Why did the Hamburg composer, singer and music writer Johann Mattheson withdraw his opera “Boris Goudenow”, which was “both poetry and composition” in 1710? In his autobiography, there is a somewhat nebulous talk of “certain causes” that would have led him to “leave them to the theater”. How did he even come to set the story of the usurper of the Tsar's throne 160 years before Modest Mussorgsky's well-known version of the same material? Did he really only write the piece that was staged at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music as part of the “Barockoper: jung” series “for his special exercise and pleasure”? In any case, the musical political comedy had to wait almost three hundred years for its premiere.The score, which was outsourced together with Mattheson's other works during the Second World War, was long thought to be lost. She only returned to Hamburg from Armenia in 1998, where she was launched in 2005 as a concert and in Boston as a stage set.

Much has been puzzled over Mattheson's mysterious "Bedencken". It is unlikely that he thought the opera was a failure or did not trust the Theater am Gänsemarkt for which it was created. It would be more conceivable that he put his project on hold because he feared that the Russian embassy in Hamburg might react sensitively to his relentless exposure of intrigues at the court of the tsars. At that time, the Hanseatic city was aiming for trade relations with the newly founded Saint Petersburg. But the case is probably more complicated. As the successor to his friend Handel, who was four years his junior and with whom he had also had a life-threatening duel because of a dispute, Mattheson had entered the service of the English ambassador John Wyche in 1704 to teach his son.Soon he was promoted to Wyche's legation secretary and was therefore familiar with internal diplomatic matters. Hamburg was doing well economically and culturally, but traditionally it was militarily dependent on protective powers such as Sweden and England against Danish desires. Sweden lost its leading role in Northern Europe at that time. With its opening to the west, Russia emerged as a new player.

Brutal mechanics of power

In the program booklet of the Innsbruck “Boris” production, the assumption is made that Mattheson might have heard about England in 1709 to strengthen Sweden's role as a regulating power in the Baltic Sea region through an arrangement with Russia. If so, Mattheson, who was familiar with music theater as a political “door opener” in his hometown, initiated an opera in the service of this diplomatic goal. The fact that in Mattheson's “Boris” two “foreign princes” with the ominous names Gavust and Josennah are bridal at the Moscow court, one of whom can easily be deciphered as the Swedish Gustav, the other as the Danish Johannes, would support such speculation. While the Swede succeeds in the end, the Dane is chased away as a villain:in connection with the dedication of the opera to Mattheson's employer Wyche, this is a clear indication of England's corresponding plans.

Mattheson's retreat would then be explained by the sudden change in the general weather situation, when the Tory opposition won the general election in 1710 and it was questionable whether England would still hold out its head as a guarantor for Hamburg. The opera's message was over. Without them, the performance might have offended the Russians. The subtitle “The throne attained through cunning” doesn't mince words. During the three-hour performance in Innsbruck's Haus der Musik (Haus der Musik), it quickly becomes clear that the brutal mechanics of power at the Tsar’s court are being drastically targeted. Jean Renshaw's fast-paced and intelligent staging unfolds the piece with satirical biting allusions to current political events as a timeless farce,which in places reminds of Shakespeare's dark royal dramas. Ice cold, Boris lets his predecessor in a wheelchair by a canon-singing team of surgeons in blue doctor's coats with lethal injection, circular saw and giant scissors busted according to all the rules of healing in the service of the fatherland - a scene that evokes the case of Navalnyj with a creepy and grotesque exaggeration.

Lisa Moro's stage and Anna Ignatieva's costumes suggest a Russian today without being too specific. As a bass-strong Boris, Olivier Gourdy pulls the strings rather discreetly. Flore Van Meerssche is at his side as the resolute tsarist wife Irina with a sharp soprano, but in a harrowing aria of desperation with wide-stretched legato arches over thinned accompaniment and delicately carving pizzicato impulses penetrates deep mezzo depths. The remaining members of the young soloist ensemble also impress with their committed vocal and acting performances. Many of them have won prizes at the renowned Innsbruck Cesti competition for baroque singing. The "historically" playing ensemble Concerto Theresia, under Andrea Marchiol's direction, lets Matthesons rich,vocal and instrumental virtuoso music bloom in all its splendid colors. Her joke, which is entirely geared towards the scene, also comes into its own.