page_title: Boris Godunov (opera)
section_title: Performance practice
hierarchical_section_title: Boris Godunov (opera) / Performance practice
caption_attribution_description: English: Maryinsky Theater in 1900s
context_page_description: Boris Godunov is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky. The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar during the Time of Troubles, and his nemesis, the False Dmitriy. The Russian-language libretto was written by the composer, and is based on the 1825 drama Boris Godunov by Aleksandr Pushkin, and, in the Revised Version of 1872, on Nikolay Karamzin's History of the Russian State.
  Among major operas, Boris Godunov shares with Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos the distinction of having an extremely complex creative history, as well as a great wealth of alternative material. The composer created two versions—the Original Version of 1869, which was rejected for production by the Imperial Theatres, and the Revised Version of 1872, which received its first performance in 1874 in Saint Petersburg.
  Boris Godunov has seldom been performed in either of the two forms left by the composer, frequently being subjected to cuts, recomposition, re-orchestration, transposition of scenes, or conflation of the original and revised versions.
context_section_description: A conflation of the 1869 and 1872 versions is often made when staging or recording Boris Godunov. This typically involves choosing the 1872 version and augmenting it with the St. Basil's Scene from the 1869 version. This practice is popular because it conserves a maximum amount of music, it gives the title character another appearance on stage, and because in the St. Basil's Scene Boris is challenged by the Yurodivïy, the embodiment of his conscience.
  However, because the composer transferred the episode of the Yurodivïy and the urchins from the St. Basil's Scene to the Kromï Scene when revising the opera, restoring the St. Basil's Scene to its former location creates a problem of duplicate episodes, which can be partially solved by cuts. Most performances that follow this practice cut the robbery of the Yurodivïy in the Kromï Scene, but duplicate his lament that ends each scene.
  The Rimsky-Korsakov Version is often augmented with the Ippolitov-Ivanov reorchestration of the St. Basil's Scene (commissioned by the Bolshoy Theatre in 1925, composed in 1926, and first performed in 1927).
  Conductors may elect to restore the cuts the composer himself made in writing the 1872 version [see Versions in this article for more details]. The 1997 Mariinsky Theatre recording under Valery Gergiev is the first and only to present the 1869 Original Version side by side with the 1872 Revised Version, and, it would seem, attempts to set a new standard for musicological authenticity. However, although it possesses many virtues, the production fails to scrupulously separate the two versions, admitting elements of the 1872 version into the 1869 recording, and failing to observe cuts the composer made in the 1872 version.
  Critics argue that the practice of restoring the St. Basil's scene and all the cuts that Mussorgsky made when revising the opera—that is, creating a "supersaturated" version—can have negative consequences, believing that it destroys the symmetrical scene structure of the Revised Version, it undermines the composer's carefully devised and subtle system of leitmotiv deployment, and results in the overexposure of the Dmitriy motive.
caption: The Mariinsky Theatre opened in 1860. Boris Godunov received its premiere there in 1874.
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