Friday, Apr. 05, 1963
The Boris Boom
The Czar's torment is terrible--but is it madness or fatal grief? He lives out his last days in the hollow splendor of his Russian palace, haunted by the child king he has murdered, as frightened of his own evil as of the false pretender who is coming through the winter forests to kill him. At last he dies, and in dying Boris Godunov demands an all-but-impossible mystic triumph of the bassos who sing his tragic role: his final prayer must be torn from a soul already lost, from lips already dead. Yet in the last few years, no role in all grand opera has grown so rich in men who sing it superbly.
You Are Boris. Every basso is his own Boris, and the six who sing it best differ widely in their interpretation of the role. The Metropolitan Opera's Jerome Hines conducted a hit-and-run seminar in psychology some years ago and concluded that Boris was a hysteric and a manic-depressive. Boris' death, Hines has decided, is from cerebral hemorrhage, and he induces it onstage by temple-pounding. Bulgarian Basso Boris Christoff sees the tortured Czar as a man who "dies of his own sin, his own dishonesty--not heart trouble or mental illness." At the Met this season, operagoers have seen George London's Boris die twice (broken by the weight of genius); last week's schedule brought Giorgio Tozzi (a tender Boris enraged to death).
All the Borises must live with the towering memory of Feodor Chaliapin, who brought Mussorgsky's masterpiece out of Russia and, until his death in 1938, was always considered the best Boris. Since then, Chaliapin's Boris (anguished and anguishing) has been as intimidating as
Caruso's Canio in Pagliacci. But every modern Boris has at least one feather in his cap, and--since Russians still consider Boris their operatic masterwork--most of them come from Moscow. Both Hines and London have sung the role there, and both now claim to be about to make a recording of the opera with the Bolshoi company. Khrushchev himself applauded London, but last week, when Hines sang his Grand Guignol Boris at the Met, Soviet U.N. Ambassador Nikolai Fedorenko came backstage and said, "You are Boris."
You Were Boris. Just as Hines was preening over that, the Paris press was proclaiming a Soviet basso, Ivan Petrov, as the world's greatest Boris. Petrov came to town with 40 Ibs. of jeweled costumes and the rank of "Artist of the Soviet People." His Boris is ideologically and politically rehabilitated: "He is touched by the misery of the Russian people he tried to help," Petrov says. In Paris, Petrov brought a bouquet of flowers to Chaliapin's grave in the Batignolles Cemetery, then disclaimed the master's influence with a fashionable Russian proverb: "Better a bad originality than a perfect copy."
Outside Paris, Christoff is generally considered the best Boris, and his new recording (Angel) is unquestionably the top. London has also recorded the opera's great arias (Columbia), but his claim to the role is more in acting than in voice; his basso register is weak; his voice is a shade too high and light for Boris' thundering miseries. Cesare Siepi sang an unforgettable Boris at the Met for years, but his Mediterranean approach to the role introduces the irrelevant question of Whom Does Boris Love?
Boris' death scene gives every basso the dramatic treat of getting to pitch himself down a flight of stairs if he cares to. In Europe, Christoff and Petrov die quietly, as if by surprise, but the Met's staging invites a good fall. London, the intellectual Boris, dies intelligently--a heave, a cry, a little gasp, and he's gone, rolling gently down the stairs. Hines, though, plays it for all he's worth. Clawing the air, grasping his heaving chest, he cries his final line ("Forgive me! Forgive me!") and pitches himself headlong down the stairs. Surely it will be the end of him some day, and then there will only be five great Borises.
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