MOUSSORGSKY Boris Godounov ~1869 & 1872 Versions (5 discs) GERGIEV Kirov Opera

Description: Besides being one of the best modern recordings of this masterpiece about a Macbeth-like czar who murders his way to the top, this five-disc set presents the opera both in its original 1869 version and in its 1872 revision, side by side. The former is clearly not finished: it needs more scenes (key characters have little stage time), and the ones that do exist don't always make their full dramatic impact. However, there's much brilliance even in nascent form, particularly with the composer's discreet breaks with traditional, functional harmony a full 30 years before Debussy. Even passages that sound inept do so eloquently, thanks to Valery Gergiev's seemingly telepathic rapport with Moussorgsky's psychologically penetrating dramaturgy. Key roles are often double cast, which gives vocal and interpretive variety and shows off just how rich the Kirov Opera is in bass voices. --David Patrick Stearns Boris Godunov(1869)byModest MussorgskyBoris - Nikolai PutilinXenia - Olga TrifonovaFyodor - Zlata BulychevaGrigory - Viktor LutsiukPimen - Nikolai OkhotnikovShuisky - Konstantin PluzhnikovVarlaam - Fyodor KuznetsovMisail - Nikolai GassievInnkeeper - Liubov SokolovaSimpleton (Holy Fool) - Yevgeny AkimovNurse - Yevgenia GorokhovskayaNikitich, police officer - Grigory KarasevMityukha - Evgeny Nikitin Boris Godunov(1872)byModest MussorgskyBoris - Vladimir VaneevXenia - Olga TrifonovaFyodor - Zlata BulychevaGrigory (False Dmitry) - Vladimir GalusinMarina - Olga BorodinaPimen - Nikolai OhotnikovVarlaam - Fyodor KuznetsovShuisky - Konstantin PluzhnikovMissail - Nikolai Gassiev (Tenor)Rangoni - Evgeny NikitinHostess - Liubov SokolovaSimpleton - Yevgeny AkimovTchelkalov - Vassily GereloKrushchov - Yuri SchikalovNurse - Yevgenia GorokhovskayaMityukha - Evgeny NikitinLavitsky - Andrei KarabanovCherniovsky - Yuri Laptev Valery Gergiev, conductorKirov Theater Orchestra, Kirov Theater ChorusVan de Omroep Music Center, HilversumRecording: 11/1997 421 page booklet with full Cyrillic librettos with facing English, French, and German translations. Among major operas, Boris Godunov shares with Verdi's Don Carlos (1867) the distinction of having an extremely complex creative history, as well as a great wealth of alternative material. The composer created two versions—the Original Version of 1869, which was rejected for production by the Imperial Theatres, and the Revised Version of 1872, which received its first performance in 1874 in Saint Petersburg. Boris Godunov has seldom been performed in either of the two forms left by the composer, frequently being subjected to cuts, recomposition, re-orchestration, transposition of scenes, or conflation of the original and revised versions. Several composers, chief among them Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov and Dmitri Shostakovich, have created new editions of the opera to "correct" perceived technical weaknesses in the composer's original scores. Although these versions held the stage for decades, Mussorgsky's individual harmonic style and orchestration are now valued for their originality, and revisions by other hands have fallen out of fashion. In the 1980s, Boris Godunov was closer to the status of a repertory piece than any other Russian opera, even Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and is the most recorded Russian opera.

Price: 29.95 USD

Location: Cincinnati, Ohio

End Time: 2024-11-16T01:39:22.000Z

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Artist: Vladimir Vaneev, Yuri Schikalov, Andrei Karabanov, Viktor Lutsuk, Evgeny Nikitin, Olga Borodina, Nikolai Bass Vocals Okhotnikov, Grigory Karasev, Evgeny Akimov, Vladimir Galusin, Liubov Sokolova, Nikolai Gassiev, Vassily Gerelo, Olga Trifonova, Zlata Bulycheva, Konstantin Pluzhnikov, Nikolai Putilin, Yuri Laptev, Fyodor Kuznetsov

Format: CD

Release Year: 1998

Record Label: Philips

Release Title: MOUSSORGSKY Boris Godounov ~1869 & 1872 Versions

Style: Opera

Genre: Classical, Opera

Run Time: 311 min.