State Opera Unter den Linden: “Khovanschtschina”: Metaphysics of Violence

Prince Ivan Khovansky is the leader of the Strelitzis, who staged an uprising the previous evening against Peter, the underage heir to the throne of the late Tsar Ivan, and his family. Ivan’s sister Sofia, who is currently regent on behalf of the underage half-brothers, encouraged her to do this.

Prince Andrei Chowanski, Ivan’s son, loves the Protestant Emma, ​​a girl from the “German district”, whom his father also has his eye on, which is why he has Emma arrested (not before Evelin Novak has sung a touching aria as Emma, before she disappears from the opera completely). Marfa, an Old Believer and Andrei’s former lover, still desperately loves and hates him. Meanwhile, the boyar Shaklovity denounces the respected Prince Ivan Khovansky, who is supported by the Moscow people. Dossifei, the leader of the Old Believers, settles the dispute between father Ivan and son Andrei Khovanski and asks Marfa to protect Emma.

Prince Golitsyn, commander-in-chief of the army that recently defeated Poland and broke the power of the boyars, is the lover of the regent Sofia. Golitsyn is actually planning a conspiracy with Ivan Khovansky and Dossifei, but Ivan falls out with Golitsyn. Shaklovity, like Golitsyn’s lover of Sofia, reports to the conspirators in Sofia’s name that the court knows about their conspiracy, which Tsar Peter has called “the Khovansky affair” (i.e. “Khovanshchina”). The Tsar orders an investigation.

This is the privately scheming starting point. Everything is fine so far? It seems as if we are in an amorous, scheming tabloid piece that should rather take place in the comedy on Kurfürstendamm – or perhaps in the back rooms of the Berlin Senate? But be careful – because with Modest Mussorgsky, the actual actor in the opera is now added to this mix, who unfortunately doesn’t usually play a big role either on Kurfürstendamm or in the Red Town Hall, namely: the people! Performed by the fantastic State Opera Choir under the direction of Dani Juris, the people sing about their fate in “Khovanshchina”.

This opera is about the drama of alienation between power and the people and is commonly referred to as a “musical folk drama”. In an important essay on the occasion of the performance at the Vienna State Opera in 1989, Sigrid Neef pointed out that a more accurate translation of the Russian “narodnaja musykalnaja drama” could be the term “folk music drama”.

Whatever the case, one thing is clear: Mussorgsky primarily lets the choir speak; it is the central plot element of his opera. The people! The people! Mussorgsky’s great art lies in allowing the various musical characters of the people to sharply clash or drift apart. His choir is sometimes the “normal people” who feel pity for Golitsyn, sometimes the choir represents the insurgent Strelitzis, who rage and riot, but among whom panic breaks out when they learn of Peter’s bodyguards approaching.

Last but not least, the choir sings the Old Believers, the Raskolniki, who ultimately commit collective suicide at the stake. It becomes clear to the audience: all the contradictions that the choir represents belong to Russian society (and not only to this one) – at the same time it is permeated by religious fanaticism, just as it tends towards rude popularism or heroism or a strong leader “Chosen Ones” longed for. The people want enlightenment and modernization, as represented by the popular Golitsyn, but at the same time they submit to the authoritarian rulers of the old order and the church. Chaos everywhere.

Many of the individuals in the tableau of characters described at the beginning of this opera are character masks at best: sometimes shrilly exaggerated like the religious fanatic Susanna or the Strelitzenfrauen with their howling glissando, sometimes stuck in dull power heroism like Iwan Chowanski (a great bass and impressive actor: Mika Kares), then another tragic lover like Marfa, outstandingly sung and portrayed by the wonderful Marina Prudenskaya. Ultimately, however, the boyar Shaklowity (fascinatingly scheming: George Gagnidze), the real politician in this series of characters, and his ideal opponent, the Old Believer Dossifei (sensational: Taras Shtonda, soloist at the Kiev National Opera), are the major protagonists of the opera alongside Marfa.

In Claus Guth’s exceptionally successful production at the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden, it is striking how disconnected all the characters stumble through this opera, i.e. through their existence, through the given social constellation. Your driving forces neutralize themselves. Ulrich Schreiber has called this the “aesthetics of unrelatedness” and interpreted it as an early anticipation of the “lessness” that Samuel Beckett developed in the 20th century and that was implemented in music by John Cage and Morton Feldman.

In Mussorgsky, individual figures represent collectives, especially of course Dossifei; then it is the choral collectives again that represent ideas. But there are no (only) good guys and (only) bad guys here, the situation is complicated. »Sleep, Russian people: / The enemy does not sleep. / Oh you, native Russia, / with your unfortunate fate! / Who then, who saves you, / sad country, from evil misfortune?” sings Schaklowity in the third act. A lot is cruelty, everything is tragedy and suffering, nowhere a way out.

Mussorgsky worked on this material from 1872 to 1881. It is likely that “Khovanshchina” was intended to be the middle piece of a trilogy of operas about the history of Russia from the 16th to the 18th century (with “Boris Godunov” as the first part) and the whole of course a reflection of the Russian present in the end 19th century. However, Mussorgsky was not able to complete his opera; he only left a piano reduction with many instrumentation instructions, which was smoothed out by Rimsky-Korsakov.

In 1939, Dmitri Shostakovich began work on an orchestrated new version, which premiered in Leningrad’s Kirov Theater in 1960. Simone Young also chose this version with its wonderful timbres and lyrical and dramatic highlights, letting the Berliner Staatskapelle shine and leading the sensational ensemble of singers stylishly through the difficult score and allowing them to breathe at all times. Director Claus Guth confessed that he “knows only a few conductors who breathe so closely with the scene on stage and are really interested in theater,” and one can only agree with him unreservedly (and ask oneself why Young is not a conductor more often in Berlin can be experienced). But above all, the State Opera Choir shines, which is probably the best opera choir in the world on this memorable evening.

The production is pleasingly stringent. Guth uses a video camera, which sometimes shows the protagonists of the production in close-up in the background and allows the wild events on stage to be experienced even more vividly. He has invented some “researchers or archivists” who currently accompany historical events. In doing so, he makes it clear that we are witnessing a historical and musical experimental arrangement, as is actually the case with every opera performance.

Guth lets the stage crew act believably and sometimes opts for drastic but coherent scenes. So he has the Strelitzen, who were pardoned by the Tsar at the last moment, suddenly massacred in the dark at the end of the fourth act – the director paid close attention to the music, because the martial A flat major march contrasts with the Strelitzen’s F sharp minor lament The tsar’s troops (“con tutta forza” – with all their might – Mussorgsky wrote in his score) does indeed not bode well for the insurgents. And at the end of the third act he creates a picture that gives you goosebumps, as the Strelitzen tremble in front of the Petrov Gardens, the choir practically begs for “help and mercy” and the scene fades away with a quiet roll of drums.

Of course, there are also a few incongruous little things about the production. The reference to Putin’s center of power, staged in pantomime at the beginning and end of the opera, turns out to be professorial. One would rather have just listened to the magnificent music: the wonderfully composed dawn with its flute and harp sounds and the string tremolo at the beginning, until “the rising sun gradually illuminates the entire stage,” as Mussorgsky’s stage directions say, the Kremlin bells ring and The horn signal assigned to Prince Andrei Khovanski allows the action to begin.

Or at the end, when the choir of Old Believers commits collective suicide by self-immolation, singing Phrygian melismas in unison in octaves, “breathing the spirit of ancient times and truth” (according to Mussorgsky), before Stravinsky’s flaming and fiery music brings about their self-imposed demise the Raskolniki, which Guth lets sink into the stage’s underground in slow motion and with only hints of red, until finally a wistful mournful music takes up the last thoughts of the “Moscow people”, “Calamity lies over our country”, and ends in a dying F major brings. A scene that is as impressive and suggestive as the accompanying music.

Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina” is a deadly sad projection screen of our conditions: a world in disorder, almost in chaos, and there is no hope anywhere. A metaphysics of violence. Beethoven’s “per aspera ad astra”, through darkness to light, is taken back by Mussorgsky. His “Khovanshchina”, a story about the losers of history, draws the arc from the sunrise, the hopeful dawn, to the blazing fire of the funeral pyre in the fifth act: the counter-enlightenment, the cruel rulers have triumphed, for Marfa’s self-destructive search and for Moscow – that of course stands for the world as such – there is no hope. From the very beginning, Mussorgsky planned the tragic end of this opera, the “requiem mass of the lovers,” as he called Marfa’s requiem to himself, the affirmation of self-destruction.

“Died for lack of hope,” wrote Heiner Müller about Georg Büchner. And ultimately, all the protagonists of this stirring and fascinating opera died from a lack of hope, from complete and bleak hopelessness. The Chowanski matter will keep us busy for a long time.

Next performances: June 6th, 9th and 13th
www.staatsoper-berlin.de