Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, N.Y.; March 6, 2012
Oh, good – an opera about 17th century fundamentalists, one religious and the other militant! Living in a thoroughly disorderly Russia before the reign of Peter the Great, each attempts to manipulate or overthrow the secular, desire-to-be-Westernized monarchy. A major member of the militant aristocracy nearly rapes a nice girl (whose father he has killed) in act one while his father, in mid-orgy with Persian slave girls, is murdered later in the opera. A fortune teller gives a “liberal” leader bad news and he tries to have her done away with. And at the end of the opera, the religious group, called the Old Believers, along with the fortune teller and would-be rapist, all sacrifice themselves on a funeral pyre rather than give in to the secular Antichrists. It’s heavy and dark, but it’s also amazingly beautiful, with the expected grand Russian choral scenes alternating with folk melodies, dramatic arias and duets, and moments of lovely introspection. There’s more, of course, but you get the point.
The opera is Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina, whose orchestration was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and later by Shostakovich. In the Met revival, conductor Kirill Petrenko uses Shostakovich’s version but substitutes Igor Stravinsky’s muted re-working of the finale and the result adds even more gloom. But the opera is ravishing gloom, served up beautifully at the Met. The sets for this 1985 production by Ming Cho Lee are oppressive, with gray planks, blank walls and a shadowy cut-outs of the Kremlin for the public scenes and small, if colorful, spaces for the private ones. The brilliance of lit candles in the final scene gives way to the final conflagration. A good time is had by none.
Vocally, the opera calls for many low, dark voices, a big-toned tenor or two and a dusky mezzo, with only a small part for a bright voiced soprano, and the Met has done itself proud with a cast of mostly Georgian and Russian singers. Dosifei, the leader of the Old Believers, is a solemn role, requiring a smooth legato and long, pleading lines. Bass Ildar Abdrazakov fills the bill with noble tone and demeanor. As Ivan Khovansky (who, we are told, wishes to seize the throne from the Czarevna, Sophie and the young Peter), Dosifei’s dangerous foil, the even darker, grander bass Anatoli Kotscherga dominates all of his scenes with both his towering presence and booming, threatening sound. Baritone George Gagnidze as the boyar Shaklovity who does behind-the-scenes manipulation for the Czarevna and has Ivan assassinated is properly snide. As Prince Golitsin, who is both forward-looking and the lover of the Czarevna, tenor Vladimir Galouzine impresses with his bright, leathery sound and his wild sincerity. The somewhat lighter-voiced Misha Didyk sings the creepy would-be rapist Andrei Khovansky (who is inexplicable loved by our fortune-teller, Marfa) with laser-like tone but seems to be trying too hard.
The solo-voiced women get short shrift as far as stage time is concerned compared to the men. Wendy Bryn Hammer as Emma, the girl Andrei almost rapes in act one, sings urgently. In the more pivotal role of Marfa, who joins the Old Believers in the big burn-up at the end (she’s atoning for loving Andrei), mezzo Olga Borodina is brilliant. Her rich sound during her incantation with Golitsin is riveting and her larger, more exclamatory passages have real power and stature. Her lyrical aria at the start of the second act, which contains the opera’s most beautiful melody, was mesmerizingly sung.
Maestro Petrenko elicited handsome playing from the Met orchestra, often at a whisper that only drew the listener in even more than in the more extroverted moments, and the chorus was at its finest. Khovanshchina, will be played three more times through March 17th; it is being overshadowed by other productions at the Met this season, but it’s a superb interpretation of a fascinating, if dour, work.
Robert Levine
