Modest Musorgsky And Boris Godunov

Caryl Emerson, Robert William Oldani

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.

Bibliographic Details

17 b/w illus.

Contents

• List of illustrations
• List of tables
• Preface and acknowledgments
• Part I. Background: 1. Tsar Boris in history
• 2. Musorgskys 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 (1874–1882), Paris (1908)
• Part II. Entracte: 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
• Bibliography
• Index.