Boris Godunov - San Francisco Opera

Like his literary contemporary Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Mussorgsky depicts in his music "the
insulted and the injured" with all their passion and pain. He raises these characters to tragic
heights until the grotesque and majestic coexist. Mussorgsky could accomplish this not
simply out of compassion or guilt towards them, but because in his works he almost
becomes them. Mussorgsky's music is vivid, confused, feverish and ultimately hypnotizing.
Many of his major works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other
nationalist themes, including the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem Night on
Bald Mountain, and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. However, while Mussorgsky's
music can be vivid and nationalistic, it does not glorify the powerful and is at times
antimilitaristic. For this reason, it was perceived as being directed against the state and its
composer "under suspicion." He, like the others in The Russian Five, were considered
dangerous extremists by the emperor and his court. This may have been the reason Tsar
Alexander III personally crossed off Boris Godounov from the list of proposed pieces for the
imperial opera in 1888.
Mussorgsky was born in Kraevo, in north Russia, March 21, the son of a landowner. He
studied piano as a child but often rebelled against his teachers. At 9 years old, he brilliantly
performed a piano concerto by composer John Field.
Originally aiming for the army, aged 10, he entered the military academy at St Petersburg,
and joined as cadet officer at the Guards Regiment, however, continued to study music and
composition.
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