Living at the Opera

The number of performances of Boris Godunov produced the biggest change in the Mariinsky Festival’s schedule since it was first announced in the summer of 2005. At first, there were to be only two. Then last winter Gergiev added a third, and for whatever reason, he decided the Festival would undertake a fourth.

Coming after Wagner’s Ring and three Shostakovich evening concerts, surely the musical burden of four performances of Boris fell on the shoulders of the Kirov Orchestra, and it would not be farfetched to presume that a sense of fatigue could possibly settle in.

Not surprisingly, Gergiev and his forces, being the workhorses they are, seemed to find the necessary energy to give each performance of Boris an intense and moving rendition . No doubt, they were aided by mounting Modest Musorgsky’s 1869 version, which calls for seven scenes in one two-hour-and-twenty minute performance.

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