Ildar Abdrazakov (Boris), Ensemble

A new production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov starring bass Ildar Abdrazakov and conducted by Riccardo Chailly opened the new season of La Scala in Milan, as by tradition on December 7th. This year opening night was especially crowded with politicians, including the Italian president Sergio Mattarella, the recently nominated prime minister Giorgia Meloni and the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. Also following tradition, demonstrations preceded the performance in the afternoon, with climate activists throwing paint at the theater’s walls, which was promptly removed before the audience started flooding into the house.

This year’s opening night was the first one not to feature an Italian opera since the opening Fidelio of 2014, the last season of the Lissner/Barenboim tenure. Still, the lesser known title was a success, reaching 1,500,000 spectators in Italy through public TV and many more worldwide. I saw the second performance on December 10th.

Maestro Chailly chose the original 1869 version with Mussorgsky’s orchestration. Boris Godunov had not been seen in Milan for twenty years - the last performances took place in  2002 when Valery Gergiev conducted a guest production from Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky on the temporary stage of Teatro degli Arcimboldi, La Scala being closed for renovation. This was also the first time in which the Milanese audience could appreciate the 1869 version, which at that time was seldom performed - indeed, it was Gergiev who championed it worldwide. On that occasion, the opera was performed without intermission, which I found a very compelling choice, and for the very fist time the company finally opted for subtitles for an opera performance. Twenty years later, titling opera is no longer questioned even on the most conservative stages, and the 1869 version looks like a less remarkable feature.

The new production, directed by Kasper Holten  in collaboration with set designer Es Devlin, focused on the role of Pimen - even before the music starts, the stage is hidden by a curtain that reproduces a page of the chronicle that the monk has been writing. The curtain then rises on the Russian people; when Boris enters the stage in his majestic clothes, a golden gate appears against the dark background. The action then moves to the monastery, where Grigorij learns from Pimen about the murder of Dmitrij, the son of Ivan the Terrible, likely ordered by Boris Godunov. Grigorij escapes to Lithuania, crossing the border gate and disappears walking upwards on a dim path (I found this the most compelling scene). In the second act, Boris, now dressed like a bank employee, is in his palace with his children when Šujskij appears and tells him that a man pretending to be Dmitrij is planning to gather troops against him. Boris is haunted by the appearance of the murdered Dmitrij covered with blood that increasingly drives him out of his mind in front of the boyars, until he dies. For some reasons that remain unclear, rather than dying oppressed by his feeling of guilt, Boris is stabbed in the back by one of the boyars in the current production.

In the title role, Ildar Abdrazakov is an impressive Boris. Besides his flawless vocal interpretation and his deep musicality, the Russian bass shows an amazing identification with the character that made the final part of the opera very moving. Among the other singers, I found tenor Norbert Ernst especially compelling as Šujskij, a character that he effectively portrayed as ambiguous and deceitful. Somewhat less convincing was bass Ain Anger as Pimen, especially in his first appearance, when tenor Dmitrij Golovnin as Grigorij ended up dominating the scene.

Next to the main protagonist, the most important role in this opera is played by the chorus, instructed by Alberto Malazzi, which deserves special praise for their vocal and theatrical interpretation. During the rehearsals Maestro Chailly prepared the orchestra with enormous care, and his choice of tempi greatly contributed to the dramatic development of the action.

The performance ended in applause for the Maestro and all singers with an ovation for Ildar Abdrazakov, who is expected again at la Scala in March, when he will appear as the three villains in Offenbach’s Les contes d'Hoffmann.