Musorgsky, "Khovanshchina" - WNO: Opera on 3, Sat 4/11/17; 6:30pm

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Following on from the superb Proms performance conducted by Bychkov, we now have the chance to hear a fully-staged version, Live from the Wales Millennium Centre and introduced by Andrew McGregor in conversation with Dr Anastasia Belina from the RCM. Tomáš Hanus conducts, and the production uses Stravinsky's conclusion to this unfinished masterpiece.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09cz43m

Fantastic!

[BBMmk2]

This should be pretty good!

[aeolium]

I attended the WNO performance of this work at Cardiff about a month ago. It was my first experience of this opera in any form (I deliberately avoided hearing the Bychkov Proms performance to come to it completely afresh). As I found the production and music striking and compelling I wanted to hear the music again before recording my thoughts about the experience and listened to the R3 broadcast last night. The discussions about the gestation and the nature of the opera before the performance, between acts and in the interval were helpful to anyone unfamiliar with it, and the programme WNO has produced about its Autumn season is very informative.

The plot is fairly convoluted and involves both a clash between reformers and conservatives and a power struggle between different factions under the regency of Sofia who was in charge during the minority of Peter, the future westernising Tsar. These are represented by four main characters: Shaklovity, the agent of the state and acting for the regent; Ivan Khovansky, the leader of the unruly militia the Streltsy; Prince Golitsyn, a pro-Western reformer; and Dosifei, leader of the schismatic Old Believers who feel threatened by recent church reforms. Dosifei's daughter Marfa - an invented character as opposed to the others who are based on real historical figures - is tortured by the conflict between her love for Khovansky's son and her fatalistic support for the Old Believer cause. The plot encompasses the downfall of the Streltsy, the murder of their leader, the exile of Golitsyn and the ritual self-slaughter of the Old Believers.

David Pountney's WNO production, first seen in 2007 and revived with designs by Johan Engles, relocates the period to another one of great political instability, the early years of the Soviet Union. It uses a set inspired by the suprematist art of the 1920s, but at the same time is sufficiently austere to accommodate large numbers of singers for the many choral scenes. The lighting is used very effectively, particularly in the final apocalyptic scene.

Mussorgsky only managed to complete a vocal score of Khovanshchina, with a couple of orchestrated sections, before he died. This production, using Shostakovitch's orchestration and Stravinsky's finale, still manages to convey Mussorgsky's musical character even with so little of the work completed (in an orchestral sense). It is sung in Russian and the cast and chorus seemed to me to cope well with the challenge, even if at times I longed for a true Russian bass, a la Burchuladze - the first performances were after all given with Chaliapin as Dosifei. I thought as in some other recent WNO productions that the chorus was the real vocal star of this performance, taking in such a range of roles: the Streltsy, and their discontented wives; the soldiers of Shaklovity; and, most movingly, the Old Believers. The orchestra of the WNO, conducted by Tomas Hanus, was also excellent.

"Lord, Lord, how sad is our Russia!" Pushkin is said to have exclaimed after reading the first chapter of what was eventually to become Gogol's novel Dead Souls. And looking at the historical pageant presented by Khovanshchina it is hard to disagree: the brutal power struggles, the drunken riot of the Streltsy, their savage mock-execution, the fatalism and eventual mass-suicide of the Old Believers, always in the background the oppressive hand of the state, and at the last a stage littered with corpses. But this grim world produced great art, literature and music, and in Mussorgsky's opera he seems to have achieved a genuinely popular - that is, of the people - style, blended with the elements of the folk and the religious chorale. It appeared to me that he had a sympathy for those to be swept away by the new order, the Streltsy and the Old Believers and this suggests that, despite the harsh words of his mentor Stasov that he had been writing of a "princely spawn", his real affinities were with those "of the black soil".

[Cockney Sparrow]

Correct me if I am wrong, but this page indicates there are no further performances (Cardiff or elsewhere) this season by WNO:

https://www.wno.org.uk/event/khovanshchina

[aeolium]

You appear to be right. That's a shame - I thought it would have had a longer run. Hopefully there will be another revival before too long.