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.