1. The Russian National Opera

Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov is generally considered the quintessential Russian opera, and by most accounts the greatest. But it has had a checkered history.

In its original version, it was rejected by the Imperial censors, ostensibly because it contained no female role and was therefore not a real opera. Very likely the real reason was because they were uncomfortable with the notion of moral decay on the throne and social chaos about the land. There was also a law forbidding the portrayal of a Tsar on stage, but it was occasionally waived. After the rejection Mussorgsky wrote two further scenes in which a Polish princess was a a central character and the opera went into production in 1874.

It was well received, particularly by critics like Cesar Cui, who would later express severe reservations. It was almost immediately hailed as the Russian national opera, displacing Glinka's A Life for the Tsar, and is held in the same regard even today.

It was not long in the repertoire, however, before its exceedingly drab orchestration began to trouble listeners. After Mussorgsky's death in 1881 Rimsky-Korsakov, one of the most brilliant orchestrators of the time, took up the task of arranging a more polished performing version of the score, and it is this version through which most people came to know the opera until the last decade or two.

It's unfashionable to say this nowadays, but there is considerable merit to the R-K Boris. While one might argue that the bleakness of Mussorgsky's orchestration expresses well the joylessness of nearly everyone's lives in the story, the revised orchestration's glowing power yields a greater scale of emotion and is certainly more listener-friendly. Indeed, if Rimsky-Korsakov had confined himself to a reorchestration, his version would probably not have ruffled as many feathers as it has.

But he went well beyond reorchestrating it. He reharmonized it in places, adding complexity and richness to some uncomfortably bare passages and, less fortunately perhaps, "correcting" the harmony in places where Musssorgsky's version may have been valid but perhaps a bit beyond Rimsky-Korsakov's ken. He even went so far as to substitute an item of his own for one of the set pieces from the original.

The most obvious changes, however, were some cuts he made and a reordering of the events late in the opera. Before going on to the merits of these changes, let's review the story of Boris.

2. Synopsis

The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in Russian history are called the Time of Troubles, an era following the death of Tsar Ivan IV (the Terrible). It was a period lasting about a generation in which difficulties of royal succession led to a period of civil war and chaos unparalled even by the Russian Revolution of 85 years ago.

For almost three hundred years after the events upon which the opera is based, it was believed that Boris Godunov, a powerful aid to Ivan, had instigated the Troubles by having the child-heir to the throne, Dimitri Ivanovich, murdered. Historians in the 20th century concluded that the charge was unfounded and that Boris was well-meaning and capable.

In any case, Mussorgsky based his libretto on the work of an historian named Karamzin and the Russian national poet, Pushkin, both of whom considered Boris guilty as charged, and for the purposes of the opera we must adopt the same assumption. It is hard for the modern listener to divorce the historical reality from the opera, though, and this adds an extra element of poignance to the story. The story as it unfolds in the opera is a remarkable mixture of historical fact and supposition with a handful of fictitious events thrown in for dramatic economy.

Prologue

Scene 1: The courtyard of Novodevichy Monastery near Moscow. It is 1598 and the death of the Tsar, the simple-minded and heirless Fodor Ivanovich, has left the throne vacant . The most obvious choice to become Tsar is Boris Godunov, once a powerful advisor to Ivan and Regent during the reign of Fyodor. However, Boris has retired to the monastery, refusing to accept the crown.

A group of peasants has assembled, or been assembled, in the courtyard. They have no idea what is going on, but on orders from the police, they cry out, begging Boris to ascend the throne and save the Russian people. Presently a boyar (lord) comes out to the crowd and, in tones of despair, announces that Russia is doomed. Boris is obstinate in his refusal.

A group of pilgrims is heard chanting in the distance. Soon they arrive and, as they pass through the crowd, distribute alms and relics to the peasants. After they enter the monastery proper, the crowd expresses its confusion and cynicism a while longer.

Why is Boris refusing the crown? It's an interesting question, even though the standard interpretation is that he is only temporizing in order to increase the appearance of legitimacy when he finally accedes. Yet other interpretations are possible, and later scenes in the opera would be consistent with them. For example, if Boris had been guilty of murder, he might well have retired to atone for the sin. He might also have concluded that he could not possibly hope for God's blessing on his reign. His eventual acquiescence might have come about when he realized that he was, in fact, the only person who could hold the country together.

Scene 2: The courtyard of the Kremlin, a few months later. It is the day of Boris's coronation and the crowd, now genuine in its enthusiasm, is singing his praises. In a moment of inward reflection, however, the new Tsar broods over his guilt and is deeply pessimistic about reigning successfully. He begs God to give him wisdom and bless his stewardship of the people. Then he invites all the people of every station to a feast and the crowd, though troubled by the anxious appearance of their Tsar, resumes singing his praises.

Act I

Scene 1: A cell in the Monastery of Chudov, five years later. Despite the Tsar's attempts to rule wisely and well, famine and plague have visited the land. (Historically, Boris cannot be blamed. Natural forces and a remarkable lack of cooperation from the boyars undermined many of his best efforts.)

An elderly monk named Pimen shares a cell with the young and restless novice Grigory Otripiev. Pimen is putting the final touches on his life's work, a history of Russia. Grigory awakens to tell Pimen of a dream that he just had for the third time. In it, he found himself at the top of a tower in Moscow. Below him was crowd of people deriding him and after a short while, he fell from the tower. At this point the dream ended.

Grigory goes on to tell his companion that he cannot stand the monastic life and longs for wordly things. Pimen attempts to console him with stories of various great men who had chosen to end their days in monasteries, and tells him of his own adventurous youth which seems, with the wisdom of years, to have been vain and unfulfilling.

The conversation turns to recent history and the death of the tsaryevich, Dimitri. Pimen angrily states that the man who took Dimitri's life now sits upon his throne. Grigory asks how old the Tsaryevich would have been, and learns that the latter was born around the same time as he was. In an instant, Grigory's future is made plain to him. When Pimen leaves the cell to go to prayer, Grigory cries out a vow of vengeance upon Boris.

Scene 2: An inn on the Lithuanian frontier. Grigory, now calling himself Dimitri Ivanovich, has run away from the monastery and has nearly succeeded in reaching Lithuania. He enters the inn in the company of two illiterate priests, Valaarm and Missail. The priests proceed to get drunk. Valaarm sings a rousing song about the siege of Kazan and Dimitri tells the landlady that he needs to cross over to Lithuania. She tells him that the border is closed because the police are looking for a fugitive, but then acquaints him with a secret path by which they may be evaded.

The police arrive and begin questioning people. They have a warrant for the arrest and execution of a fugitive monk and ask Valaarm to read his description for them. Valaarm admits that he can't read, and the job passes to Dimitri who substitutes a description of Valaarm for his own as it appears on the warrant. Valaarm sobers up enough to understand what is going on and says he will read the document himself, even if he has to sound it out syllable-by-syllable. As it becomes apparent that Dimitri is the man they are looking for, the fugitive makes his escape through a window.

Act II

The second act takes place in the apartments of the Tsar. Boris's son, Fyodor is reading while his sister, Xenia, is gazing tearfully upon a portrait of her deceased fiancé. Boris enters and tries to comfort his daughter. Fyodor proudly shows him his knowledge of geography by outlining the extent of the Russian empire on a globe. Boris speaks encouragingly to his son and expresses his wish that his he will be a better man than his father.

Left alone, he begins brooding on his guilt and insecurity in an aria-like segment that is sometimes used as a concert piece, I have attained the highest power. Prince Shuisky, a boyar who holds a position roughly equivalent to prime minister, enters. Boris mistrusts him, as just about everyone else does, but gives him audience. Shuisky is about to deliver some news when a ruckus is heard in the adjoining room. Boris summons Fyodor to discover what is happening. When the boy arrives, he doesn't want to interrupt his father's state business with his little story. Boris insists, though, partly out of his affection for his son, but doubtless also to make Shuisky wait.

When Shuisky is alone with Boris, he tells him that a pretender to the throne calling himself Dimitri has appeared in Poland. Boris asks Shuisky to confirm that the body of the real Dimitri had been identified beyond doubt. The latter assures him that it was, going into gruesome detail and skilfully playing on the Tsar's guilt. Boris pulls himself together sufficiently to dismiss the prince calmly, but then collapses into a chair, overcome with with remorse and panic. A chiming clock with moving figures starts up. Boris's hallucinations turn it into the ghost of the slain tsaryevich, and in his incoherence he urges the child to flee, perhaps it's not too late. "It was not my doing," he protests, "it was the will of the people."

Regaining his wits, he sinks into despair, begging God for mercy.

This is the so-called Polish act, and was not part of the original 1869 version. It was written to appease the censors, and is something of a digression from the main dramatic flow. But it is very powerful and rarely omitted in modern productions.

Scene 1: Sandomir, Poland. The apartments of Marina Mnishek, a Polish princess. Marina is attended by her servants who sing of her beauty. She grows weary of the flattery, though, saying that she would rather they sing of heroes and lovers. Having dismissed the ladies-in-waiting, she sings of her dream of marrying the handsome pretender to the Russian throne, Dimitri, who has come to her father's court hoping to raise an army. The thought of entering Moscow as Tsarina excites her as much as her attraction to her hero.

A Jesuit named Rangoni, Marina's sometimes spiritual advisor, comes to her. In an intense monologue, he tells her that famine and misfortune stalk the land because the Russians do not belong to the One True Church. It is her destiny, he tells her, to win Dimitri and persuade him to restore the rule of Rome over the Russian Church when he ascends the throne. At first she resists, but agrees after Rangoni threatens her with damnation and every other calamity. He tells her that she must be prepared to sacrifice everything, even her virtue, for the good of the Holy Mother Church.

Scene 2: .The gardens of the Castle of Sandomir. Dimitri is awaiting the arrival of Marina, hoping to press his suit. Rangoni arrives and urges him to hide, as a group of nobles is about to arrive. How will things look if he's found awaiting the Princess? A group of nobles does arrive, dances a polonaise, then goes away, making the stage available for the confrontation between Dimitri and Marina.

He declares his love, but Marina is cold, saying that his ambitions are all well and good, but that she would be more impressed by his achievements, if he had any. Dimitri, at the summit of his vexation, tells her that he will soon be Tsar and that the whole world will laugh at the woman who rejected him.

With that, she makes a show of capitulating, declaring him her hero and returning his love. Rangoni, in the background, rubs his hands in delight.

Act IV

Scene 1: A Square before the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed in Moscow. A large number of people are standing about. The neighbourhood Simpleton is led into the crowd where some children torment him. Someone has given him a kopek and the children goad him into showing it to them, whereupon they steal it. He laments his loss loudly, just as Boris and his retinue emerge from the Cathedral.

Boris demands to know what the comotion is about and the Simpleton asks him to make the children return his kopek. Boris, rather at a loss, asks him what he wants him to do. "Why don't you have them killed, just as you had the child Dimitri killed," is the Simpleton's suggestion. Shuisky orders him arrested, but the Tsar forbids it, instead asking the Simpleton to pray for him. But that is not possible, the latter replies. How can one pray for a child's murderer?

Scene 2: Granovitaya Hall in the Kremlin. The boyars are meeting to discuss reports of invasion and insurrection from the east. Some remark that, much though they distrust him, they need Shuisky's experience and judgement. Just then, the prince does arrive. He tells the boyars of a most disturbing scene he witnessed. The Tsar seemed to be having some terrible vision, calling to some invisible person, "Flee, flee!" The boyars are not inclined to believe him, but have no choice when Boris himself enters the chamber. He is indeed hallucinating and calling out just as Shuisky had reported.

Realizing at last where he is, Boris pulls himself together and prepares to preside over the council. Shuisky tells him that a holy man has come to court and wishes an audience. Boris agrees, hoping that the visit will somehow bring him peace.

The holy man turns out to be Pimen, the monk-historian. In an extraordinarily moving monologue, he tells of an old man who came to see him with a strange story. The man, who had been blind from early childhood, had a dream one night in which the ghost of Dimitri Ivanovich, the slain Tsaryevich, had spoken to him. He told him to rise up at once and make a pilgrimage to his tomb. The old man woke his grandson, who led him there. He laid his hands in prayer upon the tomb and suddenly his sight was restored. He saw his grandson for the first time!

This is too much for Boris. He orders Pimen escorted from the chamber. Realizing that he has had a heart attack, he sends for his son. In another extraordinarily moving monologue, Boris bids farewell to Fyodor, telling him that he now is Tsar, young though he is. He gives him good counsel, if futile under the circumstances, and enjoins him to care for his sister. He hears, or thinks he hears, a chorus of monks chanting as though he were already dead. He panics and tries to reassert his authority but, having a second heart attack, he barely manages to point to his son and tell the boyars, "Here, he is your Tsar." With that he falls dead.

Scene 3: A field in the forest of Kromy. A mob has captured and is torturing a boyar named Kruschev. From the distance, the chanting of two priests is heard - in Latin. These are Jesuits preceding Dimitri's arrival. The crowd, and particularly the Russian priests Valaarm and Missail among them, have no use for their "Roman catterwalling," and as soon as they arrive on the scene, they are hustled off to be hanged. (In some productions, they are hanged, in others, they are rescued by the timely arrival of Dimitri and his escort.) Dimitri arrives and, when Kruschev proclaims his allegiance to him, he is freed and joins the gathering mob in its march on Moscow.

Left alone on the stage, the Simpleton sings a mournful prophecy of the doom that the Russian people face. As his song dies away, the sky reddens in the distance from a village that has been set afire.

3. Historical note

I have not been able to find any reference other than Pushkin's to Boris having retired to a monastery. It seems unlikely that he did so. He had governed Russia as regent for more than a decade and was very good at it. Though far from perfect, he was progressive and responsible and it is hard to imagine him wandering off, leaving the country to its own devices.

Grigory Otripiev and Marina Mnishek (more correctly, Marina Mnisheova) were historical people, a defrocked monk and a real Polish princess, who did, in fact, enter Moscow as Tsar and Tsarina. Grigory is known in history as the First False Dimitri. His success was not due to any military prowess. When he came within striking distance, Boris's army destroyed his raggle-taggle band with no difficulty. Dimitri himself survived, however, and when Boris died suddenly of natural causes a few weeks later, some boyars pretended to believe in his legitimacy and installed him on the throne.

Dimitri's brief reign was a disaster. His combination of childish arrogance and incompetence as an administrator were not only catastrophic for the country, they cost him the loyalty of those nobles who had originally put him on the throne. Several others briefly assumed royal, including the Second False Dimitri and Prince Shuisky.

Tne Time of Troubles started to yield to a more stable era with the ascension to the throne of Michael Romanov, whose dynasty was to last until the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II during a more recent time of troubles, the Bolshevick Revolution.

4. Versions

Mussorgsky's "Original": The scenes and their order as I have presented them represent what is now considered the "correct" version. Many people assume that it represents Mussorgsky's final thoughts on the matter, but it does not.

The score that the censors rejected in 1869 is reasonably well outlined in the synopsis above if you discount the Polish act and some of the domestic material in the Godunov household. But in the revised version of 1874, Mussorgsky combined the scene at St. Basil's and that in the field, omitting the meeting of Boris and the Simpleton. Although that confrontation should have been one of the most dramatic moments of the opera, the composer wasn't able entirely to realize its potential. Some people even find it dull.

Mussorgsky further elected to put the combined scene, beginning with the Simpleton and his kopek and ending with his lament, before the death of Boris, thus providing a more conventionally operatic ending. Some friends and colleagues, however, persuaded him to put it at the end where it has a more chilling effect than the sad death of the Tsar.

There were many detailed changes in the second version, including some minor additions and some reworking of the vocal parts, particularly Boris's. The net difference is in the slant on the Tsar's character. In the original, more concise version, he comes across as more evil than in the 1874 reworking. In the latter, his humanity is more of a focus. Indeed, between the improved context and the subtle changes to the music he is singing, he is a fairly sympathetic character. Yes, he has much on his conscience and it is tormenting him. But Mussorgsky's music can express his anguish at the same time as a towering greatness about him, often in the same phrase.

Rimsky-Korsakov: Aside from his reorchestration and reharmonizations, the most notable features of Rimsky-Korsakov's edition is the cuts he made, mostly minor, and his replacing of Mussorgsky's song The Siege of Kazan in Act I with a version of his own devising.

Perhaps the most judicious of his cuts was the last third of the Prologue Scene 1. He ended the scene with the passage of the pilgrims, thus eliminating several minutes that are dramatically redundant and musically less inspired. Some listeners object to his omission of the Simpleton-Boris dialogue, but in this regard he was only respecting what Mussorgsky had probably regarded as his definitive version.

More recent editions: I first heard Boris Godunov in an English-language Metropolitan Opera broadcast during the winter of 1959. Although I was barely fifteen and had no idea how this production compared to other Borises, I was sufficiently impressed with it that the opera became one of my life-long favourites. The cast included Cesare Siepi as Boris and Giorgio Tozzi as Pimen, and I've often wondered if their portrayals would seem sufficiently Russian to me now. An American tenor named Paul Frank sang the Simpleton to such great effect that I can still hear his voice in my memory.

Milton Cross, the long-time host of the Met broadcasts, explained that the edition used in that production was an attempt to take "Mussorgsky's original in its entirety" and give it the benefit of a Rimsky-Korsakov-style orchestration. In fact, this edition by Karol Rathaus and John Gutman, prepared for the Met's 1953 revival of the opera, seems to have been based on a combination of the 1869 and 1874 versions. I can't comment on the success of their efforts as I've not heard it since that Saturday afternoon forty-four years ago.

The best known version since Rimsky-Korsakov's, known by reputation at least, is that of Dimitri Shostakovich, completed in 1959. Some people who have heard it and, I suspect, a great many who haven't, condemn it for being too much given to loud and pungent sounds. Others say that it is magnificent, adding another dimension to our view of the score. I've never heard it, though I would certainly like to.

During the earlier Soviet era, Ipolitov-Ivanov orchestrated the St. Basil scene in the manner of Rimsky-Korsakov and some while later a musicologist named Meliaglis assembled his own orchestration, also inspired by Rimsky-Korsokov, but attempting to retain more of Mussorgsky's spirit.

More recent work has focused on preparing performing editions of the original versions. The one assembled by musicologist David Lloyd-Jones is especially notable for analyzing the various elements that Mussorgsky left us and providing the music with which a conductor can assemble one combination or another for a given production.

5. Recordings

Music lovers of my generation are most likely to have acquainted themselves with Boris Godunov through the 1952 recording that featured Boris Christoff in all three of the important bass roles. He was good in all of them, and suberb as Boris, even though he took a page from Chaliapin's book and declaimed rather than sang some notes late in his death scene. There was a stereo remake around 1959 but, even though it used essentially the same cast, it was disappointing, largely due to the all-important chorus that, for the second recording, was nothing special.

The chorus was amazing in a recording that came out in the mid-sixties. It featured the American bass George London in the title role, and was a most impressive achievement.

Subsequent recordings starring the likes of Tavela, Ghiaurov and others all had their merits and followings, and some are still available. Today the choice is not wide but, aside from there being no readily available recording of the Shostakovich version, it offers about any approach you would like. There's even a wonderful DVD of the opera, to which we'll get in a moment.

"Original" versions: The first complete Mussorgsky version recording I heard was that of Philips dating from 1978, and starrring Alexander Vedernikov in the title role. It was conducted by Vladimir Fedoseyev and made a strong impression. I still have that recording on three cassettes. It doesn't quite compare with a few more recent versions, but it is good taken for itself.

The best bet for sound recordings in the "original" category is the Philips set conducted by Andrei Gergiev. It contains the 1869 and 1874 versions. This takes five CDs, but they are sold for the price of three. Thus the enthusiast can have two wonderful accounts of the score for comparison. The casting is the same in both, except for the roles of Boris (Putilin 1869, Lutsuk 1874) and the False Dimitri (Vaneev 1869, Galusin 1874).

Though I haven't heard it, I've been assured that the Abbado recording on Sony is the very best of the originals. It is based upon the 1874 score but also includes the confrontation between the Simpleton and the Tsar.

Rimsky-Korsakov's edition: Nicolai Ghiaurov's "towering inferno" interpretation is among the most memorable of all Boris portrayals. This Decca recording of the Rimsky-Korsakov edition is conducted by von Karajan who, despite his very detailed approach and his use of the "wrong" edition, conveys the rugged greatness of Mussorgsky's music better than any other recording I've heard.

Boris on DVD: No other recording of this opera will give you such a total experience of it as the Philips DVD based on the 1990 Covent Garden production. Conducted by Gergiev and directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, it features Robert Lloyd in a magisterial portrayal of the tormented Tsar.

This production is based upon the Lloyd-Jones edition and represents the 1874 incarnation of the opera with the addition of the Tsar-Simpleton scene in front of St. Basil's. This amounts to as complete a performance as possible and, aside from some slow moments at the end of Prologue, Scene 1 it is utterly riveting.

Every character seems perfectly cast and of exactly the right voice. The staging employs a certain amount of symbolism and other visual devices that don't always work through the lens of a camera, but these are minor distractions. Perhaps the most striking innovation is the appearance of the ghost of the murdered child Dimitri at critical moments, including that of Boris's death.

6. Some parting thoughts

When most of us think of Russian opera, Boris is the first title to come to mind. Most people can name two or three operas by Tchaikovsky and may have heard of Glinka's work. Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is finally acquiring a good reputation, richly deserved too.

There remains a trove of operatic treasures by Russian composers, all but unknown in the west. One could mention several operas by Rimsky-Korsakov, for example, or even a couple by Rachmaninov. The great genius among 20th-century Russian opera composers, though, was Prokofiev. Works like Betrothal in a Monastery, War and Peace and The Love of Three Oranges would be sufficient to establish him as a major composer for the lyric stage. But his mystical, hallucingenic The Fiery Angel is a work of even more distinction and, for those who experience it, one of the most powerful of operas.

Nevertheless, Boris Godunov is a work of unparalleled historical and emotional sweep, and contains one of the most complex of all operatic characterizations. For all its checkered history, it is likely for some time to remain the most quintessential, respected and beloved of Russian operas.