Castorf’s “Boris Godunow” in Hamburg: The two states of Russia

2023-09-18 12:29:34

“Boga njet!”, i.e. “No God!” is written under the cosmonaut in the red CCCP suit. He looks around in the dark space, only a few colorful stars surround him in the void, while the onion domes of the Russian Orthodox houses of worship sink beneath him. Although the picture, a poster from the Soviet Union from 1975, shows the bright hope that science will overcome superstition, the smiling astronaut radiates a great loneliness and sadness that also surrounds the desperate Tsar Boris Godunov. The whole world is conspiring against him. No higher being can help him anymore.

In seven pictures, Modest Mussorgsky shows the rise and fall of Godunov. At the beginning, the people call – not entirely voluntarily – for a new tsar, who in the end dies torn by conspiracy theories and a real conspiracy by the boyars, and a “false tsar” from Poland and Lithuania invades the empire. And there is also a famine. Unlike the astronaut, the old thing doesn’t disappear, but comes back: tons of icons are brought in and Kalashnikovs are handed out. It is the ghosts of the past that Godunov wanted to drive away. But they catch up with him.

Frank Castorf directed Mussorgskys „Boris Godunow“ at the Hamburg State Opera as an expedition into the heart of darkness, upstream on the mighty river of history – to the origins of Russian tsarism. Mussorgsky brushes this against the grain: when the composer completed his first version of “Boris Godunov” in 1869, he wanted it to be seen as a contribution to a new Russian national culture. His look back at the “Time of Troubles” around 1600 is one from the 19th century, when the Romanovs who came to power were still the tsars. This only ended in 1917.

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What Castorf makes of Mussorgsky – a critical questioning – was intended for Mussorgsky, but hardly intentional. It is more likely that he wanted to pay homage to the Romanov rule, which created a multi-ethnic empire from the wars of various warlords and princes – the boyars. And that in the upheaval of the 19th century he wanted to give his contemporaries a hint of what was threatening the country worse than a brutal tsar. Mussorgsky took the drama “Boris Godunov” by Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Karamzin’s “History of the Russian Empire” as a model.

If you follow Mussorgsky – and his allies in spirit like Pushkin – there are only two states of matter in Russian politics: confusion and order, battle of the boyars or tsarism. Castorf and his troupe illustrate this with “Soviet power plus electrification” of the 20th century: On Aleksandar Denić’s revolving stage, a small Orthodox church is overlooked by an electricity pylon, the cables of which lead to the modernist Soviet building with a bust of Stalin, the back is a U-shaped Boat and a billiards salon with politburo charm. In Adriana Braga Peretzki’s costumes, shiny priestly robes meet Soviet uniforms.

If Mussorgsky looks at the beginning of the tsarist rule in his time, Castorf is interested in what comes after the end of the tsar – and asks how much tsarism can be found in Russian politics to this day. The answer: a lot. And even though there are no direct references to Putin, that doesn’t mean it’s not about Putin. In the aesthetic eclecticism on stage with processional, Russian and Soviet flags, one can see the ideological eclecticism of Putinism reflected, which refers equally to Ivan IV – “the Terrible” -, Stalin and the church. They are the pillars of the state order against the turmoil of the civil war and attacks from outside.

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How do you explain Putin? One can describe him as crazy and insane without even being remotely interested in the degree of insanity inherent in all politics today. One can – also very popularly – consider imperialism to be a peculiarity reserved for everything Russian, as if it were a moral and not a social-analytical concept. Neither the individual nor the collective soul are exhaustive explanations. Castorf suggests something different: archetypes of Russian politics that are more enduring than the rapid costume changes of history.

The perspective of the “longue durée” can capture some things more clearly than the privative look through the keyhole or big political slogans. The historical Boris Godunov came from the Oprichnina, an intelligence service founded by Ivan IV to weaken the opposition. After the Tsar’s death, Godunov took the lead of a group of boyars, today we would say oligarchs. From the Oprichnina it goes through the KGB to the SFB. And Putin’s rise was also a “time of turmoil”, as Adam Curtis impressively showed in the documentary from the BBC archives “TraumaZone – Russia 1985-1999”.

So the stage of Russian history keeps turning, the onion dome church is replaced by the Soviet monument “Worker and Kolkhoz Woman” from 1937, which still stands in Moscow today – a young couple, storming forward and facing history, hammer and sickle in reaching up. A turn away, in the same place, there is a monumental Coca-Cola bottle with a straw in the Russian national colors. No God? Might be. For the national myth, a form of political theology, evidence of God is irrelevant. And the shapes are interchangeable.

National myth

Mussorgsky eagerly contributed to the national myth; even in the first bars his music is based on Russian folk songs. Far less pompous than the Italian operas of the 19th century or Richard Wagner, “Boris Godunow” with its clear references to folk and church music has a simplicity that also claimed musical independence from competition to the west. But contemporaries initially appear reserved, criticizing, among other things, the lack of a love story. Mussorgsky then revised “Boris Godunov”, and the opera later achieved world fame through versions by Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovich.

The first version, the “Ur-Boris”, is being brought to the stage in Hamburg under the musical direction of general music director Kent Nagano. Musically, this version may be less sophisticated, but it fits the subject matter better: There is no love in politics. Although the claim to folk music is underlined with the large choir and additional children’s choir, a double bottom is occasionally opened: the music is decidedly cheerful and lively, while there are reports of campaigns against the Tatars with tens of thousands of deaths. There is no national culture without such abysses.

There is no trace of protests like those against Anna Netrebko at the Berlin State Opera in Hamburg. And given the depth with which Castorf dissects the national opera “Boris Godunov” and Russian history, they would not be justified. Not to mention the erroneous idea of ​​complete cultural decoupling that has been circulating in Ukraine since the war. For his standards, Castorf is very friendly to the audience: no foreign texts, no nudity, reserved camera use. And the audience returns these kindnesses when the director in the white suit receives strong applause for this great evening at the opera.