The Border Scene from Boris Godunov (Act I, Scene 2, 1872 version)

Boris Godunov is, with Eugene Onegin, one of the two greatest of the many operas inspired by Pushkin. It is true that the second version, the first to be performed – at the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, in 1874 – makes several radical departures from Pushkin’s Boris Godunov. But it is also true that the initial stimulus for the opera came from Pushkin’s play and that Mussorgsky fashioned the original version of the libretto directly from it. While each version has its adherents, as far as the present excerpt is concerned there is not much point in arguing their relative merits: the border scene is little different in the revision of 1872 from what it was in the version Mussorgsky had completed in 1869 and so unsuccessfully presented for official approval in 1871.

Even after Mussorgsky had added scenes and rewritten others to meet the demands of the Directorate of the Imperial Theatres – who had been particularly worried by the absence of a prominent female role in the original version – there was still a reluctance to stage the work. One factor that led to its eventual adoption by the Mariinsky was a staging of this border scene and the two scenes of the Polish act, the latter newly written in 1872 and designed to introduce a vital love interest. From the border scene alone it must have been clear that here was a composer with a style ideally matched to the Russian language and its folk-song associations, a great gift for melody and a rare genius for characterisation in dramatic situations.

The one significant difference between the two versions of the present scene, which is set in an inn on the border between Russia and Lithuania, is a new song in folk style, “Once I caught a duck, what a stroke of luck!” for the Innkeeper (mezzo-soprano). The most prominent musical role in the scene, however, is still that of Varlaam (bass) who arrives at the inn with another vagabond monk, Missail (tenor), and a young novice, Grigory (tenor). Varlaam has two songs, “By the walls of Kazan, the might fortress, Tsar Ivan made a celebrated conquest” and, after some by-play with Grigory, “He walks along, walks all day long, singing a merry song” – the latter to a tune Mussorgsky borrowed from Rimsky-Korsakov.

Varlaam resents the fact that Grigory will not sing and drink with him. The latter is here not to get drunk, however. He has learned that 10 years earlier Boris Godunov, now the Tsar of Russia, had disposed of Dmitri, the 9-year-old son of Ivan the Terrible and rightful heir to the throne, to clear the way for his own ambitions. Exactly the same age as the murdered Tsarevich would have been by now, Grigory has conceived the plan of presenting himself as a reincarnated Dmitri with the ultimate aim of overthrowing Boris. For that he needs the support of Roman Catholic Poland which he knows will use him as an excuse for mounting a campaign against Orthodox Russia. But first he must cross the border before the Russian Police, who are already in search of the Pretender, catch up with him. The Innkeeper tells him how to avoid the border guards and, in spite of the dramatic intervention of the Police, whose suspicions he cleverly diverts onto Varlaam, Grigory escapes out of a window.

Rupert Avis © 2008