Boris Godunov at the Interstices of Opera and Film

On May 3, 2008, the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago hosted a one-day symposium entitled "Performance and Mediation: At the Interstices of Opera and Film." At the center of the discussion stood Andrei Tarkovsky's production of Modest Musorgsky's Boris Godunov at London's Royal Opera House in 1983 and the broad convergence between opera and moving pictures. A full hall heard eight presentations divided into four sections, devoted to the history of Boris Godunov in the dramatic arts, documentation of Tarkovsky's 1983 production, consideration of music and opera in Tarkovsky's cinematic oeuvre, and the broader problems of performance and photographic media. Presenters included Caryl Emerson, Yuri Tsivian, Vladimir Marchenkov, Berthold Hoeckner, David Levin, and Carolyn Abbate.

The emotional highlight of the day was undoubtedly the joint presentation—one is tempted to say performance—by Irina Brown and Robert Bryan, two of Tarkovsky's collaborators on Boris Godunov and the creative forces behind the revival of Tarkovsky's staging in 2003. Irina Brown also produced a 1993 re-creation of Tarkovsky's production at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg (available on a commercially distributed DVD) and has published a recent essay ("Tarkovsky in London: The Production of Boris Godunov," in Tarkovsky, ed. Nathan Dunne [London: Black Dog, 2008]). It is hoped that the symposium, which was filmed by Judy Hoffman of the University of Chicago, will eventually enable a fuller documentation of Tarkovsky's production.

In the meantime, I am very grateful to Opera Quarterly for the chance to preserve and circulate Robert Bryan's valuable account of his work lighting Tarkovsky's production of Boris Godunov. One of our most accomplished artists in light, Bryan has served as lighting supervisor for the Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, where he lit more than 150 productions. He has also worked for dramatic theaters, including the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Prior to the conference, he had recently been in Chicago to work on the 2007 production of Così fan tutte at the Lyric Opera.

Robert Bryan's commentary is supplemented by my review of Alexander Sokurov's 2007 production of Boris Godunov at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. Of particular interest to me is not only the comparison of Sokurov's foray into the operatic medium with that of Tarkovsky, but also how the productions help us to understand both directors' conceptions of film as a medium.