Boris Godunov
By Modest Mussorgsky
Based on Pushkin's Boris Godunov and Karamzin's History of the Russian Empire
Lyric Opera of Chicago
Original Production, Stein Winge
Conductor, Sir Andrew Davis
Director, Julia Pevzner
An essay on the protagonist's conscience and a review of the performance on Nov. 26, 2011, by M. D. Ball
How many times must we hear Lord Acton's admonition before we take it seriously? How many times must we see a story about the dangers of absolute political power before we actualize the lessons? In fictional megalomaniacs like Scarpia, the Duke of Mantua, and Macbeth, we see real ones like Gadaffi, Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong-Il, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Idi Amin, and Ceaucescu. Apparently, some of us are destined for the dark side -- sociopathy or psychopathy -- whether through genetic wiring or environmental programming. But the present story, that of a man who may have murdered a boy in order to usurp the throne of Russia at the turn of the 16th century, shows us the difficulty we have in distinguishing normal from abnormal. If everyone is a composite of good and evil, as many thinkers have argued across the millennia, then there's a continuum of conscience running from selfishness to selflessness, with each extremum being pathological. (I've already written on this question in my essay on Rigoletto). The gray area between the black and the white is where nearly everyone, if not actually everyone, functions routinely. And that's where we find our protagonist in this opera.
Boris Godunov begins seven years after the 1591 assassination in Uglich of Czarevich Dmitri, the second son of Ivan the Terrible. Russia is now in chaos and the boyars have been pleading unsuccessfully with one of their own, Boris Fyodorovich Godunov, to ascend the throne and restore law and order to the land. Eventually, though, Boris accepts. As his reign unfolds, we learn that a former warrior for Ivan the Terrible, the old monk Pimen, is writing a history of Russia. Pimen claims to have been in Uglich at the time of Dmitri's death, and that three suspects had identified Boris as the assassin. Six more years pass and Boris is brooding over Russia's troubles, believing them to be God's punishment for his sin. The boyar Shuisky reports to Boris that a pretender to the throne has appeared in Poland, calling himself "Czarevich Dmitri". The Czar orders Shuisky to confirm Dmitri's death, an order that Shuisky happily obeys by describing the murder in disturbing detail. Boris hallucinates a vision of the dead Dmitri and, in terror, begs God's forgiveness. Meanwhile, Moscow is abuzz over the False Dmitri, whom the boyars denounce with a call for his execution. Boris, approaching madness and aware of his own imminent death, urges his son, Fyodor, to rule justly after assuming the throne. Finally, with a plea for mercy on his lips, Boris dies, either from guilt over his alleged regicide or from fear of the False Dmitri's approach to Moscow. As the curtain falls, there's a tense silence as we see Shuisky taunting Fyodor with a knife behind his back.
Earlier I mentioned three other men of power. Scarpia, of course, goes to his grave unrepentant, and the Duke of Mantua never expresses remorse. Macbeth, however, tortures himself with guilt, as does Boris. But unlike Tosca, Rigoletto, and Macbeth, which make clear the transgressions for which we expect to see contrition, Mussorgsky's opera does not settle the matter of whether Boris was actually behind Dmitri's assassination. Both Boris and Macbeth involve the killing of a king by the protagonist to start a dynasty, but the former opera only implies it. We know only that people around Boris believe he committed the crime and that he himself comes to believe likewise, despite never confessing. Thus, Boris is as much about the power of conscience as it is about the lure of power. Along that line, I don't know whether Lyric could have chosen a better singer for the title role. Ferruccio Furlanetto, whether we consider him a singing actor or an acting singer, followed closely the contours that Mussorgsky traced out to parallel the intonations of natural Russian speech. Furlanetto's deep basso, heavy with substance and rich with overtones, was well-matched to Boris' emotional darkness, and his vocal litheness made the waxing and waning of Boris' psychological deterioration believably torturous.
As I said, this opera is a study in conscience -- its function and dysfunction, presence and absence. Darwin proposed that conscience is a product of natural selection. Freud considered it part of the superego. Bonhoeffer saw it as a force for preserving or restoring peace of mind. But a very poetic description of conscience ("poetic" in Neruda's sense of the word) came to us from the Second Vatican Council in its Constitution Gaudium et Spes. "Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths." Clearly, a believer could take this article of faith literally, in which case conscience would have a supernatural origin (Romans 2:14-15). However, the nonbeliever, like myself, could interpret this statement metaphorically, in which case the origin of conscience becomes an academic question because any of the naturalistic pedigrees of conscience would have culminated in the inner voice that Furlanetto's outer voice exposed.
As in all matters, we have to guard against the black-or-white fallacy -- that there are only two answers to a question -- as much as we do against the argument of the beard -- that our inability to cite the point at which black ceases to be black, or white to be white, means there's no difference between black and white. Boris isn't a binary ruler, especially for his era. The fact that Boris believes, but doesn't know, whether he committed regicide, confounds our response to the guilt he shows. Most explicit indicators in this opera point to good intentions. At no time do we detect outright evil in Boris' manner; on the contrary, he begs for God's guidance to rule justly, and, moments before dying, urges his son to seek justice on the throne. Moreover, he shows an abiding paternal love for his children. Nevertheless, he does have human flaws, not the least of which is that of lying. So, if he did kill Dmitri to take power, does he qualify as evil? Has the lure of absolute power corrupted him? Or is Boris, like most people, in the gray area on the morality continuum?
These questions find answers in a comparison of Boris to Shuisky, who seems nearly, if not fully, devoid of conscience. Shuisky clearly has regicide on his mind as the curtain falls, and, from the way Stefan Margita played the role in this production, his hesitation doesn't arise from the immorality of the action he's contemplating, but rather from the punishment he might face. It's hard to tell whether Shuisky is passively indifferent to the boy's welfare or actively malevolent towards him, but there's no uncertainty that Shuisky has been strategically terrorizing the boy's father with increasing severity in order to drive him insane. I was pleased that Margita didn't widen the fine line between the two possibilities of indifference and malevolence, because doing so would have compromised one or two dimensions of Shuisky's character and probably perforce have made Furlanetto's performance seem melodramatic. As it was, however, Boris' crushing remorse was obvious and genuine, while the psychological origins of Shuisky's wicked behavior remained hidden from us. All things considered, therefore, it becomes difficult to assert confidently that Boris, a man between the two extremes, is evil. He has resisted the siren song of corruption -- though only partially if guilty of Dmitri's murder -- even if we concede his having violated modern standards of morality. Unlike Shuisky, he feels the weight of his own guilt; he comprehends the immorality of murder and the special turpitude of ending a young life, made worse by the child's royal station. If conscience is indeed a product of evolution, without an independent existence, then Boris is not bereft of respectability for a man of his time and place.
Hummable tunes don't abound in Boris, despite the opera's tonality and romanticism. In the 19th century, the psychological verisimilitude in Mussorgsky's music proved to be seminal by tempting later composers to experiment with ways to render states of mind with greater authenticity, although elements of the tonal experience, such as anticipation and fulfillment, generally were sacrificed. The chorus in Lyric's production gave us satisfyingly thick vertical harmony, while swelling and receding with the natural arcs in the score. The resulting sense of tight unison movement created a corresponding sense of political unity among the people, even though Mussorgsky allows individuality to burn through. Furthermore, Lyric proved that the paucity of strong melodies in Boris doesn't represent a deficiency. For example, Furlanetto, whose performance I've already praised, successfully portrayed depression and derangement without conniption, precisely as Mussorgsky intended in omitting "rage arias" from the score. Without recourse to coloratura or other virtuoso tools within the music, Furlanetto had to rely on his mastery of subtlety in voice and gesture. The main intrigue in this opera, Shuisky's effort to push Boris to insanity, is patent. Therefore, had Furlanetto's performance not been so convincing psychologically, had his voice not exuded such crippling anguish, then this production might have reverted to a simple parable about the dangers of absolute power, or a mere retelling of a troubled period in Russian history.
Melancholy suffused this production. A musical pall descended even on the few bright moments in this drama, quite in line with the incessant tension between that which has already happened in the story and that which is about to ensue. The legato in both the playing and singing was so strong throughout that it could have symbolized that very tension. This production had fused the text and music to such a degree that it was impossible to ignore the continuum, like that between good and evil. How close had Lyric actually come to Mussorgsky's goal of making the text and music completely indistinguishable?