Elliot Norton Interviews; Jerome Hines

Jerome Hines was interviewed by Elliot Norton, drama critic of the Boston Record American and Sunday advertiser on April 16, 1963, the day after the opening of the Metropolitan Opera Company's Boston Season. The Metropolitan Opera Company began its annual Boston season at the music hall last night with a production of Mesogsky's opera Boris Goodenoff. The star of the opera is Jerome Hines, a great American basso who sang the title role last night and acted and sang it both with enormous power and effect, and who's also sung it in Russian, in Moscow and other cities with great effect and great acclaim.

Mr. Hines is here this evening to discuss last evening's performance, to discuss the opera, to discuss opera in general. And I think we can dispense with the usual introductory preliminaries, and I'm going to ask him, when he first became interested in this rather rarely done opera, and tell us about some of his experiences with Mr. Hines. Well I think everybody when he finds out he's going to be a bass, first begins to think in terms of Boris Goodenoff. I would say that it's probably the greatest of all the bass roles, perhaps in some respects not the most difficult, other respects definitely the most difficult. I think that vocally it is not as difficult of doing something like a valkyrie vote on or something like this, but at the same time you use such a tremendous physical energy in Boris, and also such a tremendous emotional force, and you yell so much, especially the second act, there's so much yelling and the emotion going on that it's quite dangerous

to the voice, and you can, if you don't calculate it right, you can end up absolutely without the voice and the third act, if you're not careful. But it certainly is the most tremendous fabulous piece of work, and I first became aware of it after I began to study singing when I was 16 years of age. In fact, I began singing just the year that Faeodor Shadyopin died, and I heard of him for the first time just about the time I began to study singing, and that's when I first became aware of Boris Goodenoff. And did you hear Shadyopin sing it, did you get a chance to hear it? No, as I said, he died just a year ago and I had never been much of an opera gore before that until I was 16. In fact, I heard my first opera one of the 16, the John Charles Thomas and the Barbara Saville, and Hollywood Bowl. How about acting, Boris? This is the most demanding role in opera, one of the most on the singer as an actor, isn't it?

I don't think there's any role that I have put so much study and work into. I began this one rather academically first, because there's a certain problem. Boris, if he used to be insane, which even that can be argued, I suppose, if Boris is to be a psychotic or an erotic whatever it might be, he has to fit a, what clearly defines psychological type. Otherwise, you're just putting on a mishmash that really means nothing. And I think there's a tendency of people who play the part of Boris good enough to portray his insanity in any way that it comes into their mind, and it does not necessarily make a coherent picture that would satisfy, let's say, a psychiatrist. In fact, I had a very pleasant experience last night after the opera at a party. I was sitting with a psychiatrist and he congratulated me and said that he was so interested to see that I made a completely coherent personality out of Boris that made sense to a psychiatrist. From what point of view? I mean, what does it, you say a clearly defined type, does he, do you think of Boris as a what for instance?

Well, I'll tell you, originally I went out and made a study of Boris good enough before I first sang it. I did a series of interviews with psychiatrists and psychologists and hoping to get them and then a clean cut picture of what Boris good enough was really like. I gave them the script, let them read it, and then tried to get their opinion to my surprise. I discovered they all disagreed among themselves. So I kept notes on all these interviews, which I think was about somewhere between eight and ten psychiatrists and psychologists that I talked with, a different universities on a concert tour. And finally, I wrote a thesis or a paper on the three faces of Boris good enough and had it published in musical America about ten years ago and I gave three distinct pictures that emerged out of these interviews with the psychiatrists. One was that Boris was not insane but that he was a man who was living in a medieval society where people believed in ghosts and things of this sort and in his hysterical state

if he'd seen something moving around him and the dark he would interpret it as being a ghost and so forth. He was just hysterical. He wasn't necessarily psychotic or neurotic at all. That's one point of view which I think one of my competitors in the field has taken that point of view when I've seen in print. Then there's the point of view that Boris was a schizophrenic. This I feel however in last analysis is not quite consistent with the music. A schizophrenic is a man who is not able to transfer real emotion to any other person or object. A schizophrenic is a man who lives only for himself in a sense. There becomes like a glass wall between him and the rest of the world. And he cannot transfer an emotion, true emotion to anyone else. If he has a son for example, he's concerned with his son that he has done his duty for this son. He should, let's say, that this such a grow up and portray the training that the father has given him.

Everything is purely from this egoistic point of view and a true schizophrenic can never really love anyone else but himself. And I don't think this fits with the death of Boris, the scene that's marvelously tender scene with the older. I just don't see how it's possible that you could give a schizophrenic interpretation of this. So I have a band at that point of view and have made the Boris out to be the manic depressive type. In which... Well, how do you mean that, manic depressive? Well, here's a man who goes into a series of cycles, sometimes of depression, sometimes of elation. And psychologically, it would seem that Prince Shewisky is sort of the father image in the picture. Boris hates Shewisky like poison and yet he cannot do without him. He needs him desperately. And I think of certain parts of the score which have been cut out, even out of the rewrites that have gone on by Shostakovich and Korsakov, parts in which, for example, when he first Boris, when Shewisky first comes in and greets him and Boris calls him a lioness snake and

a traitor and so forth, then there's a part that's cut out there. In which Shewisky says, in the old days of Sarivans court, my name was spoken with honor and Boris says, yes, and the Tsar himself, Yvonne, he would have had you roasted over the colds while he was singing a holy psalm and so forth, but we are more kind, we are we like to forgive our holy servants and so forth. But the point is, he gives this attitude to Shewisky. He threatens him with everything he can threaten him with. He's hysterically threatening this man, but then the last moment, he gets through threatening is now. Tell me what happened. You know, the threats are only threats and nothing more. He might man have a Shewisky, but he would never kill him in the sense because he needs this man because Boris was a tartar who was socially an outcast in the court, by the way. He got to power by virtue of having family relations, marriage within the family of the chief executioner of Sarivans, which made him a prominent man and yet one of the most

breaded men, socially he was not accepted at all, also because of his tartar blood. And Boris was a man who was just completely out of place in the court. If he represented the man from the court who knew how to run things with the nobles and was a very important go-between with Boris, he was a dangerous man to Boris. He tried to have him assassinated once, it was caught in the act, and was pardoned only because of his prominence, and he was a very dangerous ally for Boris. And so Boris, I feel, is rather helpless in the situation. He's gotten beyond his depth both politically and socially and everything else and added to this terrible guilt that he has upon his conscience for the murder of the child. And you've got a very complex situation, but it can be played more as the hysteric type whose threats to Shusky are not quite as deadly as they would be if it had been a man like up the character of Sarivan, for example. And I think that his schizophrenic would be much more capable of carrying out his threats

than Boris would have been. In fact, the very fact that Boris had a very delicate conscience, he had this child murdered and then went insane from it, which would be rather unusual in those days because he grew up in the court of Ivan the Terrible, and in Ivan's court, the worst atrocities were committed every day, just for supper, just for enjoyment. He was the most horribly perverted and sadistic sort of a court to grow up in, not a place for a person who squinish, then Boris who commits his first crime and ends up going insane for it indicates that he wasn't that ruthless, hard personality. He wouldn't be acceptable as a dramatic character unless he had this remorse, I think, number one. Do you think so? Plus, you get very definitely into the way you play it with the boy and the girl, a feeling of great affection. You even put your hands on them, don't you? Yes, yes.

And this is part of the character as you see it, but this is something I think that gives warmth to Boris. You feel even though he's a monster, you have the feeling that he's a human being who has love for his children and remorse for his son. I don't recall, regard Boris as a really terrible monster in this respect. Here's a man who has committed a political crime. All right, this was a terrible thing that he did, but a man who's so recoiled from his crime afterwards. And it seems like, if it was historically true that Boris was responsible for the crime, the fact does remain that Boris, after the crime was committed, withdrew to a monastery and became a monk. And I think that he apparently had decided that after he committed this crime, that he repented of it and felt now that if he took the throne that God would really curse him for it, because then he would take the throne that he had gained by this evil deed. And he went to a monastery for about three months. Now meanwhile, Russia was without a leader at all. They had no czar.

Russia had been the regent while the child was growing up. They had no czar. And the nobles, because Boris was the most popular and the strongest figure, began to call upon him to take the throne and be fused. I think the refusal was genuine. You do. That isn't made clear in the opera, is it? No, not necessarily. Now you see what, in the opera, we see the political force being put to work on the crowds forcing the masses to cry for Boris. Now this still fits in that if Boris had really refused, that those who were politically interested in having Boris made the czar. After they had failed to convince him to take the throne, then they began to get the crowds out and say, come on, now we want you to cry for Boris. We must have Boris what the czar. And they were trying to force him by that means. And the fact remains that Boris, that Russia was completely going into chaos without him. And apparently Boris reluctantly took the throne finally just to save his country from going into complete chaos. Of course, in the opera you can't indicate that. You can't indicate, for instance, that the nobles could be doing this exerting pressure on the mobs to ask for Boris because he had, in turn, instigated them to do it.

You get that feeling? That's the possibility. Yes, that's the possibility. And all you can do to indicate how Boris actually felt is you have almost no lines, no music to have. You have nothing but your own bearing. Which could be fraudulent. A lot of the music that has been cut, in this cut, all of it, we're not just with the metropolitan. It's cut in Moscow. It's cut all over Russia. A lot of the music of the scene between the boy, the other, and Boris, after the monologue. There's a lot of music. There were Boris. You can see that he regrets the weight of the country upon his shoulders. And his only thought, now he says, if only I could see you, my son, as the czar of Russia, so gladly would I give up all of these things. Boris has had his fill of power and his fill of all the troubles that goes with it. And you get a picture now of a man who did something desperate to acquire what he wanted.

And when he got it, he found it wasn't what he wanted. And he turns out to be quite a human character. And another thing. If you study the personal psychology, a little bit of Mr. Musorksky, I have heard from a Russian that there was an unsubstantiated bit of information I'd like to check up on. I didn't get the information in Russia I was looking for, but there's a story that Musorksky at one time was brought to court in a case where he had killed a man. It may have been a sort of a manslaughter sort of thing, whatever it was, and the court exonerated him. He was not sent to jail for this killing. But this may give us the background of a man who later poured out his soul into the personality of Boris Gurdunov. In fact, Musorksky once actually stated in writing that he completely identified himself as Boris Gurdunov when he wrote the part. And certainly if you read his letters, he was a man himself possessed of much guilt himself

who knows what. No one knows that he died of over-drinking, a man who was a terrible alcoholical of his life, and he was running away from something, and he was pouring this all out in the case of Boris Gurdunov. In fact, in his letters, he's always talking about the fact that he had a weak heart. Of course, he thought that that was very autistic. In those days, a weak heart was a sign of being an artist, and actually the dizzy spells that he was having in all this, he was having hysterical symptoms. They were very calm. He had a strong heart. He didn't die of a heart attack. He had eventually died just because of acute alcoholism, but it wasn't because he threw his heart. He was a case of cirrhosis, a liver, something of this sort, and he died of. When a man can live with the abuse that he gave his own body through drink, he's got a pretty strong heart to take it. But he transferred that to Boris now. So we see in the second act of Boris, these symptoms of dizziness and suffocation are not really attributes of a heart attack. They're attributes of hysterical symptoms that Boris was having, and people who go through

this enough sometimes can't eventually provoke a heart attack, however. And it isn't Boris's condition of symptoms that he's portraying it's his own that he's got up there. That's right. Well, that would account for the fact that I think the music is at its most effective when he is. When Boris is pleading for understanding when he's portraying remorse, don't you think? Yes. I'll tell you, I made two innovations in this opera. I think that these two innovations are quite useful to heighten the two grand aspects of Boris' life. Now, you may have noticed those innovations last night, I don't know. The first one is the innovation where I have at the hallucination scene that Boris recommits the crime and his imagination by... I wasn't conscious of that. You mean in the movement around with the ghosts that he is? Yes. Because if you call, I had the knife in my hand, and I stabbed the chair. Now, since I did not do the opening production of the Boris this year, we could not arrange

the things the way I wanted it. But I'd like to have is the light showing that the vision is over by the clock. Then as I go to it, see, Boris wasn't exactly at coward. And when I see the vision, after my first terror had subsided, I grab up the candle labor and the knife off of the table, and I start to chase the vision, to chase it away. Then I take fright as it suddenly, it's behind me, instead of in front of me, I want it to be on the throne chair. I drop the candle labor, follow my knees, and here is the usurper on his knees before the throne, begging mercy from the true czar, who belongs on the throne. That's the symbolic idea there. Then when my pleading is of no avail, and I suddenly realize I have the knife in my hand, I run, I started laughing like I'm at man, I ran over and stabbed the vision. And then screamed with horror, as I saw the dead child in my imagination, and fell down in my knees. But the first thing in them was to heighten the idea of Boris's power madness, by he's actually committing the crime personally in his own imagination.

And then I heighten the other extreme at the end of the opera, because again, the power madness always almost wins out again, when as he's dying, he suddenly is the people come in, cries out, I am still that's odd, it's not time yet, and he goes up on his throne. And then suddenly he repents of this at the last moment, as he knows he's dying, and he calls upon God again for forgiveness, and I add a couple of words at the end that aren't in the score. Oh, I didn't know that. What were those words? Yes, I pulled this innovation for the first time in Moscow, not knowing what the result was going to be of all places. I want it, how would you sum up the music at the end of Boris, after he's died? This is not the death of a man, dog. No, it's the music of a man who's desperately stricken and he's torn by remorse and loved for his son. Now, he has died now, and the method left postlude, isn't that of the same kind of a mood, for example, as the finale for the La Forza del Estino, for example, it has this ethereal, beautiful, ethereal sound of absolute peace, now in La Forza, the girl has just died, and

the priest just said she ascends to God. I thought it would be a nice thing, after poor Boris has cried for forgiveness from the beginning of the opera to the end, the very first appearance he prays to God to help him. In the mad scene, he's begging God for mercy. In the death scene, his last words that are written in a score are, forgive me, forgive me. And then, with my last attack, I all of a sudden, as I'm dying, I suddenly smile, oh, my God, that in the last case, as the last incident, at least that Boris in dying, suddenly has the feeling that he has found peace with God, he is forgiven. I had the feeling he's forgiven you. And then falls down. So I had those two words, or three words, oh, with the smile of his, oh, my God. And then reaching for God, he falls for the throne dead. And in Moscow, I tried this innovation for the first time, with the words, oh, my Bosje,

and then hit the floor. I didn't know what the effect was going to be on this atheist society. And to my surprise, and everybody else's, for the first time, in the history of the Bolshoi opera, the audience burst out in the applause with the fall, instead of waiting for the postlude, as they have always done in the past. It had just that effect upon them. And I remember afterwards I spoke with the conductor, I said, what do you think of my innovation? I didn't even do it in the dress rehearsal, I just stayed with the performance. And he says, I think it fits perfectly, the intentions of the composer and the mood of the music. It's completely in accord with it. And so I have kept that little bit in ever since. So we point up the two aspects in Boris. The power madness which causes him to kill, and then contrasted with his terrible desire to seek redemption from his sin. And so these little innovations, the two of them, I think, helped to strengthen that situation a little bit.

Well, I didn't get that full effect of that interpolation at the end. But I think a reason for it is this, because of your fall, when you fall down that flight of stairs, it's so terrifying that you forget what's happened. Is that an innovation with you that shall you have to fall down? I don't believe shall you have indeed. We have done it ever since the Met began this newer production here. We've been doing it the Met. And so far, we fortunately have had no casualties. I mean, what? More intact. Yes. Well, I think once that James Hutt has heard his head once, rolling down the stairs, I think it was the time when he did a broadcast with Ed Sullivan on that. And he wasn't seriously hurt in any way. And so far, nobody, thank God, has been seriously hurt. But this is a stupendous thing, you fall, what, four flyer, four steps. Six steps. Yeah. Some of us cheat a little bit and get down a little bit and fall only halfway. So I'm going up a little further. And I had to disadvantage, I had to disadvantage of being another four or five inches taller than everybody else.

So I had that much further to fall, yet. But you last night gave it everything. You went down there with such a crash, where we were all terrible. I think we didn't notice those last few. Well, I'll tell you, don't worry, I took tumbling in college and I was taught to roll with the fall. So. Well, that's what happened, yeah. But you made it realistic enough. Tell me about the Moscow appearances. Now, they accepted that innovation with a with you all the way along in Moscow. The first Russian performances were in Moscow, as I remember, the day. This is how long ago. This is just last September, October. I sang first in Moscow, then I toured to Leningrad, Kiev, De Blisi, Riga, Minsk, and then back to Moscow, for that last performance, that very faithful performance. That's one of the crucial. The crucial of attendance, just after, about 14 hours after Mr. Kennedy had announced the Cuban blockade. Oh, boy. That was a very exciting situation and- How did you feel when you went on that night? Well, no. We had received news from a friend of mine who was in Moscow with us that he had heard

a rumor that morning that there was a Cuban blockade announced. The Russian people didn't know it. And so then we went and had lunch with the American ambassador, and he confirmed the rumor. So I asked him, I said, do you think this is going to have any effect on tonight's performance? And he said, no, I don't think so, because the Russian people don't know about this. Is it the Kremlin knows, but the Russian people have not been told yet. They won't be told another day or so. And so we went to the performance with that information. And my friend was going to- he's made quite a large film, a two and a half hour film on Russia, which has made 18 trips to Russia to make this film. And he had gotten permission, through my help, to film the Boris from the electrician's box on the stage. So one half an hour before curtain time, he came running back, because I'd been kicked out of the box. I had to film from the wings, cruise ships coming. And so when I made my first appearance for the coronation scene, at the end of the scene, I walked out from my curtain call, and the whole audience stood up with standing ovation.

And I was surprised, because that just doesn't happen to the coronation scene. There's nothing, just a few lines. And so my wife came back after the act was over and said, Jerry, she said, Mr. Khrushchev, stood up and let us stand in ovation. That's why the audience stood up. She says, we're having a safe, why don't you at least acknowledge his presence. He stood up to lay that ovation seat. Yes. So I said, well, very well, then I looked in the royal box in the back of the opera house, I couldn't see him. She said, no, he's on the box right on the stage. The box is practically sitting on the stage. And I said, which side, just the left side? So she said the right side, rather. So when I came on for the second act, I looked at the box that would be on her right side, it was empty. So I said, well, he's gone home. So at the end of the act, I took my curtain calls again and went back to my dressing room. Now my wife came back quite upset, she said, what are you trying to do? She says, at a time like this, our two countries in such a hassle, are you trying to insult Mr. Khrushchev?

I said, he's gone home, she says, no, no. I said, the left hand box, she says, no, the right hand box says, no, your right hand not mine. So I was afraid that Mr. Khrushchev would think that Eisen-American was angry about Cuba, which naturally would all be upset about it. And he probably thought that I was snubbing him on purpose, and this is not the time to be snubbing, I don't think. And everybody was sitting around with the fingers poised over the buttons, you know. So I asked the stage director, please send somebody out to Mr. Khrushchev's box and tell him that this is an oversight and thought I would acknowledge his presence at the last curtain call. Oh no, no, they wouldn't go near his box. They wouldn't have anything to do with it. And I didn't want him to get very angry and go home at a time like this is not the time to make people angry. And so I was sort of on pins and needles because the next scene, the idiot scene, there is no curtain call, it's just a tablo. And so finally when the opera was over, I went out in front of the curtain, he was still sitting there in his box, it stood up again for another applause.

So I walked over to the right to the box and give him a low bow and walk back. My wife said she thought she was going to shake hands with her. And then we were asked to come back behind his box, but it was a big room with a reception all arranged and we spent a half an hour speaking with him and Mikhail Jan and the president of the Romanian Republic. There's about 30 people in his entourage at that moment. And it was a very interesting time and exciting time. And the next day we flew back, in fact we left in the morning before the announcement was made in Moscow. And I think that was that same afternoon that the American investors' car was stone. So we had very good timing in getting out. In fact, we were lucky all the way around because I had come from Argentina before I went to Russia. We spent a month there. They were going to have a revolution and they decided to sit down and talk that they were around. You get out of places until you know that the day after we left Argentina that the civilian airport was closed and the jets were bombing Buenos Aires. So we had some hope.

Nothing's going to happen in Boston tonight at the moment. I just was leaving. Maybe I should stay. What did Khrushchev talk about Boris as opera, did he indicate that he's interested in opera as such? Oh, he spoke of the other boroughs that he had seen. He spoke of Raisin, he spoke of Pyrogorff. And then they reminded him, of course, that we now have Petrov, they said, oh, of course. And then... Well, was he conscious of your interpretation? Yes, he was very surprised at my diction, first of all. That's the thing he'd come in front first, above all, was that you could say. My Russian sound is so Russian. And then the second thing, the next was this fall, again, as you mentioned. And he even turned to me, Khrushchev, do you think you could make a fall like that with if you practiced? And then he said, no, maybe you better not. You wouldn't be able to carry any more duties of state if you didn't do it. He wasn't suggesting anything that he'd call you on. You couldn't interrupt that politically. So then he spoke about my dramatic part of it and the voice and everything else. What about the voice?

Well, he was very impressed and pleased and everything was on a very extremely friendly level. It was hard at that time to differentiate the political from the artistic because the situation was political. And so I think the real differentiation that has made me feel well is the fact that I've been invited back to Moscow twice in the next two years, I'm going to record Boris of the Bolshoi this year and I'm going to tour a Russia again September next year. Thanks very much. I'm sorry. We have to interrupt this time and break it off. We haven't any more time. You were very kind to come over. I congratulate you on your Boris in English and Boston. Thank you. Good night. Jerome Hines, interviewed by Elliot Norton, was produced by the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council, WGBH TV, Boston. This is NET, National Educational Television.