English National Opera

1st December 2008

Have the ENO got something against intervals? I personally like them. You can have a walk around and (if you’re me), chat to the others to find out what’s happened so far. I suppose I could understand why Riders to the Sea didn’t have an interval as that’s really short, but Boris Godunov went on for 2 hours, 15 minutes, and it just seemed a bit much. Barry says if you did the whole of La boheme without any intervals it would only be about 1 hour, 40 minutes. But it could have been worse, apparently this was the short version.

I’m probably not the best person to review this, as I wasn’t really sure what was going on most of the time. If you wanted to introduce someone to opera, Boris Godunov probably isn’t the best choice. I think it would have put me off, to be honest, if it had been my first opera. There are so many characters, and a lot of it’s quite political. There aren’t many characters you like.

There were three bits in the opera I really enjoyed, moments that stood out not just in this opera but from all the operas I’ve seen recently. The first moment was near the start where the chorus were on the stage as poor people. Mostly they all sang together, but there were a few solos. There was one bit where a female singer was singing quite high, I suppose she was a soprano, her voice was really lovely.

Then there was another bit later on which shows Boris with his two children, Xenia and Fyodor. Xenia was sung by Sophie Bevan. It’s a tiny role, just one scene, and all she has to do is be sad because her prince fiancé (who never appears in the opera, and I don’t think Xenia’s met him either) has died on the way to meet her for their wedding. So she’s being a bit silly really, a bit like one of those girls nowadays who are desperate to marry a footballer, but Sophie Bevan gave a really moving performance, she even sobbed realistically, which plenty of trained actors can’t do.

Anna Grevelius, who also appeared in that scene, sang Fyodor. I saw her here a few weeks ago as Rosina in The Barber of Seville, and couldn’t quite believe it was the same girl, wasn’t totally sure it was a girl at all at first. She looked boyish, but everything was quite understated which makes a nice change, usually when you get a girl in a trouser role she’s running all over the stage and sitting with her legs unbelievably wide open (not many men can do that), and you kind of feel they’re overdoing it a bit sometimes. Well, maybe that’s just me.

The other bit I really liked was the one with Robert Murray as the Simpleton. He’s got a rather nice voice, and he played the character very convincingly. I probably had even less idea of what was going on than his character did, but it was a great performance.

The rest of it was probably fine but I didn’t really get into it. Peter Rose seemed like quite a powerful character as Boris Godunov but it was only the scene where he was with his children that he really seemed like a real person, the rest of the time it was more like he was being a political persona. Gregory Turay did a good job I thought of making Grigory into a nice person even though what he was doing, taking the identity of a man who was killed as a baby and trying to claim the throne for himself, was really quite awful. Yvonne Howard, playing the Innkeeper, provided some lighter moments and Deborah Davison, who’s in the chorus, sang nicely as the Nurse.

So the conductor. Well, I always find it difficult to know what to say about them. Edward Gardner was the conductor, and it all seemed a bit slow and murky, but that’s probably the sort of opera it is.

Madam Caterpillar

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