ABSTRACT
The restoration of the authentic version of Musorgsky’s opera “Boris Godunov” is not only a great artistic event but also a sign of the times. The “people” that according to Pushkin’s stage directions, remain “silent,” when told of the election of the usurper Boris, and later, of the impostor Grishka, that people have suddenly revolted against their artistic guardians, and have demanded to be shown into the laboratory of the genius without benefit of editors. Musorgsky’s original version is by no means a recent discovery; during the composers lifetime, and under his supervision, a vocal score was published by Bessel. But in this edition, the composer robbed himself of some ten pages of exquisite music from the final scene between the Overseer and the people. In the words of Victor Belaiev, the scholarly author of an illuminating pamphlet on the genuine “Boris,” “the exclusion of this exquisite close of the whole tableaux, exquisite in both a musical and a scenic respect, is difficult to understand.” As incomprehensible is the elimination of the eighty-four bars of “magnificent music which must be ranked amongst Musorgsky’s greatest achievements,” as Belaiev appraises it-the music of Pimen’s account of the Tsarevitch’s murder, essential to the dramatic completeness of the opera.
