Even if Modest Mussorgsky left his opera ‘Khovanshchina’ (The Khovansky Affair) incomplete and unorchestrated, the sheer theatricality of its musical text reveals the presence of a work that begs for a stage production. The first completion and orchestration was made by Mussorgsky’s contemporary Rimsky-Korsakov, but the more slender, powerful, raw orchestration made by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1960 is the one preferred today, and the version chosen by Kent Nagano for the Munich production recorded here. With his stripped-down sets and historicizing costumes, director Dmitri Tcherniakov, one of the new voices of contemporary Russian theater, throws a bridge to the political present. The historical pessimism of the opera, says Tcherniakov, ‘is legitimated by Russian history and Russian life. Basically, nothing has changed.’
The Gambler (Der Spieler)
‘The Gambler’ is a dark study of human failings and the corruptive power of money. In this work, everyone gambles: the hero Alexey, the General and even the wealthy aunt Babulenka gamble with money; Blanche, the Marquis and Polina – who loves Alexey – gamble with their fellow human beings. The results are humiliation, ruin and self-delusion. But when the Staatskapelle Berlin under worldfamous conductor Daniel Barenboim provide the orchestral sound to the full, lustrous voices of Vladimir Ognovenko, Kristine Opolais, Misha Didyk, Stefania Toczyska and their colleagues, there is nothing even remotely dismal about the opera or its production. Directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, ‘the evening zips past entertainingly, yet leaves its traces in the listener’s mind: a stroke of genius like Prokofiev’s opera itself’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).