Opera: Soulful Giant

Bolshoi means “big” in Russian, and Moscow’s Bolshoi Opera more than lives up to its name. Last week, visiting the Western Hemisphere for the first time in its 191-year history, the Bolshoi rolled into Montreal’s Expo 67 with 193 tons of scenery and accessories, five tons of special food, 99 instrumentalists, 95 choristers, 48 soloists, 50 dancers, and 127 staff workers and extras (including six female stagehands). And this was a mere splinter group from the 3,000-member company back home.

Accustomed to performing on a stage of brobdingnagian proportions (70 ft. wide by 78 ft. deep), the company practically had to be shoehorned into the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at the Place des Arts, whose stage is about one-half as roomy. While seven translators repeated orders in Russian, English and French, workmen scurried about rolling up the backdrops to fit and putting up a tent to hold the overflow of the troupe’s 3,000 costumes. Nonetheless, assured Chief Designer Vadim Rin-din, “the spectacle that will be seen here will be in no way inferior to that seen in Moscow.”

Cracking Rifles. The first two productions bore him out. On opening night, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov had a cast of 280 bedecked in pounds of furs, brocade, velvet, gems and clattering swords. Czar Boris’ throne room in the last act was a breathtaking showcase of Byzantine opulence, with richly colored frescoes on the multidomed ceiling and an elaborately carved golden throne beneath two 800-lb. chandeliers. In Prokofiev’s War and Peace, which ran for four hours the following night and called for 40 soloists even in the condensed version, some scenes were framed in 50-ft. Doric columns inflated with com pressed air, while others featured cracking rifles, flapping flags and rank upon rank of charging soldiers.

But the Bolshoi is not just visually overpowering; it is a giant with a voice and a soul. What really captivated Montreal’s audience and critics was the fact that the Bolshoi’s Boris captured not only the barbaric power of the work but also its subtle psychology. At the head of an effective cast, Basso Ivan Petrov projected passion better than pitch, but his booming, dramatically harrowing portrayal of the tormented tyrant was still a triumph.

As the curtain fell, the sellout audience of 3,000 burst into a 15-minute ovation. The company’s stand at Expo 67, which continues for the next two weeks with the addition of Rimsky-Kor-sakov’s The Legend of the City of Ki-tezh, Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades and Borodin’s Prince Igor, was already a bolshoi success.