An epic swing and a miss: Boris Godunov opens at Hungarian State Opera

Stark, rough-hewn, a dark mix of high and low: Mussorgsky’s original 1869 Boris Godunov is a formidable beast, and one that has been gaining foothold on the operatic stage. It's less narratively coherent and abounding in splendid tableaux than its 1872 reworking, but there's great thrill in its pared-down musical and dramatic directness. Its Budapest premiere fits well into the Hungarian State Opera’s drive for programming repertoire works’ “rare” versions, and it’s certainly a more compelling piece than Der fliegende Holländer’s 1841 Urfassung, or the Wagnerian and Straussian reworkings of Gluck’s Iphigénies. This Hungarian State Opera premiere, however, couldn’t make an argument for the original Boris. 

Clearly conceived as a vehicle for Gábor Bretz, this Godunov found its star shining dimly. Bretz can always cut a suitably sinister figure on stage, but his attractive bass-baritone felt pale and unfocused, lacking gravitas for his first two scenes. Ironically, he came alive the most in Boris’s death scene, giving an expressive, emotionally compelling account of the tsar’s farewell.

As his main opponent, Botond Ódor's Grigory (and the Holy Fool) was sung with a bright but thin tenor, unimpressive in vocal stature despite constantly helpful positions front and centre. Among the supporting cast, András Palerdi’s stolid Pimen, Andrea Brassói-Jőrös’s resplendent Xenia, and the ever-reliable Laura Topolánszky’s Fyodor were notable, while in the minor role of the Police Officer, Bence Pataki showed off an impressive young bass.

Alan Buribayev had the thankless task of taking over from Balázs Kocsár just two weeks before the premiere. Even affording due leniency, his conducting was extremely uneven, with dragging tempi and puzzlingly disjointed phrasing that weighed down the dramatic flow, turning the initially towering Coronation Scene lacklustre and Varlaam's scene-stealing song lifeless. With respectable contributions from orchestra and chorus, Buribayev occasionally managed to inject life into the performance, showing flashes of the dramatic brilliance Mussorgsky’s score abounds in, but such brilliance did not characterise his overall delivery.

Director András Almási-Tóth flexes his penchant for (cynical) subversion as he did in last season’s Idomeneo. Turning every relationship and dramatic situation into its opposite, however, doesn’t itself a coherent interpretation make: here, it only succeeds in undermining an existing dramaturgical structure without constructing something else in its place. 

Showcasing this issue was the production’s treatment of the real and fake tsareviches. Dmitry’s death being rendered a sorry accident in an introductory silent film-style video makes Boris’ inner conflict moot. (It did serve for later, repeated video projections of a zombified Dmitry, a tiring excuse to cover for set changes.) Grigory, meanwhile, is turned into a characterless thug here who bludgeons Pimen after learning the truth of Dmitry’s death, slaughters friend and foe when cornered at the border and, in the production’s most self-defeating coup de théâtre, returns as the Holy Fool in Act 3, brutalising the street urchins who bully him, emerging as another child-killer in his face-off with Boris. This turn not only robs the opera of the only character serving as its moral core (and a highly symbolic cultural figure!), it also offers nothing in return other than superficial, self-indulgent edginess. More of the same came with the Innkeeper’s onstage rape of Grigory, as tasteless as it was needless. If Almási-Tóth wanted to make a point about people exchanging one opportunistic, ruthless leader for another, there is a version of Godunov that can aptly serve that concept – but it is not this one.

Incoherence marks the production’s visual styling as well, with little logic to its mixing of time periods: the last Ruriks, haunting Boris, showed up in early 20th-century clothing that evokes the last Romanovs, in the otherwise entirely contemporary setting. Sebastian Hannak’s set design is fittingly cold and desolate, even in its occasional splendour, but the scene changes are clunky, and the Act 3 and 4 sets stand at odds with their supposed settings (a distinctly Western Christian stained glass window adorn the walls of St Basil’s Cathedral). For a production touted as reworking a “historical psychothriller” with “elements of horror”, Almási-Tóth’s direction ultimately shows little sense of history. It thrills even less.