Four Characters in Search of Boris Gudonov

A collage of icons glinting with gilt had replaced the Lyric's orientalized curtain for this performance. It ascended on the last act of the opera, and a black stage stretched starkly lit, only two tall stakes on its right side, empty for a moment. "Oh!" sighed the gardener, sitting forward eagerly.

The cynic shifted, lips parted, and the bitter mockery began onstage, the beast that was the People striking against its tormentors, the stark drama played out against that background that alone of all the night's sumptuous sets was no background.

'Epische Theater,' thought the playboy ironically. All the previous splendor of the production had been wasted on the cynic. This barefaced no attempt had finally hooked him. The libretto slipped into his lap with the first strains to wash across the stage, the boyar mocked to the tunes that had been wrought for his praises, the solemn music of the mother church inciting the populace to follow the Pretender against the regicide.

The booklet had told him the mob was crying now about their own power, their own glory that they were awakening to only to change their allegiance. He knew the sentiments were there, the awakened pride of the masses moving from mockery to unthought-through-purpose, they filled the meaningless syllables with their significance, with their pathetic, absurd, overweening, overconfident spirit released from generations of subservience.

"Domine, Domine, Salvum fac Regem Demetrium..."

"Oh!" breathed the gardener, thrilled to hear the first words she understood, thrilled by the serene pride of the Latins. The hardwareman was nodding to the rhythm.

The cynic sat back, brushing his hair nervously off his forehead, skirting the edge of total involvement, ashamed for the crowd, furious at the rabble, fighting off heartbreak at the human fallibility of it all. The boyar was roped to one stake, the Catholics just fastened to the other, crying out to Mary to save them in the same voices they'd hymned Dimitri, the mob's darling, in the same Latin that was Greek to these Russians.

And then the absurdity of it, Dimitri's wonderful noble music, as if there were any nobility, thought the cynic, ushering in the idiot who believed all the lies, all the lies of leadership and nobility, all his own lies? By which he hoped to effect a change, to right an injustice that had only been a symptom. His music whispered through the prayers of the Polish priests, moving inexorably closer, simple, clean, and soaring as it swept in...

"They might have had a horse!" carped the gardener breathlessly, as Dimitri looking very foolish arrived borne on a shield by four men.

... the false Dimitri, not even aware his Latins were about to be lynched, his Boyar had narrowly escaped with his life, the white and shining youth, the beautiful tenor, you wanted to yell at him 'run you fool!' The cynic hated himself for it but he did. He knew Dimitri's story began with a young man's pride and wild oats and ended in tragedy for himself and at least a generation, and he knew the whole campaign was a farce, and it broke his heart to see this imposter, unopposed as yet, following his bloody destiny in the fiction of righteousness, receiving the worthless adulation of the fickle, mindless, unawakened crowd with this angelic serene noble naive confidence.

The crowd forgot the Boyar, whom the simpleton had released. Did he hail Dimitri just to save his skin? They forgave him for it.

Dimitri's physical presence seemed to heal all wounds. Boyar, Varlaam, peasants, Latins, followed him off in fictional unity, his very train containing the seeds of his destruction and he did not see it, falling over themselves to follow the Pretender as he urged them onward to glory among the golden roofs of Moscow. They believed him as easily as they drew breath, believed in their own power behind a righteous leader, the easy never-dying lies of sure victory, a people betrayed by its leaders, praising him as he led them to their doom.

"Slava! Slava!" the only word of Russian the cynic knew, and he'd learned it that night, as the chorus that had begged for Boris in the first place and hailed him with "Glory!"now sang "Glory" to the upstart Dimitri.

Tears would not blink away, they stung the cynic's eyes.

Not nonsense this time, the new words to the old music, the Simpleton weeping for his Russia, the bare hopeless expression of the dismal truth, a glow of fire on the horizon. No blame. No guilt. Just the quiet despair of the victim powerless to change the forces shaping him and crushing him, as the lights dimmed on him sitting alone on the bare stage, and the curtain of gilded icons glided between him and the audience.

The lights came on. For the first time in her shy life, the gardener rose to applaud. The hardwareman shouted "Bravo! Bravo!" The gardener wished she could bring herself to join him, could step outside herself enough to let these magical strangers know just how much they had done for her; but she couldn't.

The last flowers were thrown onto the stage, the last bows were taken, and finally the outpouring of emotion was over. As the crowded auditorium emptied, the gardener turned to the hardwareman and asked, "I wonder if they taped this?" eager to hang onto this production, this night, this aching exhilaration, forever.

By Ruby Jung. Conductor Graphic © 2002 Ruby Jung and liscensors. All rights reserved.