Modest Musorgsky and Boris Godunov : myths, realities, reconsiderations

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Bibliographic Information

Modest Musorgsky and Boris Godunov : myths, realities, reconsiderations

Caryl Emerson and Robert William Oldani

Cambridge University Press, 2006, c1994

  • : pbk

Available at  / 2 libraries

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Note

"First published 1994, this digitally printed first paperback version 2006"--T.p. verso

"Paperback re-issue"--Back cover

Discography: p. 317-323

Includes bibliographical references (p. 324-332) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Caryl Emerson (a literary specialist) and Robert William Oldani (a music historian) take a comprehensive look at the most famous Russian opera, Modest Musorgsky's Boris Godunov. The result is both a historical study of a famous work and an interpretative piece of scholarship. The topics discussed include: the 'Boris Tale' in history; Karamzin's history and Pushkin's drama as literary sources; Musorgsky's innovations as a librettist and as a theorist of the sung Russian word; the strange story of the opera's composition and revision; its first productions at home and abroad; and an in-depth musical analysis. In the process, several often-met errors in Musorgsky scholarship are clarified and corrected. A final chapter speculates on the opera's themes of political murder, guilt and legitimacy - so important to Russian literary and national identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - and the new role the 'Boris plot' and its composer might come to play in more recent phases of Russian cultural life.

Table of Contents

  • List of illustrations
  • List of tables
  • Preface and acknowledgments
  • Part I. Background: 1. Tsar Boris in history
  • 2. Musorgsky's literary sources, Karamzin and Pushkin
  • 3. Narrative and musical synopsis of the opera
  • 4. History of the composition, rejection, revision, and acceptance of Boris Godunov
  • 5. A tale of two productions - St. Petersburg (1874-1882), Paris (1908)
  • Part II. Entr'acte: 6. Boris and the censor: documents
  • 7. The opera through the years: selected texts in criticism
  • Part III. Interpretation: 8. The Boris libretto as a formal, literary, and historical problem
  • 9. The music
  • 10. Boris Godunov during the jubilee decade: the 1980s and beyond
  • Discography
  • Bibliography
  • Index.

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