Борис Годунов (BORIS GODUNOV)
Musical drama in a prologue and 4 acts
Composer: Modest Mussorgsky (1839–81)
Libretto: Modest Mussorgsky, after Aleksandr Pushkin’s drama (1831) and Nikolay M. Karamzin’s History of the Russian State (1816–26)
First performance: Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, 22 October 1873 (Revised Version of 1872).
Revised version: St Petersburg Conservatory, 28 November 1896 (Rimsky-Korsakoff version).
First performance of Original Version of 1869: State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, Leningrad, 16 February 1928
SETTING: Moscow; the Lithuanian frontier; a castle in Sandomierz, Poland; Kromï, from 1598 to 1605.
‘Boris Godunov’, one of the masterpieces of Russian opera, is a sombre, magnificent work. The story spans some seven years, from the accession of Boris Godunov to the throne in 1598 to his death in 1605. The work is Shakespearean in its structure: a chronicle play, with an allegorical view of history; and characterisation: Boris, one of the greatest roles in all opera, is both guilt-stricken child-murdering regicide and loving father. He is supposed to have had Dmitriy, the last son of Ivan the Terrible, murdered to become Tsar (and may in real life have poisoned Ivan with mercury), and is haunted by the vision of the murdered boy; while retribution also comes from outside, in the form of the False Dmitriy, an ambitious renegade monk who claims the throne.
There are various versions of the work; that used here is the Rimsky-Korsakoff reorchestration of 1896.
‘Dostíg ya výshey vlásti’
In his famous monologue, Boris, alone in the Kremlin, reflects that, despite power and wealth, despite being the absolute ruler of Russia, his reign has brought him nothing but misery; the troubles of his reign—plots, treason, famine and plague—are divine punishment for his crime; he is racked with guilt, and his sleepless nights are haunted by the bloodstained ghost of the boy he had murdered.
Boris Godunov (bass): Boris Christoff
Conductor: André Cluytens
Orchestre de la Société du Conservatoire de Paris
Paris, 1962
