Modest Musorgsky and Boris Godunov: Myths, Realities, Reconsiderations

by Caryl Emerson , Robert William Oldani

• ISBN13: 9780521361934
• ISBN10: 0521361931
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-03-25
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Caryl Emerson (a literary specialist) and Robert William Oldani (a music historian) take a comprehensive look at the most famous Russian opera, Modest Musorgsky's Boris Godunov. The result is both a historical study of a famous work and an interpretative piece of scholarship. The topics discussed include: the 'Boris Tale' in history; Karamzin's history and Pushkin's drama as literary sources; Musorgsky's innovations as a librettist and as a theorist of the sung Russian word; the strange story of the opera's composition and revision; its first productions at home and abroad; and an in-depth musical analysis. In the process, several often-met errors in Musorgsky scholarship are clarified and corrected. A final chapter speculates on the opera's themes of political murder, guilt and legitimacy - so important to Russian literary and national identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - and the new role the 'Boris plot' and its composer might come to play in more recent phases of Russian cultural life.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

Preface

Part I. Background: 1. Tsar Boris in history

2. Musorgsky's literary sources, Karamzin and Pushkin

3. Narrative and musical synopsis of the opera

4. History of the composition, rejection, revision, and acceptance of Boris Godunov

5. A tale of two productions - St. Petersburg and Paris

Part II. Entr'acte: 6. Boris and the censor: documents

7. The opera through the years: selected texts in criticism

Part III. Interpretation: 8. The Boris libretto as a formal, literary and historical problem

9. The music

10. Boris Godunov during the jubilee decade

the 1980s and beyond

discography

select bibliography.