Boris Godunov - San Francisco Opera

Statue of Mussorgsky near his native village
From Page to Stage
By the close of 1868, Mussorgsky had already started and abandoned two important opera projects. In the
autumn of 1868, Vladimir Nikolsky, a professor of Russian literature and an authority on Pushkin, suggested
to Mussorgsky the idea of composing an opera on the subject of Pushkin’s drama Boris Godunov. Boris had
finally been approved for performance by the state censors in 1866.
Aleksandr Pushkin
(1799–1837)
Mussorgsky began work in October 1868 preparing his own libretto. Pushkin’s drama consists of 24 scenes,
written predominantly in blank verse. Mussorgsky adapted the most theatrically effective scenes, often
preserving
Pushkin’s verses, and augmented these with his own lyrics. He was assisted by a study of History
of the Russian State by Karamzin, to whom Pushkin’s drama is dedicated.
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