Red Square and appended a somewhat anticlimactic finale. In revised form, the opera made its debut at the Mariinsky in 1874.

Over time, opera companies have often chosen to present a mixture of the two versions. Such is the case with Helikon, which plays all of the revision, except for its final scene, and restores the scene on Red Square.

Mussorgsky's somber orchestral score was no doubt among the reasons that "Boris Godunov" failed to make much impact at its premiere. Two decades later, the composer's friend, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, re-orchestrated the opera in his own characteristically lush manner and thereby set it, finally, on a path to success. In recent times, however, Mussorgsky's own darker-hued score has become the preferred version almost everywhere in the world except at Moscow's Bolshoi Theater.

Following Rimsky-Korsakov, other composers tried their hand at revision, among them Dmitry Shostakovich. In honor of the 100th anniversary of that composer's birth, Helikon has chosen to make use of the seldom-performed version which he completed in 1941. Leaning heavily on woodwinds, brass and percussion, Shostakovich's revision has much the same edgy, brittle quality found in the orchestral music of his early years. While hearing it was without doubt an interesting experience, I, for one, found myself in the end longing for a return to Mussorgsky's original.

Several of Bertman's staging decisions seem open to question. Combining the role of the young pretender to the tsarist throne, Grigory Otrepyev, with that of the Simpleton, who gives voice to the agonies of the Russian people, results in the creation of a loutish oaf who convinces in neither guise. Placing the crowds of suffering Muscovites nearly out of sight behind the stage platform robs the opening tableau and the scene on Red Square of much of their normal impact. And assigning the part of Tsarevich Feodor to a male tenor, in place of the prescribed female mezzo-soprano, seems just a mite perverse.

As with most Bertman productions, a second or third look at "Boris Godunov" will probably cause certain initial judgments to be revised. Bertman's stagings tend to evolve with time, and usually for the better. Unfortunately, his "Boris Godunov" won't be seen again in Moscow until sometime next summer, as it meanwhile goes on tour to Israel, Italy and France.