Khovanshchina (The Khovansky Affair) was Modest Mussorgsky's final opera, left unfinished at the time of this death in March of 1881. Inconsistencies among the variety of completed editions makes pinning down its essential nature difficult. Ironically, this dramatic and musical malleability is perhaps what best suits Khovanshchina to its subject matter, namely the ascension of Tsar Peter I ("The Great"). Depending on one's perspective, the changes he wrought were either the most beneficial or most tragic in Russia's history, and, depending on which version of Khovanshchina one encounters in performance, one either leaves with a sense of emerging optimism or a sense of desperate resignation.

Khovanshchina takes its name from the two Khovansky princes, Ivan and Andrey, whose Strel'tsï musketeers rose up against the new Tsar in 1689. However, the adoption of their family name for the work's title is potentially misleading; while the drama is related through the eyes of the three principle groups that opposed Peter's reign (the Khovanskys, the schismatics ["Old Believers"], and the family of Peter's older brother), the Tsar himself and his historical legacy are clearly the focus of the opera. Had censorship not explicitly proscribed the depiction of Russian royalty on stage, Khovanshchina would have taken a very different shape, and most likely a different name.

Vladimir Vasil'yevich Stasov compiled the libretto from various historical documents, and the resulting text remains truthful, in the broad sense, to history. However, there is no attempt to recreate the specific events therein; rather, the various figures and events are used as raw material for the invention of appropriately operatic scenes. The most conspicuous liberty was the character of Marfa, who is a member of the schismatic sect, the lover of Andrey Khovansky, and a fortune teller with influence over Ivan's chief agent, Prince Golitsïn. Completely a work of fiction, she is the only character in the opera who has ties to all three factions, and as such she takes on a unique dramatic importance. Stasov most likely invented her to compensate for his inability to depict the Tsar himself—the work's only true common thread—on stage.

Mussorgsky conceived of Khovanshchina in six scenes, the last two of which only survive as sketches; they form matched pairs, so that each of the three opposition factions receives two—one in which they are seen plotting against Peter, and one in which they meet their demise. For its 1886 premiere, Rimsky-Korsakov completed and orchestrated the work, and cast it into the five-act form that has become standard; this edition was subsequently used for its 1911 revival and Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky's own 1913 revision. In his completion, Rimsky-Korsakov recycled some of the more uplifting passages from the orchestral prelude for use in the final scene, in which the "Old Believers"—those who advocated the return to a church-based government—leave to commit ritual suicide in protest of Peter's ascension. By doing this, Rimsky-Korsakov gave the ending a philosophical "shot in the arm" by suggesting that, despite the upheaval that accompanied Peter's reign, the resulting "modern era" of Russian society was worth the price. There is evidence from Mussorgsky's correspondence that he never intended this, but rather wanted the disenfranchised believers' sacrifice to speak to a greater sense of national loss. In 1952, Dmitri Shostakovich fashioned an entirely new version of the score for use in a film version. This new score was published in 1963, and has been used for a number of modern performances; it is arguably more representative of Mussorgsky's dramatic intentions.







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Khovanshchina, opera in 5 acts, edited by Ravel & Stravinsky

Serge Diaghilev first made his reputation in the West by presenting Russian operas in Paris. After he had begun the Ballet Russes and was presenting original works, he continued to present Russian operas heretofore unknown in the West. At the start of 1913, Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to prepare Mussorgsky's unfinished opera Khovanshchina for presentation that spring. This work involved orchestrating the portions of the opera which Mussorgsky had not, re-orchestrating those parts which he had, and composing a final chorus "for which Mussorgsky had indicated only the theme—an authentic Russian song" (from Stravinsky's Chronicles of My Life). Busy with the preparations for the premiere of Le sacre du printemps, Stravinsky suggested that Ravel be brought into the project and together they completed the work in Clarens, Switzerland, in March and April 1913. Stravinsky and Ravel divided the work of orchestration and re-orchestration while Stravinsky extrapolated a finale. The Stravinsky-Ravel Khovanshchina was premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysees in Paris on June 5, 1913, one week after the premiere of Le sacre.

Stravinsky himself disdained his part of the work. As he later wrote, "I have always been sincerely opposed to the re-arrangement by anyone other than the author himself of work already created, and my opposition is only strengthened when the original author is an artist as conscious and certain of what he was doing as Mussorgsky." (Chronicles of My Life). As the Stravinsky scholar Eric Walter White notes in his Stravinsky: The Composer and his Works: "Presumably this objection was not felt to apply when in later years he rearranged music by Pergolesi and Tchaikovsky in order to construct new scores like Pulcinella and The Fairy's Kiss."

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Khovanshchina (opera; Rimsky-Korsakov version, in Russian) - Act 1 - 1.Prelude: Dawn over the River Moscow

While not utterly incomprehensible, the task of explaining the compositional history of Khovanshchina is blessedly beyond the scope of this article. Left unfinished at his death as a mass of disorderly manuscripts, Khovanshchina resists comprehension either as a drama, an opera or even a piece of music. It also resisted successful completion: after Mussorgsky's death in 1882, his friend Rimsky-Korsakov tried to put his manuscripts in order and to create a performing edition of Khovanshchina. Part of this task, the least part of this impossible task, was the opera's orchestration, including its prelude, called Dawn on the Muscovy River.

The curtain rises during the prelude to reveal the pre-dawn city of Moscow at the end of the seventeenth century, the period which marks the rise of Peter the Great. Mussorgsky had left only indications as to how the scoring was to be handled, and Rimsky understandably chose to orchestrate it in his own manner. One might not think that this would make an enormous difference in the essence of the music. But, to a surprising extent, Dawn on the Muscovy River is orchestral in its essence, and Rimsky's orchestration, with its bright woodwinds and light basses, with its tempo rubato and its languorous tempo, makes the work seem more like a pastoral than a city scene, more like a light elegy than the prelude to a historical tragedy which would end with the deaths of many of the characters and the mass self-immolation of most of the rest.

Although Rimsky did succeed in creating a performing edition of the Khovanshchina and of the prelude, much of Mussorgsky's essence was lost in the recomposition.

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Khovanshchina (opera; Rimsky-Korsakov version, in Russian) - Act 4 - 3.Dance of the Persian Slave Girls

At the start of Act Four of Mussorgsky's Khovanschina, Prince Ivan Khovansky thinks he's got the world on a string. His Streltsy Guards have control of Moscow, his rival Prince Golotzin has been banished, his enemies have been killed, and the Czar is on his side. But the singing of his Persian slave girls still depresses him and the message from Moscow that he is in grave danger only irritates him. He calls for the Persian girls to dance for him. In the orchestral interlude appropriately known as Dance of the Persian Slaves, they do. At first, their music moves to the moody modal strains of a sensually despairing melody in the oboe over sultry low strings and a clarinet that sighs with longing and sorrow. But the music grows faster and more rhythms more violent, with cymbals and drums forcing the tempo irresistibly forward. At the Dances' climax, a messenger claiming to be from the Czarina orders him to the Royal Palace and Khovansky's dresses in his finest robes and furs. But as soon he steps over the threshold, he is stabbed to death and the act ends with the Persian slave girls singing a lament of quiet triumph.

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