{"id":3739,"date":"2019-03-25T10:15:25","date_gmt":"2019-03-25T09:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=3739"},"modified":"2019-03-28T16:06:44","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T15:06:44","slug":"star-the-wormwood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=3739","title":{"rendered":"Star the Wormwood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mussorgsky\u2019s Boris Godunov<\/em> has been more fortunate, all things considered. With a libretto based on Pushkin\u2019s \u201cShakespearean\u201d Romantic tragedy (which so pleased the author that in a letter to his friend Pyotr Vyazemsky he admitted that he had read it aloud to himself, clapped his hands and exclaimed, \u201cWhat a Pushkin! What a son of a bitch!\u201d) and referring to a generally less complicated episode from Russia\u2019s history, it conquered the world\u2019s stages over one hundred years ago and has stayed on them ever since despite numerous interferences by successive adaptors. Khovanshchina<\/em>, composed at the same time as The Fair at Sorochyntsi<\/em>, saw the light of day five years after the composer\u2019s death \u2013 in a version by Rimsky-Korsakov, who, in fact, turned the whole score upside down. The opera reached Paris\u2019 Th\u00e9\u00e2tre des Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in 1913 with a new orchestration by Ravel and Stravinsky, or rather in a hybrid version, because Feodor Chaliapin, who sang Dosifey, insisted that \u201chis\u201d fragments be kept in Rimsky-Korsakov\u2019s arrangement. Shostakovich\u2019s version, most often presented today, had its premiere in 1960, at Leningrad\u2019s Kirov State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, which in 1992 returned to its original name and now operates as the Mariinsky Theatre. It was not until 1985 that Khovanshchina<\/em>, with the libretto in Russian, found its way to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, where it has been produced several times since. Four years later the Shostakovich version (with Stravinsky\u2019s finale) was recorded by Claudio Abbado with the forces of \u00a0Wiener Staatsoper.<\/p>\n

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Ekaterina Semenchuk (Marfa) and Evgeny Akimov (Golitsin). Photo: Marco Brescia & Rudy Amisano<\/span><\/p>\n

This makes the high number of productions of Khovanshchina<\/em> at Milan\u2019s La Scala all the more surprising. They began with the Italian premiere in 1926, followed by six more productions of the Rimsky-Korsakov version, two more \u2013 in 1981 and 1998 \u2013 of the Shostakovich version and the latest one, directed by Mario Martone and conducted by Valery Gergiev (the Shostakovich version but without Kuzka\u2019s joyful song removed by Rimsky-Korsakov). It seems that Mussorgsky\u2019s unfinished masterpiece is redeemed primarily by the music \u2013 in his original libretto the composer condenses events of several months, making the narrative understandable only to those familiar with the complicated history of the feud between the streltsy and the boyars. The action of the opera begins after the famous May Moscow uprising of the streltsy following the sudden death of Tsar Feodor in 1682. In the aftermath of the rebellion Ivan and Peter, two brothers of the deceased from two different marriages, were proclaimed tsars, with their elder sister, Sophia Alekseyevna Romanova, being made regent. Sophia, in fact, ruled the country for the following seven years, taking advantage of Ivan\u2019s mental infirmity and Peter\u2019s young age. In September the haughty and cruel Prince Ivan Khovansky \u2013 made commander of the streltsy for his services in putting down the rebellion \u2013 turned against Sophia and, hoping to gain the throne, demanded a revocation of Nikon\u2019s reforms, which undermined the order of the Old Believers supporting him. The inconvenient Khovansky was pronounced a rebel and sentenced to death in absentia<\/em> on 27 September \u2013 on the very same day he was captured with his son Andrey thanks to an intrigue of Feodor Shaklovity, a former scrivener raised by Sophia to the rank of a member of the Boyar Duma and, after the execution of the Khovanskys, appointed head of the Streltsy Department. Subsequent fate of the protagonists of Khovanshchina<\/em> went along rather unexpected lines: in 1689, after Peter had deposed Sophia, the regent\u2019s favourite, Vasily Golitsyn, an Occidentalist and \u201cbest educated man of his day\u201d, was deprived of his functions and estate, and then exiled to Arkhangelsk. Shaklovity \u2013 after cruel tortures \u2013 was executed on 11 October. Power was seized by Peter the Great. Sophia was sent to the Novodevichy Convent in Moscow, where she spent the rest of her life in complete isolation \u2013 even the nuns had access to the former regent only for one day a year.<\/p>\n

Khovanshchina<\/em> is a dark opera, exposing the grimmest characteristic of the history of Russia \u2013 its dependence on an obtuse mob susceptible to all kinds of manipulation. It is a fresco about the collapse of an order of the world in which individuals, no matter how outstanding, are treated as pawns of no importance on the chessboard of history. Mario Martone, an Italian film director and screenwriter, gave it the status of a global catastrophe and as such illustrated it with images borrowed from post-apocalyptic cinema. His Milan staging \u2013 prepared in collaboration with the set designer Margherita Palli, costume designer Ursula Patzak and the brilliant lighting designer Pasquale Mari \u2013 features clear and visually beautiful references to Tarkovsky\u2019s Stalker<\/em>, Scott\u2019s Blade Runner<\/em>, Hillcoat\u2019s The Road<\/em> and von Trier\u2019s Melancholia<\/em>. From the very beginning the protagonists of the drama move in a space marked by a sense of doom. A black or grey sky hangs over everything; there is no Red Square, no streltsy quarters, no secluded monastery of the Old Believers in a pine forest. We have to decipher the relationships between the characters from codes closely linked to the present \u2013 which may cause some problems for viewers not familiar with the context of the work. However, the overall concept is fairly coherent and features several memorable images. For example, the Scrivener\u2019s dillapidated motorbike loaded with lots of attributes of his trade \u2013 typewriters, old computers and outdated laptops \u2013 from which an illiterate mob tries to extract some information but has no idea how to use them. Or the magnificent ending to Act Four \u2013 beginning with Ivan Khovansky hunting birds and closing with the murder of the prince wearing a snow-white shirt and killed with his own gun to the sounds of village girls singing about a white swan. Or the finale, when the Old Believers are engulfed by the fire or a huge apocalyptic star which, \u201cburning as it were a lamp, it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood\u201d.\u00a0 Khovanshchina<\/em> at La Scala ends with the breaking of the Seventh Seal, coming of the last days when God separates good from evil and sends death onto earth. Martone\u2019s idea fits in well with the paradoxically hopeful finale of Shostakovich, who in his version returns to the opera\u2019s opening theme of dawn on the Moskva River: star the Wormwood \u2013 or, perhaps, planet Melancholia from Lars von Trier\u2019s film \u2013 heralds a \u201cbeautiful end of the world\u201d, Good News about liberation from captivity.\u00a0 The question is whether it fits in just as well with the overwhelmingly pessimistic vision of the composer.<\/p>\n

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Evgeny Akimov and Mikhail Petrenko (Ivan Khovansky). Photo: Marco Brescia & Rudy Amisano<\/span><\/p>\n

Martone\u2019s vision has its gaps and blunders, which, however, recede into the background when confronted with an awe-inspiring musical concept of the whole. Khovanshchina<\/em> requires exceptional skill when choosing the cast: a singer to tackle the mighty part of Marfa with its Italian origins, three radically different low male voices and singers responsible for the three just as contrasted main tenor roles. The character of Andrey Khovansky\u2019s abandoned fianc\u00e9e was brilliantly portrayed by Ekaterina Semenchuk \u2013 a singer with a dark, meaty mezzo-soprano with a perfect command of dynamics (wonderfully ethereal pianos in the final scene when Andrey is led to the stake). Mikhail Petrenko represents an increasingly rare breed of singers who rivet attention from the very first stage appearance: despite very brief moments of insecure intonation and too wide vibrato, his Ivan Khovansky fully reflected the arrogance, stupidity and animal cruelty of the tragic boyar. Alexey Markov\u2019s noble and, at the same time, ominous-sounding, slightly smoky baritone was perfect for Shaklovity\u2019s demonic character. The beautifully rounded, soft and velvety bass of Stanislav Trofimov (Dosifey) brought to mind Feodor Chaliapin, who sang the role at the premiere of Khovanshchina<\/em> at Saint Petersburg\u2019s Kononov Hall.\u00a0 Among the tenor voices the one I was impressed by the most was Maxim Paster (Scrivener) \u2013 a fine character singer, sensitive to every word and its place in a phrase. I wished for a bit more expressiveness in the role of Golitsin (Evgeny Akimov), especially in comparison with the passionate singing of Sergey Skorokhodov (Andrey), perfectly even across the registers. I was a little bit dissatisfied with the other female voices: Evgenia Muraveva\u2019s soprano (Emma), slightly constricted at the top, and Irina Vashchenko\u2019s instrument (Susanna), not very attractive in colour and intonationally insecure.<\/p>\n

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Setting for Act V. Photo: Marco Brescia & Rudy Amisano<\/span><\/p>\n

As should be expected, the main hero of the evening was the chorus \u2013 perfectly prepared linguistically by Alla Samokhotova, and delivering the text with perfect diction and phenomenal sense of phrasing. The bloodcurdling finale of Act III (the streltsy in a dialogue with old Khovansky) made me all the more frustrated that Mussorgsky did not manage to write the \u201csmall piece in the auto-da-f\u00e9 scene\u201d \u2013 I think that the hymn based on a traditional Old Believers\u2019 melody, a hymn that was never written, would have sent us into raptures in this rendition. The orchestra under Gergiev sounded too aggressive at times; I also missed a thoughtful gradation of tension \u2013 in Act V, when everything should have screamed in pain and whispered in anguish, the narrative seemed to have got stuck and did not get its colours back until the last several dozen bars of the opera.\u00a0 Yet this does not change the fact that such a finely honed and simply thrilling Khovanshchina<\/em> would be hard to find even in Russia. Not to mention Poland, where Mussorgsky\u2019s masterpiece was staged only once, exactly fifty years ago at Teatr Wielki in Pozna\u0144.<\/p>\n

However, it would be unfair to put the blame for this on the directors of opera companies in Poland \u2013 a country whose motto has for decades been \u201cwe\u2019ll get by somehow\u201d. Khovanshchina<\/em> is an opera about great impossibility, about history leading to nowhere. About waters that became wormwood, about people who died of the waters and will never be revived. Perhaps this is why Mussorgsky never finished it.<\/p>\n

Translated by: Anna Kijak<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mussorgsky\u2019s Boris Godunov has been more fortunate, all things considered. With a libretto based on Pushkin\u2019s \u201cShakespearean\u201d Romantic tragedy (which so pleased the author that in a letter to his friend Pyotr Vyazemsky he admitted that he had read it aloud to himself, clapped his hands and exclaimed, \u201cWhat a Pushkin! What a son of … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","post","publish","author-mangusta","post-3739","format-standard","category-posts-in-english","category-wedrowki-operowe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3739"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3748,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions\/3748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}