Boris at the Bolshoi

For anybody who wants to understand what the big deal about Boris Godunov is....



This is from 1949 (not 1947 as said above), the late Stalin years and the Golden Age of Moscow's Bolshoi Opera under their much-venerated chief conductor (that is until Stalin literally banned him from the opera house in 1952), Nikolai Golovanov. The Boris is Alexander Prigorov, who was actually Golovanov's second choice to play Boris. His first was Mark Reizen, who was Jewish, and his preference for Reizen over Prigorov was the reason Stalin eventually banned him from the Bolshoi. I don't think we're quite capable of understanding what this opera, about nothing less than the eternal suffering of the Russian people, meant to those who lived through the World Wars and the Bolshevik purges. But we can still marvel at the intensity they generate.

Performances like this are why I love opera.