Listen but don't look

Khovanshchina | Royal Opera House, London

Dissent spilled from stage to auditorium during the Kirov Opera's opening performance of Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina on Monday night. Once again (and this must be at least the third occasion in recent months) the surtitles packed up during act one, never to return. In the absence of an early explanation, punters started barracking; catcalls and slow-handclapping from the amphitheatre met with one shout of "peasants!" from the stalls. It's good to know that the principles which drove Russia into her "time of troubles" in the 16th and 17th centuries are alive and well at Covent Garden in the year 2000.

Dissent spilled from stage to auditorium during the Kirov Opera's opening performance of Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina on Monday night. Once again (and this must be at least the third occasion in recent months) the surtitles packed up during act one, never to return. In the absence of an early explanation, punters started barracking; catcalls and slow-handclapping from the amphitheatre met with one shout of "peasants!" from the stalls. It's good to know that the principles which drove Russia into her "time of troubles" in the 16th and 17th centuries are alive and well at Covent Garden in the year 2000.

But the surtitle problem was serious in a long opera which, for better or worse, is very much text-led. The plotting, through all the various religious and political intrigues is complex enough, but without clarity of the principal characters' moment-by-moment motivation, the subtlety of Mussorgsky's musical dramatisation is greatly diminished for a non Russian-speaking audience.

But did I say subtlety? How many bad wigs, obtrusive beards, and false noses does it take to suspend belief (yes, you did read that right) altogether? The unwilling scribe in act one - one of those wise fools so prevalent in Russian opera - sported a nose to shame Cyrano and came straight to the stage from the ministry of funny voices. The Boyar Shaklovity, well-schooled at the ministry of demonic laughs, seized his big moment at the assasination of Prince Ivan Khovansky and made it, well, laughable.

So pageant or pantomime? Or both. Why should the quaint picture-book decor and melodramatic ineptitude have proved so much less worrisome in Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa than it was here? Because there is so much less reality at stake. Russia's "time of troubles" happened and are still happening. To reduce them to the level of an historical burlesque is tradition taken to excess. Yes, as dawn broke over the Moscow River in Mussorgsky's famous prelude and a rosy light picked out the Kremlin's minarets and the rippling water beyond, the old painted cloths still looked moody and evocative. But cast too much light on them and suddenly it's Christmas at Debenhams.

In an opera of well over three hours, one tiny moment of stage action proved telling, even dramatically wry, ironical. The Old Believer Marfa has divined the future of scheming Prince Vassily Golitsyn in a bowl of water. When Khovansky arrives moments later, he unwittingly drinks it. Divine retribution for him, too.

This is a celebrated scene in the opera and was much enhanced here by the presence of trumpet-toned Gegam Grigorian and the starry Olga Borodina as Marfa. Her prophecy rolled out over a carpet of the Kirov Orchestra's finest string sound, gloriously deep dulcet tones possessed of a lullaby-like tenderness whilst chronicling Golitsyn's betrayal, disgrace, exile, and poverty.

More deep irony. Mussorgsky was a past master of it. He taught Dmitri Shostakovich everything he knew about it. So will someone tell me why a company so entrenched in their traditions should have given the Shostakovich edition of the score rather than Mussorgsky's more austere original? In Marfa's music alone the addition of celeste and/or glockenspiel lends an unwarranted halo of piety and sweetness to that which is already implicit. Elsewhere, the over-use of percussion, the omnipresent tolling of tam-tams, is simply too much of a good thing. Mussorgsky knew best.

He certainly knew how to furnish the stage with great Russian bass roles. There are two here, three if we add the Boyar Shaklovity which one might describe as bass-baritone. Demonic laughter apart, Nikolai Putlin (the first of the company's Mazeppas - it is amazing how they can field not one but three casts of principals in a single season), rose to his great Act Two lament for the future of Russia. Gennady Bezzubenkov was sagely resonant as Dosifei, the leader of the Old Believers, and the magnificent Vladimir Vaneev (Khovansky) once again towered like a Tsar-in-waiting over the proceedings.

As did Valery Gergiev. His great orchestra continues to plumb depths of expression that others only hint at, while his chorus... Well, speaking of bass voices, I can still hear the sepulchral bottom D's from the chorus of resignation at the close of Act Two - perhaps the highlight of the evening. If tradition has a sound, that's it.