For the first half hour or so, English National Opera's new production of Boris Godunov is thrilling. The ENO Chorus throws itself into the opening scenes with furious intensity; Edward Gardner and the orchestra extract balefully savage sonorities from the raw-boned orchestration; and Tim Albery's staging, in Tobias Hoheisel's stark, dark set, has exactly the right kind of austerity, to which the first sight of Boris himself in full regalia as the newly installed tsar, children following dutifully behind, adds a brilliant stab of colour.
Gradually, though, that dramatic and musical power seeps away in the middle scenes. Gardner and Albery have opted for Mussorgsky's original, seven-scene version, which the staging updates to the last throes of imperialist Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, with the overthrow of the Romanovs just around the corner, though the ending has Boris walking off stage rather than dying on it. The dialogue between the chronicler Pimen and the idealistic young monk Grigory, and Boris's scene with his family - which leads to his remorse over the murder of the previous tsar's son - drag in a way that is fatal to their pivotal role in the unfolding chronicle. Performing the whole work in a single, two-and-a-quarter-hour sitting starts to seem a very bad idea indeed.
It is hard to identify exactly where that energy goes. It is partly down to Gardner's conducting, which is better in the moment than over the long paragraphs the central scenes depend upon; Albery's direction is more convincing when organising the masses than when delineating one-to-one encounters. Even the work's single moment of light relief is rather unfocused: when Grigory is fleeing to Lithuania and encounters the monk Varlaam (Jonathan Veira) and Yvonne Howard's babushka-like Innkeeper, the production depicts only the brutality of the border guards who harass them, and loses the rich character of both cameos.
Crucially for the drama, though, Peter Rose lacks the presence that the role of Boris really requires. He has none of the fathomless bass depth demanded by the vocal writing, and Rose presents the character as almost genteel - more Peter the Great than Ivan the Terrible. There surely needs to be more of the ruthless thug about such a despot.
Brindley Sherratt's Pimen is a model of clarity and John Graham-Hall's clipped Shuisky is perfectly judged; yet Robert Murray's omnipresent Simpleton, though beautifully sung, remains surprisingly unaffecting. In the end, this production is as uneven as Mussorgsky's epic itself.
