“No one wants Russia as a neighbor,” said Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán of the balancing act he must maintain between his country’s EU partners, NATO allies, and Vladimir Putin’s revenant authoritarian regime. Current geopolitical realities have relieved Hungary of that problem, but this year’s “Slavic Season” at the Hungarian State Opera, lavishly restored in recent years by Orbán’s government, allows for impressive artistic meditation on the looming eastern neighbor.
A highlight of the Opera’s season emerged in this new production premiere of Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, which is widely regarded as the quintessential “Russian” national opera. The story is of the eponymous tsar, who reigned from 1598 to 1605, during an especially chaotic period in Russian history known as “the Time of Troubles.” Boris, a courtier of Tatar origin from medieval Russia’s boyar elite, came to the throne after the death of the ancient Riurikid dynasty’s last tsar. Although revisionist historians have good things to say about Boris’s short reign, it was widely suspected that he did away with the next blood heir to the throne, Dmitri, inviting rebellion and strife. His main challenge came from an escaped monk, Grigorii, who heard the tale of Dmitri’s murder, fled to Poland, and returned at the head of an army while claiming to be the assassinated heir. Boris died before they faced off, and Dmitri took over for about a year, ending Boris’s incipient dynasty before himself being overthrown and killed as Russia continued to struggle for stability—which eventually arrived, in 1613, with the election of the Romanov family as the country’s new dynasty.
Fittingly, Boris Godunov is based on a play by Russia’s national man of letters, Alexander Pushkin, who completed it in 1825. Publication was permitted, but it was barred from public performance for forty years, reaching the dramatic stage only a short while before Mussorgsky set about adapting the play for his opera. The ostensible reason for the play’s long ban was that it depicted a monarch on stage; but, in the very year Pushkin wrote the work, the Russian Empire experienced one of its periodic convulsions. In December 1825, a movement of reformist army officers demanded fundamental constitutional change, and tried to hijack a moment of confusion in the imperial succession to force political reform. However, Russia’s new tsar, Nicholas I, prevailed. The participants were repressed, with five sent to the scaffold and about 200 into Siberian exile. The new tsar famously questioned Pushkin about his own thoughts and motives, an exploration of culture and tyranny that has haunted Russia ever since.
Opera is suffused with a curatorial ethos these days, and the question of which version of Mussorgsky’s opera—left as a work-in-progress at his death, aged 42, in 1881—should be performed has largely settled on his original version, presented to Russia’s imperial theaters in 1869. The theaters sent it back for reworking because it lacked a love plot. Mussorgsky easily added one, for the false Dmitri had courted and married a Polish princess, Marina Mniszek, as part of his campaign to dethrone and replace Boris. The composer also added a scene depicting rebellious Russian peasants who support Dmitri and overthrow their landowners—another theme recurrent in Russia’s turbulent past. Combinations of this new music, largely finalized by 1874, long stood as more standard versions for performance. But the 1869 original, which disappeared into the archives until it was rediscovered in 1928, now predominates.
There are merits and demerits to this approach. The 1869 version captured a more instinctive adaptation of the play. Boris’ monologues are more introspective than in the later, more grandiose versions of the opera. The story is told more economically, without diversions into Polish court politics or a bloody mob scene. At the same time, one misses the spectacle of the later versions. The revision’s so-called “Polish Act” contains voluptuously beautiful music and alluring dances that it would be sad never to hear or see again.
Nevertheless, this is the Boris we have, more or less. Hungarian State Opera artistic director András Almási-Tóth broke up the scenes into distinct acts and added an intermission. His production and Sebastian Hannak’s sets reflect the opera’s development, showing much of the action starkly from behind the scenes. Coming just a few weeks after Putin’s stage-managed reelection (which, like Boris, came with its own celebration on Moscow’s Red Square), Almási-Tóth reminds us that the external attributes of power are often deceptive. Boris does eventually get out among his people, but we see much more of the back stairs, the cruel blows, and the cheap shots that make all the superficial action possible. When Grigorii escapes the monastery, he takes good care to strike the senior monk—Pimen, who will eventually confront Boris—hard enough to knock him out. Krisztina Lisztopád’s costumes draw from various eras of Russian history, from 19th century court dress to medieval pageantry, to overly casual modern streetwear. The suggestion is that a national psyche is at work, but often it was just confusing.
The superb Hungarian bass Gábor Bretz made his debut as Boris in this new production premiere. Offering a steady legato and excellent Russian diction, he showed all the makings of a great international career. Grigorii was sung by the spirited tenor Botond Odór, who added a welcome degree of panache and athleticism to the role. András Palerdi was an affecting Pimen. The HSO’s star heldentenor István Kovácsházi brought force to the role of Prince Vasilii Shuisky, a sneaky courtier who, in history, eventually succeeded Boris as tsar—but who enters the opera to tell him that Dmitri is approaching. Aleksei Kulagin and Tivadar Kiss added strong bass voices to the parts of the wayward monks Varlaam and Missail. The impressive young Kazakh conductor Alan Buribayev led a moving and suitable subtle reading of the score.
