Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Much in the same way that Khovanshchina has 13 soloists but no single main character, Mussorgsky’s opera exists in several radically different versions, none of which are definitive. The composer died before fully orchestrating it; most commonly used these days is the version by Shostakovich, with his finale swapped out for one by Stravinsky.Such a melding of three Russian composers could be an unholy mix, but (to a degree) that disjointedness works in Khovanshchina’s favour. The opera, set to a libretto Mussorgsky wrote based largely on historical documents, chronicles years of House of Cards-level intrigue in the Russian court during the early years of Peter the Great’s reign. As several factions vie for power, they often talk past one another, leaving certain scenes feeling incoherent in the wrong hands.Leading the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Helsinki Festival, however, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted these scenes with a propulsive motion. He turned an extended act-two conversation between decommissioned military chief Khovansky, progressive aristocrat Golitsin and Dosifey, leader of the persecuted Old Believers religious sect, into edge-of-your-seat political drama, augmented by bass Mika Kares’s menacing swagger as Khovansky and Ain Anger’s towering, yet understated, authority as Dosifey. (As a short-notice replacement for Golitsin, tenor Kristofer Lundin was commendable, but often overpowered by his colleagues.)The drama of Khovanshchina is less about the individual characters than about the world they inhabit and the forces shaping that world. Here, however, perhaps enabled by the semi-staged concert format, it was possible to see the humanity of each of the leads. When Kares learnt his planned rebellion against Peter had been exposed and that his days were numbered, he looked as if he had shrunk by at least a foot. His death, at the hands of Peter loyalist Shaklovity (the Byronesque baritone Tomi Punkeri), is inevitable, but here it was also imbued with the pathos of a Greek tragedy.Most sympathetic were Dosifey and fellow Old Believer Marfa (Russian mezzo-soprano Nadezhda Karyazina). Her romantic past with Khovansky’s son Andrey leads the hot-headed young soldier to join the religious schismatics in a massive self-immolation, an act of protest against the Tsar. The opera ends with a sublime chorus of benediction, the martyrs dying happy in their religious conviction. But the final notes also provide an unsettling commentary: this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a pianissimo.In an attempt to soften the edges between the Shostakovich arrangement and the Stravinsky finale, composer-director Gerard McBurney arranged his own bridge, working with a handful of newly discovered fragments that the composer had written for Dosifey, Marfa and Andrey. The fragments themselves are so slight that they don’t offer much in the way of revelation. However, their incorporation by sound designer Tuomas Norvio into a larger electronic soundscape that resonated throughout the opera was remarkable.Picking up after the fragments arranged by McBurney, Norvio faded the finale’s prelude into the sound of a roaring fire that grew louder and more expansive. The in-the-round seating of the concert hall, combined with the surround sound, made the audience into Old Believers, fellow participants in a spectacular act of protest. To hear this in Helsinki — a city three hours from St Petersburg where the tension induced by Russia is palpable — was a searing moment of the present merging with the past.★★★★★The Helsinki Festival continues until September 1, musiikkitalo.fi. ‘Khovanshchina’ will be performed in April 2025 at the Salzburg Easter Festival, osterfestspiele.at
