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Opera in four parts and seven scenes, First version (1868/1869)
Libretto: Modest Mussorgsky after Alexander Pushkin & Nikolai Karamsins

Stage direction: Calixto Bieito
Set design: Rebecca Ringst
Costume design: Ingo Krügler
Lighting: Michael Bauer
Dramaturgy: Andrea Schönhofer
HD recording: Bavarian State Opera, Munich, February 2013

Child murder, scheming monks and a Tsar lapsing into madness - Modest Mussorgsky spread the thematic arc wide in his choral opera, which he began to work on from 1868, and with which he attempted to awaken an awareness of his own time through the indirect route of a historic story.

As an artist of the 19th century, he was driven by the psychology of the masses. Thus, in 'Boris Godunov', alongside the hero of the title, the main role is actually taken primarily by the Russian people, rejoicing, starving, demanding and questioning. In conjuction with conductor Kent Nagano, Spanish stage director Calixto Bieito proposes an original reading of this brilliant work. The cast is led by Alexander Tsymbalyuk (Boris), with associates Gerhard Siegel (Schuisky), Markus Eiche (Chelkalov) and Anatoli Kotscherga (Pimen).

"A 'Boris Godunov' to die for...The bass Alexander Tsymbalyuk sings Boris with handsome, lean tone and ably conveys the Czar's mental disintegration'' NEW YORK TIMES

Director: Andy Sommer Length: 139 min.
Picture: NTSC, colour, 16:9
Audio: PCM Stereo, 5.1 Dolby Digital
Subtitles: French / English / German
Region: All Region

Questions of editions and orchestration aside, Modest Mussorgsky's penetrating, powerful and potent four-act Boris Godunov, arguably the greatest Russian opera of the 19th c., requires no less than a figure of towering stature to portray this late 16th - early 17th c. Russian Czar. This 1958 Covent Garden performance led by Czech conductor Rafael Kubelik, in his last year as the Royal Opera House music director, has such a figure in Boris Christoff, a bass of considerable vocal and acting talent. Josephine Veasey, Geraint Evans and Regina Resnik, among other cast members, prove no less formidable.

Classical Music

Jimin Oh-Havenith's fourth album for audite is dedicated to works by Mussorgsky, Scriabin and Rachmaninoff, three of the most famous Russian composers of the 19th and (early) 20th centuries. Planned long before Putin's Ukraine war, the release is now a beacon for the often damaged freedom of art.

A breath of fresh air is blowing over the Ural Opera Ballet with this new version of Paquita, halfway between tradition and modernity! A festive ballet recounting the thwarted loves of a gypsy and an officer, Paquita marked the debut of Marius Petipa in Saint Petersburg. But only the last scene of the ballet, the famous Grand pas Classique, remained in the companies’ repertoire. Thanks to a careful reconstruction, the Ural Opera Ballet finally revives the original version in three acts. The product of methodical research by expert Sergei Vikharev and former Principal Vyacheslav Samodurov, the choreography scrupulously recreates Petipa’s 1881 version, according to notes kept at the Harvard Theater Collection. The original score has been rearranged by the famous Saint Petersburg composer, Yuri Krasavin. But if this new production uses the original libretto of the ballet, it nonetheless transposes it in time. The result is a show of great relevance, which brings up to date the strong political and social substrate of the original plot by illustrating it with artistic references gleaned throughout the 20th century. A powerful theatrical experience, crowned with the jury’s special award of the ‘‘Golden Mask’’ in 2019.

Written after Mussorgsky had met Russian artist and designer Viktor Hartmann, Pictures at an Exhibition is by far Mussorgsky’s most played work. The piece was written when Hartmann gave Mussorgsky two ‘pictures.’ Hartmann very suddenly died aged 39; following his death, a memorial exhibition was put on in St. Petersburg. Mussorgsky donated the two ‘pictures’ which Hartmann had given him before he died. Mussorgsky is said to have based the piece on his experiences at this exhibition, which was in memory of Hartmann. The concerto version is performed here by Tamas Ungar in an arrangement by Lawrence Leonard. Australian conductor Geoffrey Simon is resident in London and has appeared there with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra and English Chamber Orchestra. Internationally, he has appeared with the Adelaide, Atlanta, Bournemouth, Canberra, City of Birmingham, Fort Worth, Melbourne, Milwaukee, Queensland, Sapporo, Shanghai, St Louis, Sydney, Tasmanian, Vermont and West Australian Symphony Orchestras, the Israel, Moscow, Munich and New Japan Philharmonic Orchestras, the American Symphony, the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony and the Australian Opera.

First Percy Grainger: Folk Music, then Edvard Grieg: Lyric Music, and now Modest Mussorgsky: Unorthodox Music – a logical sequence in soprano Claire Booth’s and pianist Christopher Glynn’s growing AVIE discography, interspersing a selection of under-represented songs with solo piano works by this most individual and idiosyncratic of all Russian composers. Claire and Chris approach Modest Mussorgsky: Unorthodox Music in the spirit of a storyteller, tracing an arc of life from innocence to experience that is arranged across a prologue and four “scenes” – Nursery, Youthful Years, Marriage and Loneliness – taking their cue from the colorful tableaux of the composer’s operas. Individual numbers from the great song cycles – Youthful Years, Nursery, Sunless, and Songs and Dances of Death – are juxtaposed with works from Mussorgsky’s more unorthodox output, all delivered by Claire and Chris with disarming affect.

Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov stands out among the major works of the opera repertoire in having an extremely complex creative history. The original libretto, by the composer himself, was based closely on Pushkin’s Shakespeare-inspired drama about the ill-fated Russian ruler. Mussorgsky completed the score in 1869, and submitted it to the committees of the Imperial Theatres. It was rejected, however, primarily because of the lack of a female lead and therefore a love interest, but Mussorgsky’s unadorned style has also been mentioned as a reason. In 1871 the composer therefore reworked the opera extensively, adding new scenes – and a female principal in the form of the Polish princess Marina Mniszek – and changing the overall structure from seven scenes into a prologue and four acts. The revised Boris was completed in 1872, and two years later it was finally performed in St Petersburg, while the Moscow audience had to wait until 1888, seven years after the death of its composer. In order to promote the work, Mussorgsky’s colleague and friend Rimsky-Korsakov undertook to revise the work, making the orchestration more traditional and colorful and softening a number of harsh harmonies. It was the Rimsky-Korsakov version that took the opera out of Russia and without it, the opera would not be as widely known as it is today. In recent times, however, several opera houses have begun performing the more abrasive original version from 1869, and it is this ‘Ur-Boris’ that has been recorded here. It is performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra under its principal guest conductor, Kent Nagano. They are joined by a cast of mainly Russian vocal soloists, headed by Alexander Tsymbalyuk as Boris, a role he performed under Nagano already in 2013 at the Bayerische Staatsoper. In the opera, as in Pushkin’s drama, the Russian people plays a hugely important role – here performed by the Göteborg Opera Chorus.

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REVIEWS:

Tsymbalyuk’s young-sounding Tsar is beautifully sung, gaining in intensity from the scene in the Kremlin onwards; but the developing extremity of his emotional responses is never overdone and his death scene remains restrained, with no scenery-chewing.

– Opera

This new account, based on live performances, is beautifully sung and played, and recorded in surround sound. Although one can nitpick many aspects of this recording, there is much to enjoy. It is especially valuable to now have a recording of the opera as Mussorgsky first intended it.

– MusicWeb International

These brilliant, hard-driving performances bring back (happy) memories of Russian orchestras of the 1960s and a style of playing that has all but disappeared. The performances aren't subtle, but then neither is the music, and my how Theodore Kuchar and Co. deliver the goods! The playing isn't perfect: in Pictures, Gnomus sounds a touch frantic, and the trumpets smear their rhythms in Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle; but incidental imperfections count for little next to Kuchar's "pedal to the metal" approach. Listen to the plangent wind sonorities in the second Promenade, to the pounding attack on The Hut on Fowl's Legs, or to the totally uninhibited brass and percussion at the conclusion of The Great Gate of Kiev. This is the real deal, an impression only confirmed by scorching accounts of both versions of A Night on Bald Mountain (Mussorgsky's original and Rimsky-Korsakov's better-known rewrite). The other two short pieces, the Hopak and Golitsin's Exile, simply put the icing on the cake. Don't let the cheap price, the not-terribly-well-known performers, or the brevity of this review prevent you from trying out this really exciting and very well recorded disc (probably the best sonics from this source thus far). You'll be missing a real treat if you do. [6/7/2003]

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com