Royal Opera Chorus
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Antonio Pappano
The set is a cross-section view of a domed box, with the curved "lid" available and used as an upper level on a regular basis, particularly to illustrate Boris's recurring hallucination of the murder of the young Tsarevich Dmitri. The walls of the "box" are stamped with bells, and then adorned with a line of iconic representations of Boris in full regalia. It's tidy and timeless, and suits the spareness of this 1869 version of Boris Godunov, the so-called Original Version. This new production replaces the superb Tarkovsky production of the 1872 Revised Version, and although I will always prefer that version - for one main reason, the Kromy Forest scene - the arguments in favour of the Original were presented very persuasively tonight.
Bryn Terfel was the big attraction, of course, taking on the role of Boris for the first time, and in Russian, which he freely admitted was a major challenge in and of itself. Without being a Russian speaker myself, I did, however, get the impression that almost none of the Russian heard tonight, from soloists or chorus, was very idiomatic, but as everyone was more or less in the same boat, it kind of evened out over the whole proceedings, and did not jar. Terfel was everything one could have hoped for, expressive, powerful, eloquent and moving, the voice in splendid shape and very well handled, using parlando effects very sparingly, able to convey a snarl in sung notes just as easily as melting tenderness.
The rest of the cast was uniformly excellent too, with special mention for the fine Tchelkalov of Kostas Smoriginas, and an outstanding Pimen from Ain Anger. Aside from a rich, stirring bass timbre, he also delivered his final monologue with a startling (and startlingly effective) degree of cruelty, not at all the usual sort of thing one gets at this point, and extremely telling. Another plus factor was Ben Knight's Fyodor, because it's nice to have an actual boy play this role rather than a mezzo, and Knight was very good. If there was one weak point, it was Andrew Tortise's Innocent, and that was mainly because he is the wrong sort of tenor for this part. If you don't have one of those high, rather nasal Russian tenors, you want something like a French haute-contre, and Tortise simply didn't have the access to that high-lying, whining timbre this role requires. His sound was too soft and mellow, and the poignancy of the character, and of his plaint for Russia, didn't come through.
The chorus, so important in this opera, was generally very good; they took a fair part of the first scene to really get going, but by the time they reached the St. Basil scene, the pathos was almost tangible. However, the real stars of the show, for me, were Pappano and the orchestra. From first note to last, they were magnificent, the orchestra burning with a dark fire, the music woven through with the dull glint of gold in deep shadow, perfectly controlled yet completely spontaneous, impeccably balanced to let the voices come through apparently effortlessly. The seven scenes of this version were played without interval, and it is the orchestra that carried it all through so that there were no longueurs, no weariness in the experience.
[Next : 26th March]
Bryn Terfel was the big attraction, of course, taking on the role of Boris for the first time, and in Russian, which he freely admitted was a major challenge in and of itself. Without being a Russian speaker myself, I did, however, get the impression that almost none of the Russian heard tonight, from soloists or chorus, was very idiomatic, but as everyone was more or less in the same boat, it kind of evened out over the whole proceedings, and did not jar. Terfel was everything one could have hoped for, expressive, powerful, eloquent and moving, the voice in splendid shape and very well handled, using parlando effects very sparingly, able to convey a snarl in sung notes just as easily as melting tenderness.
The rest of the cast was uniformly excellent too, with special mention for the fine Tchelkalov of Kostas Smoriginas, and an outstanding Pimen from Ain Anger. Aside from a rich, stirring bass timbre, he also delivered his final monologue with a startling (and startlingly effective) degree of cruelty, not at all the usual sort of thing one gets at this point, and extremely telling. Another plus factor was Ben Knight's Fyodor, because it's nice to have an actual boy play this role rather than a mezzo, and Knight was very good. If there was one weak point, it was Andrew Tortise's Innocent, and that was mainly because he is the wrong sort of tenor for this part. If you don't have one of those high, rather nasal Russian tenors, you want something like a French haute-contre, and Tortise simply didn't have the access to that high-lying, whining timbre this role requires. His sound was too soft and mellow, and the poignancy of the character, and of his plaint for Russia, didn't come through.
The chorus, so important in this opera, was generally very good; they took a fair part of the first scene to really get going, but by the time they reached the St. Basil scene, the pathos was almost tangible. However, the real stars of the show, for me, were Pappano and the orchestra. From first note to last, they were magnificent, the orchestra burning with a dark fire, the music woven through with the dull glint of gold in deep shadow, perfectly controlled yet completely spontaneous, impeccably balanced to let the voices come through apparently effortlessly. The seven scenes of this version were played without interval, and it is the orchestra that carried it all through so that there were no longueurs, no weariness in the experience.
[Next : 26th March]
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