Review of Boris Godunov – Brienne Terfel A brash and barker in Mussorgsky’s relentless study of power | Opera

A doll-headed figure plays with a multi-colored fidget spinner, high above the stage. Three men – masked and armed – crawled forward, grabbed him, cut his throat and dragged him away.

It’s a brutal beginning to a brutal opera. This flashback is the brainchild of director Richard Jones (in his 2016 Royal Opera production, revived for a second time by Ben Mills, we see it replayed twice more as an episode that haunts the protagonist), but the overriding atmosphere is Mussorgsky’s. Based on Pushkin’s drama about the Tsar’s reign, Boris Godunov is among the darkest series ever made. In the composer’s lean and mediocre original, it is almost relentlessly so: dominated by low voices, its orchestration dense and heavy, the seven scenes push inexorably toward crisis.

In this context, speed is everything. Conductor Mark Wigglesworth kept up the momentum, heightening the contrast between the score’s darker and more swollen sections, the huge slabs of lower brass almost obliterated by the clanging bells, the light thrown periodically by loud, delicately blended woodwinds. When they were inaudible, did the buzzing have to be so disastrous? – The strings were lively in this musical light, fidgety and gentle, rough-hewn and spun into one delicate thread.

In Jones’s production, the drama plays out in one beautifully lit set: a cavernous charcoal gray box with a small, bright yellow, low-ceilinged room above. The chorus dresses in drab peasant clothes until they are asked to dress brightly for Boris’ coronation. The boyar sport matches the jaw-length bob of the 1970s and everyone on stage is a little stiff – except for the hostess (played here by Susan Bickley in a stroke of luxurious casting) who is a one-woman bob of colour. There is an opening burst of movement as the chorus rushes frantically and the painful physical advance of Adam Palka’s elderly monk Pimen, whose “History” becomes a vast canvas that he drags across the stage to emphasize the nature of the burden he bears. The prominent “monks” in the bar scene sway cartoonishly.

However, for the most part, this production frames the singing as the main event. Among the impressive cast, Palka and Andrei Kimach (as boyar clerk Andrei Shchelkalov) stand out as particularly convincing, while Robert Perry Rowe is exceptionally assured in the trippy role of Boris’ son. In his promising film debut, Alexander Roslavets is the quintessential thug Varlam, and James McCorkle has a stately voice as Grigory Otrepiev. Best of all was Bryn Terfel in the lead role he has played in this production since its inception. His Caesar was unmistakably agitated: wild-eyed, with violent consonants, dark laughter, and barking. But Terfel’s voice also remains supple and rich, its beauty insisting on the sheer humanity of this complex character.