BORIS GODUNOV, grand opera in three acts (often subdivided differently in per formance) by Modeste Petrovich Moussorgski (libretto based on a drama by Pushkin). First produced at Saint Petersburg 24 Jan. new style 6 Feb.) 1874. Moussorgski was one of a group of amateur musicians whose life purpose was the formation of a Neo-Russian school of music. They all labored unceasingly and left their ineradicable mark on the musical life of Russia. Boris is a national music drama in the truest sense. It concerns itself with one of the most sensational episodes of Russian his tory—one that is familiar to every Russian— and is full of dramatic interest. The period is about 1600 and the story is that of the regent Boris, who, after doing away with the younger brother of the weak heir to the throne, the only obstacle in his usurped the crown and ruled for many years, until the false Dmitri appeared, causing him to. give way suddenly in a paroxysm of remorse and madness strikingly portrayed in the opera. MOussorgsky was musically not a thoroughly trained artist and his extraordinarily imaginative genius was handicapped by a craftsmanship unequal to the i demands upon it. His lifelong friend and asso ciate, Rimsky-Korsakov, undertook a revision of the orchestral score after the composer's death and that is the version now used in per formance. The music. of Boris has a powerful
magic of its own. The composer shows a strik ing aloofness from the prevailing musical in fluences of his day and, in his effort to give practical expression to the slogan °Russian music for the Russians,'" he even swung, at times, in the direction of musical nihilism; but his music is always vital, original and realistic. Boris has none of the conventional divisions and ensemble numbers of Italian opera, nor the usual distribution of arias. In spite of the com manding figure of Boris and the magnificent monologues which the composer has provided for him, the chief interest is centered in the chorus. The introduction of the third scene suggesting the bells of the Kremlin is strangely prophetic of the music of the ultra-modern French composers. This, and the great choruses in the first, third and last scenes, and the song of the hostess of the Inn, folklike in character, may be singled out as the finest portions of the work. Lewis M. ISAACS.