[Met Performance] CID:330264



Boris Godunov
Metropolitan Opera House, Fri, December 19, 1997

Debut : Constantin Pluzhnikov, Olga Borodina, Iosef Shalamayev, Nikolai Gassiev, Daniel Sumegi, Matthew Polenzani




Boris Godunov (251)
Modest Mussorgsky | Modest Mussorgsky
Boris Godunov
Samuel Ramey

Prince Shuisky
Constantin Pluzhnikov [Debut]

Pimen
Paul Plishka

Grigory
Sergej Larin

Marina
Olga Borodina [Debut]

Rangoni
Sergei Leiferkus

Varlaam
Vladimir Ognovenko

Simpleton
Iosef Shalamayev [Debut]

Nikitich
Richard Vernon

Mitiukha
Hao Jiang Tian

Shchelkalov
Alan Held

Innkeeper
Sandra Walker

Missail
Nikolai Gassiev [Debut]

Officer
Daniel Sumegi [Debut]

Xenia
Korliss Uecker

Feodor
Nicholas Frisch

Nurse
Jane Shaulis

Khrushchov
Matthew Polenzani [Debut]

Lavitsky
Jung-Hack Seo

Chernikovsky
Tony Stevenson

Boyar in Attendance
Anthony Dean Griffey


Conductor
Valery Gergiev


Production
August Everding

Set Designer
Ming Cho Lee

Costume Designer
Peter J. Hall

Choreographer
George Balanchine

Stage Director
Phebe Berkowitz





Boris Godunov received seven performances this season.
Note: Constantin Pluzhnikov's name was spelled Plujnikov in the program of his first six performances.
Revised orchestration by Igor Buketoff

Review 1:

Justin Davidson in Newsday
From Russia With Love
Talented singers shine in Met’s “Boris”

In the years since the Metropolitan Opera last performed Mussorgsky's epic of Russian political history "Boris Godunov" in 1991, the Soviet Union was splintered, a new Russia was born, and the Caucasus foamed with civil war. Among other epochal changes, a combination of penury and freedom sowed the international opera world with a generation of Russian singers and musicians. Neither conductor Valery Gergiev nor any of the superb Russians in the Met's current cast of "Boris" had ever appeared at the Met.

The end of the Cold War, which also brought the Met its new principal guest conductor — Gergiev — provided the perfect opportunity for a new staging of "Boris." It's a chance the Met chose to miss preferring to resuscitate August Everding's creaky 1974 staging instead and mark the occasion by introducing yet another orchestration of Mussorgsky's much worked-over score.

But if not all the gold glitters anymore on Everding's backdrop of Russian icons, vocally, this "Boris" gleamed. Samuel Ramey sang the title role for the first time at the Met, bestowing on the infanticidal Czar the voice and bearing of a tormented tyrant, brimming with majesty and guilt. Ramey, who has wide experience portraying evil, also brought a touch of Knievel to the role, ending his death scene by tumbling hair-raisingly down a flight of stairs.

Sergei Larin was Grigory, who dons the mantle of Dimitri, the boy Boris had murdered for his throne, and if as an actor the tenor seemed like something of a pretend-pretender, his singing certainly had the charisma to rouse a rabble. Olga Borodino sang the role of Marina, Dimitri's love interest and power-craving cheerleader.

Five months of pregnancy have not, it seems, thrown her off balance, and Friday's performance made one grateful that the schedule of family life permitted her to sing "Boris" but sorry that during the Kirov Festival of Russian opera at the Met, exactly four months from now, she will be otherwise engaged.

The cast is too enormous and its virtues too plentiful to do everyone justice. Sergei Leiferkus was far more felicitously cast as the slithering, lurking Jesuit Rangoni than he was as the Latin swaggerer Escamillo in "Carmen." Among the Met debuts were Constantin Piruzhnikov, who gave the Iago-like role of Shuisiky a neat, oily malevolence, and Josef Shalamavev in the role of the lyrically melancholy Simpleton, whose hurdy-gurdy lamentations brought down the final curtain, and nearly the house. The chorus, the real star of "Boris," embodied the fond image of the people rising up and singing as one.

Then there was that new orchestration: Faced with the choice of an original full of rusticities and awkwardness. Rimsky-Korsakov's brilliantined revision, or Shostakovich's garish, Soviet-style version, Gergiev called on yet another rewrite man, Igor Buketoff. Buketoff's goal was to preserve both the sharp flavors of Mussorgsky's harmonies and Rimsky's orchestral sophistication. His version was no more authentic or definitive than any other, but it did strip a crust of yellowed varnish from this vast, crepuscular panorama of a score. Now if only the Met would do the same on the stage.



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