Metropolitan Opera

Notes on Boris Godunov

(Stagebill 12/97 p.22)

To most music lovers, Modest Mussorgsky's magnificent Boris Godunov ranks among the world's greatest operas. Yet no one can deny that this masterpiece suffers from flaws, which, over the last 125 years, have rendered it one of the world's most frequently reworked operas.

From its very inception, Boris was plagued with problems. The first version (1869) was rejected by the Imperial Theaters, primarily because it lacked a major female role. Mussorgsky then completed a second version (1872), in which he added both a Polish Act introducing Marina and the scene in the Kromy Forest while making major cuts that included the St. Basil scene. At its 1874 premiere, this second version was a hit with the public, but critics panned it, particularly citing its weak orchestration. And justifiably so. A late bloomer, Mussorgsky had not begun to study composition and instrumentation until he was 18. So, at the time he completed Boris, his skills at orchestration were, at best, extremely limited. Moreover, he was already experiencing his first bout with alcoholism, a disease that would ultimately kill him at the age of 42, in 1881.

Over the subsequent eight years, Boris was performed 26 times, then withdrawn from the repertoire. By 1896, it seemed destined for oblivion, but it was then that Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov decided to save the opera by "correcting" its weaknesses. The plan seemed destined for greatness. After all, Rimsky was both one of his generation's greatest orchestrators and Mussorgsky's closest friend. The two had shared the same furnished room while some of Boris was being composed, and Rimsky had heard his friend play the opera countless times on the piano.

Unfortunately, in his fervor, Rimsky "over-improved" the score, and by the time he completed both his 1896 and 1908 versions he had changed an estimated 85 percent of the original music. The opera had been rescued for posterity, but it was no longer Mussorgsky's work.

In 1928, Mussorgsky's voice was once again heard in the combined publication of both the 1869 and 1872 versions, edited by the Soviet musicologist Pavel Lamm. While the operatic world was astonished at its originality, Mussorgsky's orchestration was again branded "inept and inefficient." Reviewing a performance of this version by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in November 1929, the distinguished music critic of the New York Times, Olin Downes, reported, "The orchestration did not carry. Original as the purpose is, the scoring, again and again, is plain weak." In conclusion, he expressed grave doubts that Boris could ever be a success with Mussorgsky's instrumentation. Stokowski, however, voiced great confidence that Mussorgsky's objective could be realized, saying, "The original orchestration of Mussorgsky shows clearly what he was trying to say, but sometimes he failed to express his musical conception because he was inexperienced in the vast, subtle, and highly differentiated world of the modem orchestra."

The word was out: the opera had to be reorchestrated. But how? And by whom? In 1940, the challenge was accepted by Dmitri Shostakovich, who declared, "I wished to keep it on another plane, to bring out, as far as possible, its traits of affinity with the Soviet epoch." But the public rejected this "Sovietized" approach, finding the orchestration vulgar, strident, and more reflective of Shostakovich than of Mussorgsky.

The Metropolitan Opera, having reservations about both the original and the Shostakovich versions, then commissioned composer Karol Rathaus to develop an enriched orchestration. Although performed between 1953 and 1958, it, too, was ultimately abandoned, probably because the "Mussorgsky sound" had been lost. Eventually, the Met did mount the Shostakovich version under the batons of such luminaries as Erich Leinsdorf, in the 1960-61 season, and Georg Solti, in the 1962-63 season.

Finally, in 1974, the Met scheduled the Lamm version to be conducted by Thomas Schippers, who, determined to avoid changing a single note, said, "Nothing has been touched up. There is nothing wrong with the original orchestration. A large orchestra can make it sound." However, the Met's Chief Librarian, John Grande, reports that the best laid plans quickly fell apart: "Mr. Schippers instructed me to get a clean set of parts of the original Mussorgsky, because that was what we would be using. But, at the first rehearsal, which was the first time that I heard this version, I could hear what 'the complaint' was all about. The orchestration sounded bare and almost amateurish. After this first rehearsal, Mr. Schippers called me to his room and told me he wanted to make a few 'adjustments' in the parts. These changes were made, and many more followed over the next few weeks, not only during rehearsals, but even after opening night."

Assistant Conductor Richard Woitach, who was covering for Schippers, recalls that once he began making changes, the staff began counting. The count was terminated when, before even reaching -the halfway point, 270 changes had been made.

The Met scheduled other performances of the original Boris between 1978 and 1990, with each new conductor making his own edits and adjustments.

By June 1997, 125 years after its completion, Boris had been completely reinterpreted, rebalanced, and rewritten by no fewer than four composers. Moreover, conductor after conductor had tried to "spot correct" the various scores, leaving them in worse shape than ever.

However, one more version was already in development. This version, first performed on December 19, 1997, by the Metropolitan Opera, is the work of the Russian-American conductor and expert in Russian church and folk music Igor Buketoff.

Buketoff had been one of the first in the United States to own the 1928 Lamm edition of Boris, and, while in his teens, he pored over it with his composition teacher, Constantin Shvedov. An outstanding music professor, formerly of Moscow, Shvedov had been an associate of Rimsky-Korsakov, who had shared many recollections of his friend Mussorgsky. So, in a sense, a lineage had been formed, from Mussorgsky to Rimsky-Korsakov to Shvedov to Buketoff.

By the time he was in his late teens, Buketoff was already dreaming of reorchestrating Boris, but as his teaching and conducting career expanded, the opera project became increasingly remote. Finally, six decades later, the second Russian revolution put several of his commitments to the Soviet Ministry of Culture on pen-nanent hold, leaving him time to devote to this task. By then, he was experienced in reorchestration. (His version of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture restored the introductory and closing theme "God, Save Thy People" to its original form as a sung chant from the Orthodox liturgy, and called for a children's choir to sing the lilting nursery song that is placed against the Marseillaise.) His lifelong familiarity with Russian culture and music and his friendship with Sergei Rachmaninoff led to a request from the composer's family for him to orchestrate the first (and only existing) act of Rachmaninoff's abandoned opera, Monna Vanna. After conducting the premiere of this work with the Philadelphia Orchestra, he recorded it with his reconstruction of the original version of Rachmaninoff's elusive Piano Concerto No. 4.

Buketoff's reorchestration was five years in the making. Decades of studying both the piano and orchestral scores of Boris left him with the growing suspicion that the problem of the orchestration concerned more than the instruments alone. The "Mussorgsky sound" resulted also from unusual chord spellings and from "unorthodox" voice leading that had its origin in the native Russian folk song. Buketoff explains, "The piano score, especially, revealed incomplete spellings, when it would have been easier for the hands to add the missing notes. However, when these notes were added experimentally, what was immensely fresh and original became commonplace and pedestrian."

He continues, "A danger lay in abandoning Rimsky, whose brilliant orchestration had been inspired by Mussorgsky's playing on the piano. Time and again, I found Rimsky's changes of notes, rhythms, even keys, unnecessary and unforgivable. Yet his orchestration was still superb, and I realized it could be refashioned with Mussorgsky's notes. For example, his brief use of cellos divided into four stands, accompanying Boris's solo in the Coronation Scene, is a sound of indescribably simplicity and beauty."

"Rimsky was very proud of this scene," asserts Buketoff, "and with good reason. Mussorgsky's original was weak, and the introduction was very bland. Then came a moment of silence followed by the curtain, and more blandness! To make the scene more effective, I used a slightly enhanced version of the Mussorgsky for the introduction. Then, at the curtain, I combined Mussorgsky's notes and Rimsky's orchestration, and enriched it further to give the audience a greater sense of immediacy and presence."

Buketoff admits to encountering several extremely awkward sections: "There are places where Mussorgsky clumsily stitched sketches together, and because I refused to add anything that was not the composer's, I either tried to camouflage the 'seams' by covering them with a cloudier orchestration, or I made them more stark in order to shock the listener."

In 1994, Buketoff met with conductor Valery Gergiev, who had heard about Monna Vanna and expressed an interest in performing it in St. Petersburg. In the course of their meeting, the conversation turned to the Boris project, and Gergiev asked to see sample pages of the work-inprogress. His subsequent enthusiasm about the project led to its presentation to the Metropolitan Opera, which programmed Boris for the 1997-98 season.

So, how will this Boris differ from others? Listeners can expect the gaunt music to sound more desolate, the love music to be more impassioned, and the mob scene to feel more out of control. Buketoff's summary is brief. "My aim was to preserve the sound of Mussorgsky, rather than to change it."