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April 14, 2007
Music Review | 'Boris Godunov'
Prokofiev's Take on Pushkin's Czar, Revealed at Last
By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
PRINCETON, N.J., April 12 - Sergei Prokofiev and Vsevolod Meyerhold, the
Russian stage director, scorned Modest Mussorgsky's music for his opera
"Boris Godunov." The opera was based on Aleksandr Pushkin's play about
Godunov, the 16th-century czar, and they hoped to present what they believed
would be a more accurate representation of Pushkin's vision with a 1936
staging featuring a new score by Prokofiev.
But they never got the chance. Meyerhold ran afoul of Stalin and (like
Pushkin) was shot, and the fruits of the Meyerhold-Prokofiev collaboration
languished in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow
until recently. The work finally had its world premiere on Thursday here at
the Roger S. Berlind Theater at Princeton University.
Mussorgsky's music for "Boris Godunov," or at least Rimsky Korsakov's
familiar and plush re-orchestration of the original, is as luxuriant as the
golden domes of an Orthodox church. Like Pushkin before him, Mussorgsky had
his own artistic battles with the censors, and the cuts and revisions he
made to mollify them ended up mitigating the comic elements and adding a
loftier tone to his opera.
Meyerhold and Prokofiev wanted to restore the lighter, comic aspects of
Pushkin's "Boris Godunov" that were lost in the stirring, emotive opera
score, whose music is sometimes so guilt-laden that even a casual listener
can start to feel penitent.
Prokofiev was adept at collaborating with directors, as demonstrated by his
gripping soundtrack to Sergei Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky." But whereas
that score stands alone as an orchestral work, the score to "Boris Godunov"
is very much incidental music, which is what the composer and director
intended it to be.
Twenty-five fragments of orchestral and vocal music (done well by members of
the Princeton University Glee Club and Orchestra) are woven into the drama
like carefully rationed accents, which befits Meyerhold's spare and modern
production and emphasizes both the comic and weighty aspects of Pushkin's
play. There are long periods with no music; when it appears, it plays a
supporting role to Pushkin's lyrical text, performed here in a vital new
translation by Antony Wood.
During wordless behind-the-scenes choruses at the beginning and end of the
play, the singers repeat one-syllable vowels with increasing intensity to
denote the stirring frustrations of the Russian people. Other scenes feature
the widow Ksenia (Boris's daughter) singing a simple, melancholy lament, and
irreverent, drunken monks (who did not amuse Pushkin's censors) singing
liturgical music set to cheeky lyrics.
The composer Peter Westergaard, an emeritus professor of music at Princeton,
wrote music for one scene Prokofiev did not complete: an effective
paraphrase of Russian liturgical chant to heighten the drama while the young
monk Grigory Otrepiev begins to lust after Godunov's throne.
An amusing multicultural battle scene is boosted by a carnival-like brass
band and fife and drum, resulting in a cacophony befitting the chaos onstage
and in the audience, as the actors romp in the aisles. As in Mussorgsky's
opera, there is eerie music for a Holy Fool. A Hollywood-style amoroso is
the lighthearted musical backdrop over which Grigory tries to woo the
haughty Polish princess, Marina.
The Polish ball is one of the most visually striking scenes in the staging,
which features floor-to-ceiling spaghettilike cords that encourage the
actors (all Princeton undergraduates) to adopt fully Meyerhold's intensely
physical style of acting. Orchestra musicians in fanciful wigs are seated
behind a multilayered red grid, against which the brightly colored round
skirts of the dancers whirling to a Tchaikovsky-like waltz and a polonaise
intersect like circles and lines in a Malevich painting.
While perhaps a new, essential Prokofiev work was not revealed with this
premiere, it unearthed a fascinating collaboration between important artists
in a staging Pushkin would have doubtless enjoyed.
The final performances of "Boris Godunov" are today at the Roger S. Berlind
Theater, 91 University Place, Princeton, N.J.; (609) 258-2787. Tickets are
sold out.
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