SOL Tuesday: Do I Hate Opera?

             A friend invited me to go to  Lincoln Center last night where a filmed version of the opera Boris Godunov was going to be projected on a giant screen to a crowd sitting on the outside plaza.

            I have never cared for operatic singing. You know that stereotype of the man who’s dragged to the opera by his wife, where he complains about the screeching and yelling? I’m that guy. But Moussorgsky wrote the music for this opera, and it was outdoors on a warm night. Why not?

            It was a very pleasant evening, and I’m not sorry I went. But I’m still not a fan of opera. First, they were singing in Russian, with subtitles—and the subtitles were white. I could make out most of the words in the first scene, but the second, rather long scene featured a monk in a white robe. The subtitles were impossible to read. Impossible. And that scene was rather crucial, as a young man the monk was apparently telling an important story to, in a subsequent scene was attempting to escape Russia (why?) and was fairly hostile to the itinerant monks he was traveling with (why?).

            Next, much of the story seemed reduced to slogans: Boris resists being named tsar, then he accepts. But he feels guilty (for what? was that a subtitle I missed?). Maybe he killed a previous heir to the throne, maybe he didn’t. The young man trying to escape Russia is claiming to be that heir, but nothing comes of that plotline. The chorus represents the people, who at the beginning beg Boris to accept being the tsar, but at the end, they want him gone (why?), even though he provides food during a famine. Accused of killing the heir, Boris has a heart attack and dies. The end.

            It felt rather Macbeth-ish—though I learned later that the the opera is based on a play by Pushkin, which was based in turn on Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2. And there were echoes of current affairs, an autocratic ruler reminding us of Putin, the chorus hinting at revolution that doesn't happen for another 300  years. But I did want to know more about the real-life Boris. He turns out to have been a Tatar, part of the Golden Horde, which was the European wing of the Mongol Empire in the Middle Ages. (Also an early 1950s movie I saw as a child.) Ivan the Terrible was one of them, and one of his sons was the heir Boris was accused of killing. Boris was a good ruler, but the nobility conspired against him, and then he died. And the next tsar, about 10 years later, in 1613, inaugurated the Romanov dynasty.

            Except for a couple of peripheral women characters, all the singing was done by men, so that was bearable. I haven’t become a fan of opera, but the outdoor event in the summer was enjoyable.

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