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| Boris Godunov |
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| Open Air: Thursday 10/30/08 BORIS GODUNOV at the San Francisco Opera - host Alan Farley talks with Samuel Ramey, who's playing the lead/ Source |
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| Boris Godunov |
| Sung by |
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| Dramatic bass role. Tsar of Russia. |
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| SFO Boris Godunov History |
| Aria Database for Boris Godunov |
| Chester Ludgin |
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| This site and all related sites are for entertainment and reserch and contains information that anyone can get by using a search engine, such as Google./ This site is a sub-site of SF ART World // Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License |
| In his American debut, there wasn�t any question about the triumph of Rossi-Lemeni as Boris. With more than ample vocal resources, magnificent bearing and dramatic ability, the young singer, elicited raves.
Rossi-Lemeni conceived the Czar as frantically racked with pangs of conscience and his interpretation, vocally and visually, was intense enough to leave the audience limp. It was climaxed by a brilliant piece of showmanship, skillfully wedded to his conception. A sensational corkscrew fall down a flight of steps � a fall so realistic that the listeners greeted the tremendous thump on the stage floor with a collective gasp. This fall came at Boris� last words, as he rises from his throne at the top of the steps, clutching the arms of the chair, protesting he is still the Czar. A little earlier, after Pimen�s narrative about the shepherd�s vision of the child Dimitri, he fell backwards freely and startlingly from the platform to be caught by two choristers. There was unusual vividness in Rossi-Lemeni�s Death Scene entrance, too, hurtling on as he did with a wild stare on his face, clutching a handkerchief./ pg 121 - 1922-1978 SFO-Bloofield |
| Boris� marked the outgoing of Pinza, who had sung with the company for 21 out of 22 seasons from 1927 onward./ pg 92 - 1922-1978 SFO-Bloofield |
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| ICertainly the force of Ramey's performance swept all doubt aside. Singing with unflagging stamina, resonance and an air of tragic depth, he created a character at once charismatic and fatally flawed.
...His wide vibrato impeded things slightly in the Coronation Scene, but thereafter this was a performance that married gravitas with emotional transparency. His extended soliloquy in Scene 5, which finds Boris at home with his children, was both grand and deeply moving, carried forward on the strength of Ramey's muscular but pliant bass. The final scene, in which Boris gives dying advice to his son and heir (don't trust the Boyars, guard the Lithuanian border, watch out for the military-industrial complex), was equally potent./ SFCV
Ramey's Boris is a commanding, complex figure, torn between his desire to rule wisely and his unassuageable guilt over the murder that put him on the throne. / Review |
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