Boris Godunov
Борис Годунов
Bass René Pape, the world’s reigning Boris, reprises his overwhelming portrayal of the tortured tsar caught between grasping ambition and crippling paranoia. Conductor Sebastian Weigle leads Mussorgsky’s masterwork, a pillar of the Russian repertoire, in its original 1869 version, which runs two-and-a-quarter hours with no intermission. Stephen Wadsworth’s affecting production poignantly captures the hope and suffering of the Russian people as well as the tsar himself.
Actors
Boris Godunov
Pretender, the false Dimitri, Grigory Otrepiev
Prince Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky
Andrei Shchelkalov, secretary to the Duma
Pimen, hermit chronicler
Varlaam
Holy Fool
Crew
The following day the bells of Moscow herald the coronation of Boris. On a square in the Kremlin, the new tsar, overcome by fear and melancholy, implores God to look kindly on him. He invites the people to a feast. The people cheer.
Now on a mission to expose Boris and proclaim himself the Tsarevich Dimitri, Grigori is trying to cross into Lithuania to find support for his cause. He falls in with two vagrant monks, Varlaam and Missail, at an inn near the border, and uses them as cover. No sooner has he asked directions to the border from the innkeeper, who warns that the frontier is heavily patrolled, than a police officer enters with a warrant for Grigori’s arrest. The officer is illiterate, so Grigori reads the warrant, substituting a description of Varlaam for his own. But Varlaam can read. Grigori escapes, pursued by the Streltsy.
ACT IV
In the Duma, the council of boyars passes a death sentence on the pretender. Shuisky arrives with an account of Boris’s hallucinations of the murdered tsarevich. Boris suddenly storms in, disoriented and crying out to Dimitri. When he regains his composure Shuisky brings Pimen before the Duma. Pimen tells of a man who was cured of blindness while praying at Dimitri’s grave. Boris breaks down. He sends the boyars away, calling for his son. Naming him heir to his throne, he bids a loving farewell to the boy and dies.
In a forest clearing near Kromy, an angry mob seizes and humiliates several boyars and Streltsy police. Varlaam and Missail enter proclaiming Boris’s guilt. The mob strengthens its resolve to tear down the old order, and when two Jesuits appear, at the vanguard of the Polish-Catholic advance, they are attacked and brutalized by the crowd. The false Dimitri arrives with Marina, Rangoni, and his army. He calls for the cheering people to follow him on his march to Moscow. The Holy Fool stays behind, lamenting Russia’s bleak, uncertain fate.
Language
Russian
Runtime
2 hours 29 minutes, tbc
2021
16+
The Met: Live in HD. Сезон 2021-2022
Весь сезонBoris Godunov
«Борис Годунов» из Нью-Йорка – в динамичной авторской версии Модеста Мусоргского и с харизматичным Рене Папе в главной партии