The idea to re-cast Alexander Pushkin's verse play Boris Godunov as an opera was suggested to Modest Mussorgsky by history professor Vladimir Nikolsky during a visit to Ludmila Shestakova's home in St. Petersburg. Shestakova sent Mussorgsky a copy of the play, which he'd adapt by the fall of 1868. The first version of Boris Godunov was composed between October 1868 and July 1869, with the orchestration done by December. Mussorgsky submitted the score of Boris to the Imperial Directorate of Theaters, which in February 1871 rejected the work. The Directorate's grounds for dismissing Boris Godunov had little to do with the revolutionary style of the opera; rather it was the lack of a central female character that was their primary concern. The Directorate recognized Mussorgsky's talent, and offered to reconsider provided an additional scene was added. Mussorgsky took this news with encouragement, and launched into a major overhaul of the opera, reaching far beyond what was required. He trimmed scenes, such as the one in Pimen's cell, and added others, including the scene in the Kromy forest, added dances, and added the role of Marina Mnishek. This version of the opera was accepted after a trial run of three scenes at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in December 1873. Boris Godunov premiered under Nápravnik at the Mariinsky in January 1874.



Boris Godunov was an unqualified success with the Russian public from the first. It was revived five times by 1882 for a total of 22 performances, unheard of for a native Russian opera. Boris Godunov has gone on to become the most popular of all Russian operas. Internationally, the version made by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov earned this popularity through a luxuriant re-scoring of Mussorgsky's deliberately gritty orchestral textures. Hardly had the newer version begun to play the capitals of Europe before the call went out among critics to revive Mussorgsky's "original version." The problem is that there are two "original" versions that are distinctly different from one another. Starting in the 1970s, various combinations of the two became the standard for Boris, based on David Lloyd-Jones' 1975 critical edition that prints both operas side-by-side. Any combination of the 1869 and 1872 versions of Boris Godunov makes a muddle of the scenario; the 1869 version is tightly constructed in four "parts," totaling just seven scenes. It is bleak in tone and resembles Bertolt Brecht's alienist theater of the 1920s more than it does nineteenth-century opera. Boris is made more of an obvious villain in the first version than in the revision, which leaves that question open-ended. The 1872 version is also more expansive, laid out in four acts and a prologue, scenes run longer, and the edge of 1869 is softened somewhat. It wasn't until 1998 that a recording of the two versions of Boris were issued together within a single unit, and in practice the general consensus has become that one or the other Boris Godunov should be chosen when the "original" Mussorgsky score is presented.

© All Music Guide

Boris Godunov, opera in 7 scenes (1869 version)

There were three different versions of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov completed during his lifetime. The first was composed between October 1868 and December 1869. This version was submitted to the Directorate of the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg and rejected in February 1871. Mussorgsky then undertook to revise and expand Boris based on the suggestions of the Directorate, beginning work in April 1871 and completing the second version in June 1872. The third version is a cut version of the second version created by the conductor of the opera's premiere at the Imperial Theater in February 1874. Although the third version is clearly unacceptable, the problem of which of the first two versions represents the "definitive" version is much more complicated.

Both versions are drawn from Pushkin's verse-drama Boris Godunov and on the historian Karamzin's History of the Russian Empire and deals with the seven-year reign of Tsar Boris Godunov (1598 - 1605). The first version is in four acts divided into seven tableaux:

Act I, first tableau: The Novodievichy monastery;

Act I, second tableau: The Coronation of Boris;

Act II, third tableau: Pimen's Cell;

Act II, fourth tableau: The Inn at the Lithuanian border;

Act III, fifth tableau: The Kremlin;

Act IV, sixth tableau: St. Basil's Cathedral;

Act IV, seventh tableau: The Death of Boris.

As was noted at the time by Mussorgsky's friend, the historian Stasov, "the opera Boris Godunov was to have consisted of only four acts and was almost wholly devoid of the feminine element. All those close to Mussorgsky, (myself included), ecstatically though we admired the miracles of dramaturgy and of fidelity to the folk with which these four acts were filled, nevertheless remonstrated to him whenever we had the chance that his opera was incomplete." While this is undoubtedly true as far as it went, Stasov seems to have underestimated the dramatic unity of the 1868 - 1869 version.

In the original version, Mussorgsky's opera has virtually no distractions from the opera's central character. Without the interlude of the second version's "Polish" third act, the focus of the first version gives the opera a sense of unstoppable momentum and unrelenting intensity which is as great an achievement as the more expansive 1871 - 1872 version. This concentration on Boris himself alters one's interpretation of his character. While the second version includes a scene of Boris with his children and a scene with Boris going mad with guilt, the first version does nothing to soften Boris' character and he emerges as a darker and more terrifying figure.

In conclusion, as with so many works by Mussorgsky, both the first and the second version of Boris are equally valid each in its own way. But, in either version, Boris Godunov is unarguably the greatest Russian opera ever composed and one of the greatest operas of the nineteenth century.

© James Leonard, All Music Guide

Boris Godunov, opera (Rimsky-Korsakov edition)

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov's contact with Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov came quite literally as it was written. Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky had shared the same worktable as both Boris and Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Maid of Pskov were composed. After Mussorgsky's death in 1881, and long after Boris Godunov had been a success at the Mariinsky Theater, Rimsky-Korsakov undertook a general review of the quality of Mussorgsky's work in regard to its orchestration. Rimsky-Korsakov's assessment of Mussorgsky's orchestral ability was not particularly favorable; in letters Rimsky-Korsakov writes of Mussorgsky's "unbelievably bad voice leading," his propensity toward thick textures, uneven rhythmic patterns, and, by Rimsky-Korsakov's own standards, questionable harmonic practices.

In terms of refashioning the music of Boris Godunov, Rimsky-Korsakov initially limited himself to an arrangement made in 1886 of the Act One Prelude and Act Three Polonaise, neatly dovetailed together as a sort of overture. In 1891, Rimsky-Korsakov re-scored the Coronation Scene, and six years later his first edition of Boris Godunov was staged. Rimsky-Korsakov had, by this time, made deep cuts in the score and had switched the running order of the last two scenes. Rimsky-Korsakov proclaimed "For the present, there is need of an edition for performances, for practical artistic purposes, for making Mussorgsky's colossal talent known, and not for the mere studying of his personality and artistic sins." Rimsky-Korsakov clearly viewed Boris Godunov as being non-performable in its original state, despite that the opera had already been given 22 times from Mussorgsky's own score.

Rimsky-Korsakov returned to Boris in 1906 at the request of Serge Diaghilev, who was looking for a version to use in Paris with the Bolshoi Opera and its formidable Russian bass, Feodor Chaliapin. In this instance, Rimsky-Korsakov restored some of the cuts, but elected to rewrite some of the music himself. This became the version the whole world came to know, and was the performance standard even in Russia until the 1970s. It is certainly an impressive piece of work, fitted with a gorgeous, sweeping orchestration and generous melody for the singers. But it is far different from Mussorgsky's original conception, with its speech-like vocal lines and its disdain for accepted notions of scoring and dramaturgy.

"If for some reason in the future my Boris Godunov should be determined as inferior to the original, then by all means, I invite you to discard it" Rimsky-Korsakov once stated, perhaps a bit facetiously. Rimsky-Korsakov would doubtless express surprise to know that it has been indeed "discarded" in Russia, toppled like statues of Lenin after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Post-Soviet audiences seem to prefer the short, 1869 version best of the three Boris Godunovs. However, Rimsky-Korsakov's conception of the opera maintains a stronghold in the West, and perhaps this is appropriate, as Gerald Abraham stated in 1945, "both (Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky versions of Boris) are masterpieces."

© Uncle Dave Lewis , All Music Guide