In Mussorgsky's historical tragedy Khovanshchina, Prince Golitsyn is a character who could be said to represent the Westernizing Tsarevitch, the future Peter the Great (in Imperial Russia, it was forbidden by the censors to depict members, living or deceased, of the ruling Romanov dynasty on stage). Mussorgsky draws him as the lover to the Regent Sophia and as a cruel pragmatic counselor who willingly orders murders if they will further his political goals. And yet, when he is stripped of all his possessions in the opera's fourth act and sent into exile, Mussorgsky's music, "The Departure of Prince Golitsyn," is as dark and as sorrowful as all but the darkest and most heartbreaking pages of his music. With basses holding tight to a relentless handful of notes and a melody in the upper strings of endless longing, Mussorgsky not only makes music of the notion of exile, it almost makes Prince Golitsyn sympathetic.

© All Music Guide