Boris Godunov (Борис Годунов) by Alexander Pushkin · OverDrive: eBooks, audiobooks and videos for libraries Drama Fiction Historical Fiction Non-English Fiction The play Boris Godunov is an epic historical work by one of Russia's greatest poets Alexander Pushkin. Based on life of real historical figure and Russia's first elected ruler Boris Godunov the work incorporates elements of early political satire in Russian literature. Boris Godunov reigned as Tsar from 1598 to 1605. The play consists of 25 scenes and is written predominantly in blank verse. Modest Mussorgsky's opera, Boris Godunov, is based on this play. This audio book features a full cast radio drama performance in Russian language. Boris Godunov is played by Dmitriy Nazarov. Grigori Otrebiev by Yuriy Vasilev. For complete cast list please visit Sovereignclassic.net Дубровский — одно из самых драматичных и лиричных произведений русской классической литературы.

Повесть о любви и верности, чести и достоинстве, благородстве и справедливости. Режиссер: Борис Соколов; Исполнитель: Александр Пономарев; Музыка: Борис Соколов; Иллюстрация: Александр Стоцкий; Дизайн: Юлия Стоцкая. Boris Godunov - Opera - Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, Russia based on Alexander Pushkin’s play of the same name Version and orchestration by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Orchestration of “At St. Basil Cathedral” scene by Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov Boris Godunov is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881). 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 (1598 to 1605) during the Time of Troubles, and his nemesis, the False Dmitriy (reigned 1605 to 1606). The Russian-language libretto was written by the composer, and is based on the "dramatic chronicle" Boris Godunov by Aleksandr Pushkin, and, in the Revised Version of 1872, on Nikolay Karamzin's History of the Russian State. Boris Godunov, among major operas, shares with Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos (1867) the distinction of having the most complex creative history and the greatest 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. These versions constitute two distinct ideological conceptions, not two variations of a single plan.

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, conflation of the original and revised versions, or translation into another language. Several composers, chief among them Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Dmitri Shostakovich, have created new editions of the opera to "correct" perceived technical weaknesses in the composer's original scores. Although these versions held the stage for decades, Mussorgsky's individual harmonic style and orchestration are now valued for their originality, and revisions by other hands have fallen out of fashion. Boris Godunov comes closer to the status of a repertory piece than any other Russian opera, even Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and is the most recorded Russian opera. Synopsis Prologue Scene 1 A crowd throngs by the high walls of the Novodevichy Monastery in Moscow. The boyar, Boris Godunov, has withdrawn to the monastery after the death of Tsar Fyodor, who did not leave an heir.

That Boris will be elected to the throne is a foregone conclu­sion, but he makes a show of refusing the crown so that he is not suspected of wishing to seize power. At the order of a police offi­cer, the people beg Godunov to accept election to the throne: “Do not abandon us, Father, Do not leave us helpness!” But Shchelkalov, secretary of the Duma, announces that Boris is implacable. Scene 2 Square in front of the Cathedral of the As­sumption in the Kremlin. A majestic pealing of bells — Boris has given his consent and is being crowned. But Tsar Boris is not happy, he is weighed down by anxiety: “My soul is heavy, In the Kremlin the bells are pealing and the people break out again into acclamation. Act I Scene 1 Late at night. A cell in the Chudov Monaste­ry. By the light of an icon-lamp, the wise monk Pimen is writing a truthful chronicle of the history of the Russian state.

In his chronicle, Pimen reveals the secret of the murder, by Boris Godunov, of Tsarevitch Dimitri who had stood between him and the throne. Grigory, a young novice, sharing Pimen’s cell, wakes up. He listens to the holy man’s tale and a storm of anxieties, passions and vainglorious ambitions breaks into the peace of the night. The idea comes to Grigo­ry of calling himself the Tsarevitch and of doing battle with Boris for the throne. “Boris! Boris! All tremble before you, No one dares to remind you Of the fate of the hapless infant... But meanwhile a hermit in a dark cell Is writing a terrible denunciation against you. And you shall not escape human judgment, As you shall not escape the judgment of heaven!” Scene 2 An inn near the Lithuanian frontier. Three va­gabond monks, Varlaam, Missail and Grigory, have dropped in on the sprightly, merry mistress of the establishment. Varlaam, a drunkard and glutton, sings a song about the capture of Kazan.

Grigory, questions the mi­stress of the inn on the best route to Lithuania. A police officer comes into the inn: on the Tsar’s orders he is searching for the run­away monk, Grigory Otrepiev. After an un­successful attempt to deflect the suspicion from himself, Grigory leaps through the win­dow and makes good his escape. Act II Scene 3 The Tsar’s private apartment in the Kremlin. Tsarevitch Fyodor is looking at the “Book of the Big Drawing”, the first map of Russia. Ksenia, Boris’ daughter, is grieving before a portrait of her dead fiancй, the heir to the Danish throne. In an attempt to cheer her up, her old nurse tells her a funny story. Boris comes in and talks tenderly to his children, he is pleased to see his son gleaning wis­dom from a book. But even here, with his children, Boris is tormented by anguish. Russia has been visited by a terrible famine.

“Peop­le affected with the plague wander about like wild animals”, and the common people bla­me the Tsar for all their troubles: “in the squ­ares they curse the name of Boris”. Some­thing approaching a groan breaks out from deep down inside the Tsar: “All around is darkness and impenetrable gloom, O, for a fleeting glimpse of a ray of joy!.. Some secret anxiety, One inconstantly expecting disaster!..” The boyar, Shuisky, comes in, a cunning courtier and leader of a group of boyars with seditious intentions. He brings bad news: a pretender has raised his head in Lithuania, having taken the name of the Tsarevitch Dimi­tri. He has the support of the King of Poland, the Polish nobles and the Pope. Boris requires Shuisky to tell him the truth: is he certain that the babe who was killed in the town of Uglich was the Tsarevitch Dimitri? Shuisky, enjoying the Tsar’s torment, descri­bes the deep wound on the Tsarevitch’s neck, and the angelic smile on his lips...

“It seemed, that in his cradle He was peacefully sleeping...” Shuisky departs, having aroused with new force the fears and agitation which grip Bo­ris: the latter now thinks he sees an appari­tion of the murdered Dimitri. Act III Scene 4 A ball in the garden of Mnishek, the Governor of Sandomir. The Polish nobles are preparing to march on Moscow. They mean to place their protйgй on the Russian throne: Grigory, the runaway monk from the Chudov monaste­ry, who has taken the name of the murdered Tsarevitch Dimitri. In this they will be helped by the ambitious plans of the Governor’s daugh­ter, the beautiful Marina, who dreams of beco­ming the wife of the future king of Russia. The long-awaited (by the Pretender) rendez­vous between Marina and Dimitri who is in love with her takes place. However, Marina’s abrupt and calculating speech, and her de­termination, which she makes no attempt to conceal, to sit on the Russian throne discon­cert the Pretender for a brief moment.

Reali­zing this, Marina wins him over by false pro­testations of her love for him. The Jesuit, Rangoni, celebrates his victory. Scene 5 An early winter’s morning. A square in front of the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed in Moscow. A crowd of starving people are discussing the Pretender’s victories over the forces of Boris. A Simpleton comes running into the Square. Urchins surround him and take a kopek from him . The Tsar comes out of the Cathedral. “Bread, bread! Give the starving bread! Give us bread, father, for the sake of Christ!” cries the crowd. Goaded by the urchins, the Simple­ton addresses the Tsar: “Order them to be killed, as you killed the little Tsarevitch”. Boris tells the boyars not to seize the Simpleton: “Let him be! Pray for me, simple person...” But the Simpleton replies: “No, Boris! It can not be done! How can one pray for a Tsar Herod? Our Lady does not allow it...” Act IV Scene 6 A clearing in the forest near Kromy. Night-­time.

The peasants, who are in revolt, lead in a Kromy boyar whom they have taken pris­oner. They make fun of the boyar, reminding him of all their grudges: “You trained us the right way, In storms and bad weather, and when roads were impassable, You exploited us, And whipped us with a slender lash...” The arrival of the monks, Varlaam and Missail, who denounce the sins of Boris, the regicide, stirs up the crowd’s anger even more. They break out into a threatening song: “A dashing young force is on the rampage, The Cossack blood is all aflame! A great subversive power has risen from the depths...” Jesuit priests, the Pretender’s emissaries, appear. But the arrival of these foreigners arouses the crowd’s indignation. The peas­ants drag the Jesuits into the forest to be hanged. The Pretender, rides into the clearing, sur­rounded by troops, Polish gentry and Jesu­its. He frees the Kromy boyar. By promising his favor and protection, the Pretender per­suades the peasants to march on Moscow.

The sky lights up with the glow of a fire. The alarm bell is rung. The Simpleton appears, looking round him in fear. His prophetic words of the new troubles that await the Russian people are spoken in anguish and pain: “Flow, flow, bitter tears, Repertoire Repertoire Premiered on October 16, 1948. Sung in Russian. based on Alexander Pushkin’s play of the same name Version and orchestration by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Orchestration of “At St. Basil Cathedral” scene by Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov 1948 production Conductors: Vassily Sinaisky, Pavel Sorokin Director: Igor Ushakov Designer of scenery revival: Alyona Pikalova Designer of costumes revival: Elena Zaytseva Choreography revival: Ekaterina Mironova A scene from the performance. Photo by Damir Yusupov. Mikhail Kazakov as Boris Godunov. Photo by Damir Yusupov. A scene from the performance. Vladimir Matorin as Boris Godunov. Photo by Damir Yusupov. A scene from the performance.

Vladimir Matorin as Varlaam. A scene from the performance. Oleg Kulko as Pretender. A scene from the performance. Alexandra Kadurina as Fyodor. A scene from the performance. Maxim Paster as Shuisky. Mikhail Kazakov as Boris Godunov. Photo by Damir Yusupov. Paata Burchuladze as Boris Godunov. Photo by Damir Yusupov. A scene from the performance. Photo by Damir Yusupov. Svetlana Shilova as Marina Mnishek. Photo by Damir Yusupov. Modest Mussorgsky and Boris Godunov Modeste Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was a member of a so-called ‘New Russian School’ (also known as The Mighty Kuchka and The Five) comprising the composers Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui and Balakirev. These composers were a loosely formed coalition against the more heavily Western-influenced, cosmopolitan Anton Rubenstein whose work in music dominated Russia during the mid-nineteenth century.

Rubenstein believed that music, in its purest form, was a “German art”, and his operatic works were particularly popular in German speaking countries (they were enthusiastically promoted by no less a personage than Franz Liszt in Weimar, who was also simultaneously promoting Wagner’s ‘music of the future’). The Five, on the other hand, were nationalists and looked to their musical and literary Russian roots for inspiration. For these five men music began as an avocation, even as a hobby; they were, in essence, amateurs. For cultured Russians from the middle or aristocratic classes the study of music was a mandatory part of their education. But few were encouraged to actually be musicians or composers. Mussorgsky for his part was destined for a life in the military. Borodin was a distinguished chemist, Cui an engineer in the army who eventually attained the rank of general. But their passion was music, particularly the composition of works that truly reflected the culture, history, spirit and musical traditions of Russia. Mussorgsky had the typical musical education of his peers, excelling at the piano and writing short pieces.

He met Borodin and Dargomïzhsky in the mid 1850s, who in turn introduced him to Cui and Balakirev. He studied composition with Balakirev and was so enthusiastic about his prospective future as a composer that he rashly resigned his military commission (he was by this time an officer in the Tsar’s personal guard). He later found it necessary to take a low level position as a government clerk, all the while attempting to make his name as a composer. An early operatic project, a setting of Victor Hugo’s Han d’Islande, never came to fruition. He next attempted a grand opera based on Flaubert’s Salammbô. It remained unfinished, however, although much of the material from this project eventually found its way into Boris. He also attempted a comic opera based on Gogol’s Zhenit’ba (Marriage), a work that inspired him to write music that closely conformed to the rhythm and color of the Russian language, wanting his characters to sing with the identical intonations of common speech.

All of this activity took place in the mid-1860s and, as in the case of all of the composers in the ‘Kuchka’, compositions were presented to the group for comment, criticism and encouragement. By 1868 he was well into the composition of Boris. Mussorgsky’s greatest desire was to write a work that would define a new national opera, music drama that could easily and truthfully proclaim its ‘Russianness’. At the suggestion of an acquaintance he looked to Pushkin’s ‘Shakespearean experiment’, the verse-play Boris Godunov. [Tracing the various versions of the opera Boris Godunov is a daunting and confusing chore. Because San Diego Opera is performing Mussorgsky’s first version of the work from 1869, this article will focus on it alone. But more detailed information on the other versions, including the composer’s own 1872 revision as well as re-orchestrations by Rimsky-Korsakov and other composers, can be easily found in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera.] In writing Boris, Mussorgsky pulled music (and a great deal of experience) from his earlier works, as well as tunes from the Russian ‘folk’ repertoire.

When it was completed at the end of 1869 he gave the score to a committee of the Imperial Theatres in hopes of a production, but he was disappointed when, in 1871, they ultimately rejected the work. The reason for its dismissal was that the work lacked a principal female role but in revising it the composer went further than simply adding love interest: he completely re-thought whole swaths of the drama making it a more ‘traditional’ piece, an opera on a grander scale than the first version. As the musicologist and author Richard Taruskin has noted, the opera “was now unmistakably a tragedy, whereas the earlier version had been cast in a mixed genre whose tone, to the composer’s consternation, had been misconstrued by many of its early (private) auditors.” (Grove, “Boris Godunov”) The new material in the revision was first performed at a benefit concert at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1873, a performance that was so well received that the opera was finally staged in its entirety in February, 1874 to great acclaim. Unfortunately, Cui, who was the music critic for an influential St.

Petersburg newspaper, gave the performance an unfavorable review. This unkind act (undoubtedly a result of Cui’s envy at his brother ‘Kuchkist’s’ success) signaled the end of The Russian Five and any influence they had on the direction of Russian art music from that time on was due to individual, rather than communal, efforts. Despite further work on his part in the operatic sphere, Mussorgsky’s Boris ended up being his only completed opera. Khovanshchina was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov, Mlada in a collaboration of Rimsky, Cui (!) and Borodin, Sorochinskaya by others. It is regretful that Mussorgsky’s lifelong addiction to alcohol not only killed him at the relatively early age of 42, but made it impossible for him to see any of these larger projects to their completion. The shorter first version of Boris Godunov is arguably more direct and immediate in its impact upon an audience. It is darker and more austere in orchestration than the traditionally performed Rimsky-Korsakov version and certainly much shorter being only in seven scenes (Rimsky re-orchestrated the longer 1872 version which has nine scenes).

It is much more focused on the main character than Rimsky’s later version, and the vocal lines are highlighted in such a way as to give greater importance to the text. But as in the case of Carmen, The Tales of Hoffman and Don Carlos, there is no definitive version of Boris Godunov. Every production team that approaches this work must make difficult decisions before embarking on it in order to decide exactly which Boris will be performed, and with which cuts, additions and amendments to the score! Not an easy prospect for a work that has engendered enough popularity with opera audiences to become a standard repertory item. Boris Godunov - San Diego Opera Boris Godunov In the Classroom Modest Mussorgsky and Boris Godunov Modeste Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was a member of a so-called ‘New Russian School’ (also known as The Mighty Kuchka and The Five) comprising the composers Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui and Balakirev. These composers were a loosely formed coalition against the more heavily Western-influenced, cosmopolitan Anton Rubenstein whose work in music dominated Russia during the mid-nineteenth century.

Rubenstein believed that music, in its purest form, was a “German art”, and his operatic works were particularly popular in German speaking countries (they were enthusiastically promoted by no less a personage than Franz Liszt in Weimar, who was also simultaneously promoting Wagner’s ‘music of the future’). The Five, on the other hand, were nationalists and looked to their musical and literary Russian roots for inspiration. For these five men music began as an avocation, even as a hobby; they were, in essence, amateurs. For cultured Russians from the middle or aristocratic classes the study of music was a mandatory part of their education. But few were encouraged to actually be musicians or composers. Mussorgsky for his part was destined for a life in the military. Borodin was a distinguished chemist, Cui an engineer in the army who eventually attained the rank of general. But their passion was music, particularly the composition of works that truly reflected the culture, history, spirit and musical traditions of Russia. Mussorgsky had the typical musical education of his peers, excelling at the piano and writing short pieces.

He met Borodin and Dargomïzhsky in the mid 1850s, who in turn introduced him to Cui and Balakirev. He studied composition with Balakirev and was so enthusiastic about his prospective future as a composer that he rashly resigned his military commission (he was by this time an officer in the Tsar’s personal guard). He later found it necessary to take a low level position as a government clerk, all the while attempting to make his name as a composer. An early operatic project, a setting of Victor Hugo’s Han d’Islande, never came to fruition. He next attempted a grand opera based on Flaubert’s Salammbô. It remained unfinished, however, although much of the material from this project eventually found its way into Boris. He also attempted a comic opera based on Gogol’s Zhenit’ba (Marriage), a work that inspired him to write music that closely conformed to the rhythm and color of the Russian language, wanting his characters to sing with the identical intonations of common speech.

All of this activity took place in the mid-1860s and, as in the case of all of the composers in the ‘Kuchka’, compositions were presented to the group for comment, criticism and encouragement. By 1868 he was well into the composition of Boris. Mussorgsky’s greatest desire was to write a work that would define a new national opera, music drama that could easily and truthfully proclaim its ‘Russianness’. At the suggestion of an acquaintance he looked to Pushkin’s ‘Shakespearean experiment’, the verse-play Boris Godunov. [Tracing the various versions of the opera Boris Godunov is a daunting and confusing chore. Because San Diego Opera is performing Mussorgsky’s first version of the work from 1869, this article will focus on it alone. But more detailed information on the other versions, including the composer’s own 1872 revision as well as re-orchestrations by Rimsky-Korsakov and other composers, can be easily found in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera.] In writing Boris, Mussorgsky pulled music (and a great deal of experience) from his earlier works, as well as tunes from the Russian ‘folk’ repertoire.

When it was completed at the end of 1869 he gave the score to a committee of the Imperial Theatres in hopes of a production, but he was disappointed when, in 1871, they ultimately rejected the work. The reason for its dismissal was that the work lacked a principal female role but in revising it the composer went further than simply adding love interest: he completely re-thought whole swaths of the drama making it a more ‘traditional’ piece, an opera on a grander scale than the first version. As the musicologist and author Richard Taruskin has noted, the opera “was now unmistakably a tragedy, whereas the earlier version had been cast in a mixed genre whose tone, to the composer’s consternation, had been misconstrued by many of its early (private) auditors.” (Grove, “Boris Godunov”) The new material in the revision was first performed at a benefit concert at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1873, a performance that was so well received that the opera was finally staged in its entirety in February, 1874 to great acclaim. Unfortunately, Cui, who was the music critic for an influential St.

Petersburg newspaper, gave the performance an unfavorable review. This unkind act (undoubtedly a result of Cui’s envy at his brother ‘Kuchkist’s’ success) signaled the end of The Russian Five and any influence they had on the direction of Russian art music from that time on was due to individual, rather than communal, efforts. Despite further work on his part in the operatic sphere, Mussorgsky’s Boris ended up being his only completed opera. Khovanshchina was completed by Rimsky-Korsakov, Mlada in a collaboration of Rimsky, Cui (!) and Borodin, Sorochinskaya by others. It is regretful that Mussorgsky’s lifelong addiction to alcohol not only killed him at the relatively early age of 42, but made it impossible for him to see any of these larger projects to their completion. The shorter first version of Boris Godunov is arguably more direct and immediate in its impact upon an audience. It is darker and more austere in orchestration than the traditionally performed Rimsky-Korsakov version and certainly much shorter being only in seven scenes (Rimsky re-orchestrated the longer 1872 version which has nine scenes).

It is much more focused on the main character than Rimsky’s later version, and the vocal lines are highlighted in such a way as to give greater importance to the text. But as in the case of Carmen, The Tales of Hoffman and Don Carlos, there is no definitive version of Boris Godunov. Every production team that approaches this work must make difficult decisions before embarking on it in order to decide exactly which Boris will be performed, and with which cuts, additions and amendments to the score! Not an easy prospect for a work that has engendered enough popularity with opera audiences to become a standard repertory item. The Libretto and Source of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov Boris Godunov is based on the historical verse-play by the same name published by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin in 1831. Pushkin, considered the founder of modern Russian literature and Russia’s greatest poet, was raised in a cultured atmosphere by his family in Moscow. His childhood was marked by the supervision of a seemingly endless line of nurses, nannies and tutors. As was true of many Russian families in his time, the primary language spoken in the home was French, but he learned Russian from serfs in the family’s employ.

With this background it is difficult to understand with any surety where his total grasp and ease with the Russian language came from, other than stating the obvious: Pushkin was a genius whose understanding of the color and intonation of the spoken word led him to revolutionize the use of the language in drama, verse and narrative. One of the most interesting aspects of Pushkin’s life is his genealogy. On his father’s side he was descended from an ancient noble Russian family, but his maternal great-grandfather was an Ethiopian prince in the service of Peter the Great. He was fascinated by stories of Gannibal (Hannibal), his black African ancestor, and his eventual rise to the rank of general in Peter’s army. Pushkin often made reference to his own physical appearance as being more ‘African’ than ‘Russian’! Even more interesting is the fact that one of the poet’s daughters and a granddaughter both married German princes and are directly related to the Mountbatten family (Pushkin’s granddaughter Nadejda, Countess Torby, was the aunt of Prince Philip, the consort to Queen Elizabeth II). Pushkin was greatly influenced by Shakespeare and Byron but he was at the same time greatly devoted to Russian folk tales, legends and fairy stories.

As with many poets of this Romantic age he was also enamored of the Russian countryside and the lives and culture of the simple people, serfs and peasants, who populated it. At about the age of twenty he produced Ruslan and Ludmila, a fairy tale in the shape of a narrative poem which the composer Mikhail Glinka later fashioned into an opera (1842). There followed a series of imitation folk tales and legends including Rusalka (1826-32) and The Tale of Tsar Saltan (1831). His verse novel, Yevgeny Onegin appeared in 1830 and was turned into an opera by Tchaikovsky in 1879. Onegin is considered the greatest of Pushkin’s works; cultured Russians can recite whole chapters of the work by memory. The historical tragedy Boris Godunov was published in 1831 and probably written in 1825 while Pushkin was in exile at his family’s estate in Mikhailoskove. The inspiration for the play (his only drama) was found in the history plays of William Shakespeare, especially works like Richard II, Henry IV and Macbeth.

Boris was something of a Shakespearean experiment, the playwright seeking to take an extremely complicated piece of Russian political history and condense it in order to be perfectly understood by an audience. At the same time, he wanted the work to be in beautiful verse while also creating believable characters. The play was, of course, about the struggle for power over Russia, something not ever very far from the peoples’ consciousness. The work therefore had (and has!) great significance for the Russian people, a significance which was not lost on state censors in Pushkin’s time. When the author read it privately to a room full of friends, the Tsar’s secret police were eavesdropping; hence the drama went unperformed during Pushkin’s lifetime (although Tsar Nicholas I did finally relent and allow a censored version of the play to be published in 1831 as a wedding gift for Pushkin that year). The work has a very modern sensibility and deals with such issues as the mass manipulation of public opinion for political purposes. As history, the play stays close to the (then) accepted version of events leading to Boris’ accession to the throne and eventual death.

And because of the dramatic characterizations the work moves as quickly as any of its Shakespearean forebears. Many of Pushkin’s works have been used as the basis for opera libretti: Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila, Dargomïshky’s The Stone Guest, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar Saltan, Mozart and Salieri and The Golden Cockerel, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Mazepa and The Queen of Spades, Rachmaninoff’s Aleko and Stravinsky’s Mavra. In the case of Mussorgky’s Boris, the composer used Pushkin’s play as the basis for his own libretto, in many instances keeping the original verse intact. The Music of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov This article should probably be entitled “The Score of Boris” or even “The Problem with the Score of Boris” because of all of the confusing issues involved in even speaking about the piece. To begin with, the composer himself created two versions: the first, in 1869, containing seven scenes; the second, in 1874, containing two additional scenes and small additions to the original seven.

Although the version of 1874 met with great public acclaim, the critics (including his fellow composers in ‘the Five’) were unkind. They were particularly perplexed by the dark and rather somber orchestration of the score. Fifteen years after the composer’s death in 1881, his close friend Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov decided to take the score in hand and re-orchestrate it, brightening it considerably and ‘fixing’ many other rhythmic and structural details along the way. Rimsky ‘re-orchestrated’ his re-orchestration in 1908 for the impresario Serge Diaghilev who was introducing Russian music, opera and dance to the West. Following this all manner of composers and arrangers felt that they had carte blanche to try their own hand at ‘improving’ Mussorgsky’s work. They include Anatol Liadov, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Nikolai Cherepnin, Dmitri Shostakovich and Karl Rathaus.

Mussorgsky’s own original score had to be rediscovered through trial and error in the 20th century until now when we find the 1869 version considered a viable, some say even preferable, alternative to all of the variants that now exist. One of the things that Mussorgsky wanted to do with this opera was to capture in music the way real people express themselves, and in the same simple language ‘of the people’ in order to create a true national epic. Happily this wasn’t far from Pushkin’s intention in creating the verse play in the first place. Both artists wanted their work to not only be a reflection of a critical moment in Russian history; they wanted to create a vast canvas upon which to paint the national character in all its hues. The ‘people of Russia’ are a corporate identity in both the spoken drama and the opera, and they play a role as significant as Boris or any other principal character. Vocally speaking it is remarkable how the melodic lines given to the characters (particularly Boris) portray the emotion in the text in an immediate, forceful way. Mussorgsky is never less than direct.

This is especially true in Boris’ great monologue in Act II and his farewell and death at the end of the opera. It also leads to the false impression that there is no melody at all; repeated hearings of the score will dispel this myth. But Boris Godunov is definitely closer to arioso than to aria, a lyric style somewhere between recitative and the flowering of true song. It is this semi-melodic style which pervades the more dramatic moments in the opera. Not that there aren’t pure songs in the work; there are. They will be heard in the scene at the inn and at the beginning of the second act where we hear children’s songs sprung from the composer’s sensitivity to Russian folk song. In terms of balance one constantly feels that Mussorgsky is being careful to be sure that the text is always heard clearly above the orchestra which is only occasionally given the opportunity to fly on its own. The overall feel of the score is ‘dark’, with an emphasis on the lower ranged instruments of each orchestral section. That feeling is bolstered by the rather thick textures the composer creates in the movement of these lower ‘voices’ against each other throughout the score.

This description is not unlike how a person would describe the sound of an all male Russian Orthodox choir during services: emphasis on darkness certainly, and with a sense of monumental space. We also feel intuitively that we are experiencing something akin to Wagnerian time, time suspended and allowed to roll out at a rather slow pace (it is remarkable that one feels this whether listening to the two-hour 1869 version or the much longer 1874 version!) The music, as in any great opera, matches the story, the atmosphere and the characters perfectly. It can be described as direct, immediate in its impact, somber, sustained, even ‘blunt’. All of these qualities are innately ‘Russian’. But even the first audiences that experienced the work were much more used to German, French and Italian opera in their theatres. It was probably the stark difference between this score and the more ‘Western’ operas that were regularly performed in Russian theatres that accounts for the amount of critical disdain poured upon the work after its first performance.

It is also perhaps the reason that Mussorgsky’s composer friends were so attentive to the score after his death, tinkering with it so that it put its best face forward to the public, almost apologizing for its directness and naïve genius. It can now stand on its own, without the redactions of well-meaning apologists, and elicit real affection from any lover of great opera. CONNECT WITH US The Libretto and Source of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov Boris Godunov is based on the historical verse-play by the same name published by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin in 1831. Pushkin, considered the founder of modern Russian literature and Russia’s greatest poet, was raised in a cultured atmosphere by his family in Moscow. His childhood was marked by the supervision of a seemingly endless line of nurses, nannies and tutors. As was true of many Russian families in his time, the primary language spoken in the home was French, but he learned Russian from serfs in the family’s employ.

With this background it is difficult to understand with any surety where his total grasp and ease with the Russian language came from, other than stating the obvious: Pushkin was a genius whose understanding of the color and intonation of the spoken word led him to revolutionize the use of the language in drama, verse and narrative. One of the most interesting aspects of Pushkin’s life is his genealogy. On his father’s side he was descended from an ancient noble Russian family, but his maternal great-grandfather was an Ethiopian prince in the service of Peter the Great. He was fascinated by stories of Gannibal (Hannibal), his black African ancestor, and his eventual rise to the rank of general in Peter’s army. Pushkin often made reference to his own physical appearance as being more ‘African’ than ‘Russian’! Even more interesting is the fact that one of the poet’s daughters and a granddaughter both married German princes and are directly related to the Mountbatten family (Pushkin’s granddaughter Nadejda, Countess Torby, was the aunt of Prince Philip, the consort to Queen Elizabeth II). Pushkin was greatly influenced by Shakespeare and Byron but he was at the same time greatly devoted to Russian folk tales, legends and fairy stories.

As with many poets of this Romantic age he was also enamored of the Russian countryside and the lives and culture of the simple people, serfs and peasants, who populated it. At about the age of twenty he produced Ruslan and Ludmila, a fairy tale in the shape of a narrative poem which the composer Mikhail Glinka later fashioned into an opera (1842). There followed a series of imitation folk tales and legends including Rusalka (1826-32) and The Tale of Tsar Saltan (1831). His verse novel, Yevgeny Onegin appeared in 1830 and was turned into an opera by Tchaikovsky in 1879. Onegin is considered the greatest of Pushkin’s works; cultured Russians can recite whole chapters of the work by memory. The historical tragedy Boris Godunov was published in 1831 and probably written in 1825 while Pushkin was in exile at his family’s estate in Mikhailoskove. The inspiration for the play (his only drama) was found in the history plays of William Shakespeare, especially works like Richard II, Henry IV and Macbeth.

Boris was something of a Shakespearean experiment, the playwright seeking to take an extremely complicated piece of Russian political history and condense it in order to be perfectly understood by an audience. At the same time, he wanted the work to be in beautiful verse while also creating believable characters. The play was, of course, about the struggle for power over Russia, something not ever very far from the peoples’ consciousness. The work therefore had (and has!) great significance for the Russian people, a significance which was not lost on state censors in Pushkin’s time. When the author read it privately to a room full of friends, the Tsar’s secret police were eavesdropping; hence the drama went unperformed during Pushkin’s lifetime (although Tsar Nicholas I did finally relent and allow a censored version of the play to be published in 1831 as a wedding gift for Pushkin that year). The work has a very modern sensibility and deals with such issues as the mass manipulation of public opinion for political purposes. As history, the play stays close to the (then) accepted version of events leading to Boris’ accession to the throne and eventual death.

And because of the dramatic characterizations the work moves as quickly as any of its Shakespearean forebears. Many of Pushkin’s works have been used as the basis for opera libretti: Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila, Dargomïshky’s The Stone Guest, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar Saltan, Mozart and Salieri and The Golden Cockerel, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Mazepa and The Queen of Spades, Rachmaninoff’s Aleko and Stravinsky’s Mavra. In the case of Mussorgky’s Boris, the composer used Pushkin’s play as the basis for his own libretto, in many instances keeping the original verse intact. Monster in the making | Music | The Guardian Classical music Monster in the making Andrei Tarkovsky wasn't a great fan of opera. And yet, when Covent Garden asked him to direct Boris Godunov in 1983, he was unable to resist.

As this remarkable production is revived, Stuart Jeffries reports on the great Russian film-maker's difficulty with the genre Striking but sometimes baffling images: scene from Covent Garden production of Boris Godunov Share on Messenger Close When the great Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky arrived in London in 1983, he had only three years left to live. He had just completed a film in Italy, called Nostalgia, about an artist abroad, smitten by homesickness and unable to live in his own country or to flourish away from it. Those last wandering years, in which Tarkovsky was unemployable in his beloved homeland and unsettled in the west, might make one think that Nostalgia was prophetic. "I am lost!" he wrote in his diary while in Italy after the film's release. "I cannot live in Russia, nor can I live here." Tarkovsky had come from Rome to London at the invitation of Claudio Abbado, then director of the Royal Opera House, to direct a production of that most Russian of operas, Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.

This was an offer it was hard to refuse - at least for Tarkovsky, who was obsessed by his motherland's history and steeped in Pushkin, who wrote the play on which Mussorgsky based his opera. But, as soon as he got to work at Covent Garden, Tarkovsky made things difficult for himself. "I reject opera in the psychological and dramatic sense," he told a baffled audience at London's Riverside Studios that autumn, "and yet I do everything in my production [of Boris] to develop these aspects. In short, I am caught in a trap." Tarkovsky had never directed the opera before, but had been engaged to work on a four-and-a-half hour monster sometimes derided as one of the most undramatic and gloomy in the canon. Worse yet, the chorus was almost unmanageably vast, and the leading soloists of his cast could not speak Russian but were required to sing in it fluently, nor could the director speak much English. Exhausted, sometimes ill and preoccupied by the plight of his 13-year-old son who was not then permitted to leave Moscow to join him in the west, Tarkovsky could have failed disastrously.

Whether he did or not is something you can judge for yourself from Tuesday, when Tarkovsky's production of Boris Godunov is revived at Covent Garden for the first time in 12 years. It's hard to resist the thought that Godunov - with its child-murdering tsar whose life is tragically undone by guilt and its theme of a Russian people rising up against a hated ruler - must have had allegorical resonance for Tarkovsky. Perhaps it spoke topically to him of the corruption of Russia's current rulers, prophesied the fall of communism and the country's subsequent difficult history. "I don't know about any of that," says Irina Brown, who worked as Tarkovsky's assistant in 1983 and is now directing the revival. "Andrei was not a director who created allegories or symbols. He talked in images." And there's confirmation for this view in Tarkovsky's diaries, in which he argues that symbolism is a sign of decadence, but defends the use of strong images in art. "The image is like a clot of life," he said, "and even the author may not be able to work out what it means, let alone the audience.

Pushkin's 'My sadness is radiant' is an image, not a symbol." This is no small matter in Russian operatic history. For instance, Prokofiev's boringly patriotic 1945 opera adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace was taken as using the dramatic defeat of Napoleon in 1812 as an allegory for the Red Army's recent repulsion of the Nazis. Tarkovsky would have found it hard to stage Prokofiev's opera, given his aesthetics, never mind his growing contempt for Stalin and his legacy. But he had no such problem bringing his distinctive vision to Mussorgsky's opera. Tarkovsky's production, like his films, abounds with striking and sometimes baffling images. Contemporary critics were struck by the map of Russia upon which Boris falls asleep at one point, an image that might lend itself to a symbolical interpretation. But there was one image that Tarkovsky never got to use. He wanted the opera to end with the dead Boris lifted to heaven by angels. Many in the production resisted this, including the great bass singer Robert Lloyd, who played Boris. He regarded the image as too kitsch. What else did Tarkovsky bring to this opera production?

"One thing is the film lighting, which makes ordinary opera acting look crude," says Brown. "You could see the actors' eyes, which meant that they had to act more subtly than before." The 1983 production was well received, not least because of Abbado's thrilling conducting. Some critics, however, thought Tarkovsky had made only a rather conventional production, perhaps because he was awed by the material. The Times Literary Supplement reviewer noted that, at the Riverside, Tarkovsky had said that he disliked opera and alarmingly urged opera-goers to close their eyes and listen to the music. "That's not true," says Brown. "And I should know: I was the interpreter during that interview. What he said was that he thought opera was unnatural, not that he disliked it. He was thinking aloud, trying to work out what he thought about this medium he had never worked in before." How did Tarkovsky like being in London? "He loved it," says Brown. "But it was a very difficult time for him. At the end of each rehearsal he would call his son and mother-in-law in Russia.

Each night, little Andrei, who was only 13, would put down the phone and cry." A year after directing Godunov, Tarkovsky renounced his Soviet citizenship. He took this dire step because Soviet authorities refused to grant him a passport enabling him to spend three years working abroad, a passport he said he needed to flourish creatively. In fact, he only made one more film, The Sacrifice, in Sweden, before dying of lung cancer in Paris in 1986. But why did Tarkovsky leave the Soviet Union in the early 1980s? "This was the Soviet Union of Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko," says Brown. "He made only five films in nearly 20 years, not because he was lazy, but because he was stymied. He didn't make the films they wanted. He once agreed to make a film about Lenin, but they hated his script - not surprisingly." Many projects that Tarkovsky contemplated - a film about Tolstoy, another about Dostoevsky - were refused by Goskino, the Soviet cinema organisation. State-run newspapers campaigned against his films and claimed that his pictures were unpopular in the Soviet Union.

"That was even though they only released his films for a couple of days in Moscow, not because they were unpopular but because the authorities didn't want them to be seen," says Brown. "His is a magical name for any Russian because he never lied. He was revered for no superficial reason. He was the one person who brought truth into the kingdom of lies." For Brown, growing up in the stultifying cultural atmosphere of the 1970s Soviet Union, Tarkovsky's films were like oxygen. "I used to see his films again and again, long before I met him, and long before I left the Soviet Union. I left in 1978, and then in 1979 Stalker came out in London and I remember dragging all my British friends to see it." In Britain she developed her theatre directing skills and worked for opera companies. And then, in 1983, she received a call from the ROH. Would she like to work with Andrei Tarkovsky on Boris Godunov? "It was the greatest moment of my life! He was my hero, and I don't mean that in a celebrity way.

His art was always not about the neurotic expression of the ego, but transcending the ego for the glory of something bigger. I loved that." During our interview before rehearsal at Covent Garden last week, Brown sheds a tear. "It is such a privilege to work on it again," she says. "In 1983, I was just a little girl brought up in the Brezhnev era. The joy and the glory of doing it now is because I can serve it better. I'm not a little girl now." She rummages in her bag. "These are the scores for Godunov, which I've been virtually sleeping with. But there's something else I want to show you." She produces her snapshots of Tarkovsky. There she is with Andrei and his wife at a cottage in Wiltshire. There again, Tarkovsky sitting at the kitchen table of her London flat. And, most poignantly of all, the photograph that Brown took of the gaunt director in his Paris flat shortly before his death. In his hand he is holding a little bird that he was caring for after it broke its wing. She puts the photos away and tells me of the work she has been doing for the revival.

"I've been studying the history of of Boris. I felt like I was home in Brezhnev's Soviet Union. The familiarity was devastating. It was Ivan the Terrible, Boris's predecessor, who set up spies, and they thrived during Boris's rule. Russia was plagued by corruption and bribery during Boris's reign, just as it was when I was a girl in the Soviet Union. It's as though we have not moved in 400 years." That said, the story of Boris Godunov that will unfold on the Covent Garden stage is a poignant lie rather than historical truth. As Orlando Figes points out in Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, the raw material from which Pushkin took his story is a fiction propagated by the Romanovs to cement their claims to the Russian throne in the wake of Boris Godunov's death. Boris was no child murderer, as they claimed, though Nikolai Karamzin, whose early 19th century history of Russia was Pushkin's chief source, must have felt the story was too good to resist retelling.

"It underpinned his tragic concept of Boris Godunov - a progressive ruler who was haunted by his crime and in the end undone by his own legitimacy as a Tsar." It's this historical fiction that proved utterly seductive to both Pushkin and Mussorgsky. According to Karamzin, Boris died of the "inner agitation of the soul which is inescapable for a criminal". What artist worth their salt would refuse the chance to intimately explore that Shakespearean tragic flaw and delve into what seemed like Russia's epic, tragic past? Certainly not Tarkovsky. ½ Boris Godunov is in rep at the Royal Opera House from Tuesday until October 9. Box office: 020-7304 4000

Question: The opera, "Boris Godunov" by Mussorgsky was based on a play by which Russian author?
Answer: ALEXANDER PUSHKIN