We went to the cinecast of the ROH’s Boris Godunov. As I go to more of these, I realise there is a dedicated audience that I keep seeing at them, several of whom are known to me through other musical connections.
This production was stripped back to the first version of the opera. I don’t miss the Polish act particularly (it introduces a love interest that the opera doesn’t really need), but there is a loss in not having the final scene of confusion, and a lack of light relief when the landlady doesn’t sing the song about the duck!
The production itself went for realism with some costumes, but others were not of the period. I have to agree with the widespread criticism that it was rather static, and I’m not sure it was necessary to show Dmitri’s murder being repeatedly replayed; we’d got the message. Bryn Terfel really inhabited the title role and of the others I would single out Ain Anger as Pimen, conveying gentle humility, awe at the miraculous and a resolve that could make him stand up to the Tsar.
There are many great operas that give insight into the human condition as instanced in individuals, but I can’t think of any others that reveal a whole nation in the way this one does.