Suddenly realising that we were on the point of missing WNO’s Khovanshchina performances altogether, we grabbed tickets, leapt in the car and drove off to Cardiff to see it (as often with more ambitious repertoire, it wasn’t coming to Bristol).
Was any operatic character so much on a hiding to nothing as Marfa? She is clearly getting nowhere with Andrei Khovansky, threatened with death by Golitsyn (though I thought they might have made quite a good couple) and derided by other Old Believers, whom she joins just in time for them all to commit mass suicide. Her real function seems to be to hold together the various parts of a very diffuse plot. In this thankless role we had the spirited Sara Fulgoni. Mark le Brocq, with whom I used to sing in Cambridge choirs played Golitsyn (why is it he always seems to play plonkers?). The orchestra thrillingly brought to life Shostakovich’s completion of the score, conducted by Tomáš Hanus.
The sets had a vaguely Soviet look, (Golitsyn was carried off into exile in a frame which had previously held a Constructivist-looking painting) and despite being Pountney I saw no umbrellas. The whole stage ended up being rather cluttered, with characters having to dodge bric-a-brac left over from earlier scenes. In the final scene the funeral pyres resembled nothing so much as those outdoor heaters you get in pub gardens, though to be fair, I don’t think those were commonplace when this production was new. There was the usual (for WNO) superb use of lighting. And they no longer seem to have problems now disposing the chorus around the stage.
It is a confusing opera if you aren’t familiar with that bit of Russian history, and possibly if you are. Probably no production can really solve all its problems, but we are glad that we went to this one.
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