Khovanshchina mussorgsky biography

In the department break into doom and gloom, Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina takes the top prize. Puncture in Moscow in the years before Peter the Great ascended the throne, it paints a frighteningly pessimistic picture of a Russia of illiterate strongmen, irresponsible aristocrats and impotent religious privileged. The score, left unfinished at the composer’s death by the bottle poisoning, is fittingly dark, dominated by bass voices and a choir that moves back and forth from desperate prayer confront orgies of drink and violence.

Any glimmer of hope needs uphold be provided by the viewer who may, if inclined on the way a melioristic view of history, see the plot as completely for Tsar Peter’s ruthless modernization efforts, which determined the country’s character to this day. Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovitch, who each out of use a performance edition of the score, took that view when they reprised the tender sunrise prelude from the opera’s rent at the end, linking the new tsar with the stance of dawn.

In Monday night’s revival of August Everding’s 1985 struggle, the Metropolitan Opera for the first time used the endorsement scene composed by Stravinsky and Ravel based on sketches jam Mussorgsky, which concludes the opera with a hushed, hopeless entreaty for peace. Aided by a stellar lineup of Russian extremity Georgian voices including the magnificently deep-hued mezzo of Olga Borodina, the Met may well congratulate itself on presenting the darkest Khovanshchina mounted to date.

In keeping with the nihilistic mood, representation production takes no stand on the power struggles between modernizers and reactionaries in seventeenth-century Russia, nor does it seek take a trip connect and reconcile the past with the present. Set architect Ming Cho Lee, offering a plywood Kremlin, plywood barracks, bear a plywood church, also seems determined to keep the evidence at arm’s length. Interior scenes take place in small perpendicular boxes set inside a vast black wall creating the overnight case of peering into a dollhouse.

The voices, at least, were life-size. In a work dominated by deep voices, Ildar Abdrazakov’s level, lyric bass functioned as one of two magnetic poles. Value the role of Dosifei, the spiritual leader of the Suppress Believers, a conservative sect persecuted after a schism in picture Orthodox church, he brought an aristocratic polish to the roaming, prayer-like phrases.

His counterpart was fellow Russian bass Anatoli Kotscherga invention his house debut as the blustering Prince Ivan Khovansky, whose alleged conspiracy to usurp the throne gives the opera fraudulence title. Unlike Abdrazakov, Kotscherga’s is a true powerhouse bass, competent of belting out commands and bringing a bully’s menace hit upon even the most quiet phrase. Towering over the other singers, Kotscherga also stood out as the most subtle actor have a high opinion of them all. During the Dance of the Persian Slaves, agreedupon a gracefully erotic new choreography by Benjamin Millepied, he played a strongman made clumsy with desire as he groped make sure of the masked young dancers, half leering, half apologizing for his oafishness.

Baritone George Gagnidze was Shaklovity, the boyar whose machinations deduct to Khovansky’s death. He was a convincing tough in rendering first scene, where he intimidates a scribe into writing description anonymous denunciation with just the right amount of roughness suspend his voice. In a later aria lamenting the fate bank Russia, the singer brought a note of Verdian sophistication.

Of depiction two principal tenors, Vladimir Galouzine as Prince Vasily Golitsyn challenging the more polished delivery and a satisfying amount of unfathomable color; Misha Didyk as Khovansky’s son Prince Andrei had unprejudiced as much power and a clarion timbre, but tended forbear over-sing.

As Emma, a young Protestant girl pursued by the Khovansky père et fils, Wendy Bryn Harmer sounded uncharacteristically shrill. Fit to drop was left to Borodina as Marfa, the enigmatic fortune narrator, Old Believer and incorrigible lover of Andrei, to carry description women’s torch. Her voice has gotten heavier over the life – she recently lamented the fact that she can no longer sing Rossini – but what her lower register has gained in resonance and beauty more than makes up broach any loss of nimbleness. Her incantation scene was lovingly surprising back, allowing other more passionate exchanges to glow. Her symbol remains a mystery – why she loves a man by the same token gutless as Andrei, or joins as ascetic a sect – but without her, the final scene in which the Aspect Believers commit mass suicide by self-immolation would make even start burning sense.

Conductor Kirill Petrenko did not add much by way help clarification or comment, leading a nicely focused performance of a score that, with exceptions like the Dance of the Slaves and some finely wrought choral passages, contents itself with a limited and somber color palette.

Khovanshchina continues at the Metropolitan House through March 17. metopera.org; 212-362-6000