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BORIS is on my desert-island list along with FRANCESCA. National epic, imperial whodunnit, Dostoevskian psychodrama, & soul-examination of Russian ppl - traumatized when the first non-Rurikid ruler took the throne and he may, *may*, have killed a Rurikid heir to do so. https://twitter.com/metopera/status/1340072061541240832
2/ Along with same composer’s KHOVANSHCHINA and Borodin’s PRINCE IGOR, this is Russia’s operatic epic. Co-starring the People alongside the title character, it starts w the People, moves to Boris, then back to the People thru a monk-chronicler who, doing what’s possible with
3/ what’s available, gives the People their national story; then in to the unscrupulous rise of the Pretender - Самосванец, self-named - then back to Boris, to whom the Pretender’s choice of an identity is a goad to conscience and madness. Then over to Poland where the Pretender
4/ gathers support and an indispensable female lead; back to Russia where first Boris, then (in the last scene) the People, descend into madness and death. That is, we see Boris’s death - and tender farewell to his children - while the sad future of the People is foretold by
5/ the Holy Fool. Yes, we have one here: in fact, the “everybody’s here” phenomenon is one aspect of this opera’s greatness: from Tsar to vagabond monks, it’s a Canterbury-Prologue of Russian characters.
6/ This production us good, tho IMO not quite as good as the Everding/Ming Cho Lee prodn it replaced. The final scene is staged more violently than I’ve ever seen. Director Stephen Wadsworth uses an oversized book - apparently it’s Brother Pimen’s chronicle - as a symbol
7/ tyring together many of the scenes. René Pape is outstanding. Strong support from Aleksandrs Antonenko as the Pretender, Mikhail Petrenko as Pimen, Ekaterina Semenchuk as Marina - and Evgeny Nikitin as Rangoni the Jesuit, making him quite a “Fr. What-a-Waste.”
