A Singer’s Guide to the Great Composers: Mussorgsky
The extraordinary Russian composer, Modest Mussorgsky, lived a strange life, wrote one of the greatest of Russian operas and also composed many wonderful songs, some of which I have sung over the years, initially inspired and helped by the human whirlwind that was Galina Vishnevskaya!
Mussorgsky was born in 1839 into an aristocratic Russian family in Karevo, on a large estate 250 miles south of St Petersburg. There had been musicians in the family, and the young Modest showed talent. The family name has given rise to many stories, as it should read Musorsky. The ‘g’ was added later and the pronunciation, with the stress on the second syllable was also changed at a later date. Apparently, ‘musor’ with the stress on the first syllable means rubbish or garbage, and the family were understandably wary of mistakes, deliberate or otherwise! At the age of 10, he was enrolled in the prestigious St Peter’s School, in St Petersburg, where lessons were taught in German, and at the age of 13, he entered the Cadet School of the Guards, where he played the piano and acquired the taste for alcohol that eventually killed him.
After graduation, he received a commission for the Preobrazhensky Regiment, the top regiment of the Imperial Guard, where he met the composer Borodin. Music began to take over his life, and friendships with Balakirev, Cui and Darghomyzhsky resulted in him resigning his commission and devoting himself to composition. The emancipation of the Russian serfs forced him back home to try to stave off the impoverishment of his family, but this change in circumstances resulted in his return to St Petersburg to work, where he became a civil servant.
He was part of the “Five”, an amorphous grouping of composers in Russia, and began to be seen as a serious composer, whose music was unique. He was especially interested in using text and music together, to express emotions directly in a heightened form, far from traditional classical song. He bore a strong similarity to Debussy, not in musical style but in his unorthodox and individual writing. He wanted to create something new and intensely Russian, a sound world that reflected both his homeland and the huge changes that were happening in it. Although their music is not remotely similar, both composers were determined to create a new type of word setting. While working at his day job in the Forestry Department, he started work on the opera that was to define him, ‘Boris Godunov’, first performed, after many setbacks and revisions, in 1874.
The genesis of this masterpiece is immensely complicated, both by Mussorgsky’s willingness to rewrite parts of it, and the genuine but mistaken efforts of friends and colleagues to “improve” it. The subject – the rise and fall of Tsar Boris Godunov (1551 – 1605; Tsar 1598 – 1605) and both the intrigues that led to that fall and also the part played by the Russian people in the events – was a particularly touchy one in the light of the breathtaking events of the 19th century in Russia, leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and this political element, rather like the contemporary history of Italy and its relationship with Verdi’s operas, ensured that there was a hiatus in the recognition of ‘Boris Godunov’ as a work of genius for several decades. Mussorgsky’s early death from alcoholic poisoning in 1881 resulted in the rewriting, re-orchestration and re-ordering of many of the scenes, mostly by Rimsky-Korsakov, himself a hugely talented composer, but limited in vision, and quite incapable of understanding what Mussorgsky was trying to achieve. It was the Rimsky version that became known to the wider world in the early years of the 20th century, along with Feodor Chaliapin’s hugely dramatic assumption of the title role, and it is only recently that scholars have been able to piece together what Mussorgsky really wanted it to sound like, and how the scenes fit together. It is clear that his original concept, while preserving the central role of Tsar Boris, was to have the Russian people, symbolised by the Holy Simpleton (of whom more later) as the main protagonist in the story.
I have sung twice in ‘Boris Godunov’, once in 1987 with Chelsea Opera Group in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, and a few years later at Opera North, a production which was revived at the BBC Proms in the Albert Hall. On both occasions, I sang the drunken monk, Varlaam, and at Opera North, I also understudied the role of Tsar Boris, played by Sir John Tomlinson, the first of many times over the years when I covered the great man, although he never cancelled!!!
The author as Varlaam
Listening again to the opera as research for this article, I was astonished once more by the fantastic inventiveness of Mussorgsky, and his ability to catch what is often referred to as the “Russian Soul”. My wife and I twice visited the former Soviet Union in the 1980s, once in summer and once in the depths of winter, in 1987, to celebrate Fran’s 30th birthday. I will never forget a wonderful day on that second visit, when we managed to get ourselves on a tour out of Moscow to Sergiyev Posad, to the monastery of the Trinity Lavra of St Sergius, where Boris is buried. It was a crystal-clear January day, sunny with a cloudless sky, absolutely freezing (we were told it was -30 degrees Celsius) and with the landscape covered by deep snow. The monastic complex, including the great Cathedral of the Assumption (modelled on, but much larger than, the cathedral of the same name in the Kremlin in Moscow) was mostly completed by the beginning of Godunov’s life, and we felt privileged to be there, especially as Glasnost was beginning to open up Russia to the outside world. The white buildings, topped by golden domes, glittered in the winter sunlight. We were there right before the very end of the Communist era, as the events of that day showed. It had always been an ambition of mine to see the great Bolshoi (meaning Big in Russian) Theatre in Moscow, and I inquired early in our trip, which was organised by the Soviet tourist company, Intourist, if we could get tickets for the opera. The tickets were quite cheap, as was everything for tourists at that time, but hard to get. I asked what we could see and was told that there was a performance of Puccini’s ‘La Boheme’ and, I think, ‘Carmen’, during our stay. I could read enough Russian to work out that on the night of our trip to Sergiyev Posad, there was a performance of ‘Boris Godunov’ at the Bolshoi, so I enquired about tickets, only to be told that “No, is not possible. Very lovely Puccini opera the next night. Much nicer!” For the first, and I hope, last time in my life, I came out with the “Do you know who I am?” line, inventing a much larger career than I had managed by this time, and once again insisting that we needed to go to Mussorgsky’s opera.
Miraculously, two tickets appeared, and Fran and I found ourselves in the stalls of the Bolshoi, watching the great Yevgeny Nesterenko singing Tsar Boris, on the same day that we had visited his tomb at the Trinity Lavra. It was an unforgettable experience, although the standards of acting fell well short of the vocal skills, except for Nesterenko, who was magnificent. It was a pity to discover later, reading Vishnevskaya’s fantastic autobiography, that Nesterenko had been a party man and was one of the musicians responsible for kicking Galina and Rostropovich out of Russia, but he was a hell of a singer, and his Boris was splendid. It is also funny to recall that, exhilarated as we were after the performance, I remember only sporadic applause, as the majority of the audience ran to the cloakrooms in an attempt to avoid the huge queues to collect coats, scarves hats, gloves etc with which to face the Moscow night! But what a day it had been!
We have never been back to Russia since, and I imagine it is much changed. Memories of the Moscow Metro, pristine and gleaming with tickets at 1 Kopek a ride, the huge state store GUM, in the heart of Red Square, with very little to buy, a visit to the Kremlin (more gleaming buildings with golden domes), the Science Park with its historic Soviet space rockets, Leningrad sparkling in the pale northern sunlight, next to the frozen Baltic Sea and the silent Neva River, thick with ice, empty restaurants where we couldn’t get a table because the staff couldn’t be bothered to serve us, fabulous blinis for breakfast and the vast Hermitage Museum to explore almost alone! I remember the overnight sleeper train from Moscow to Leningrad, with dour babushkas attending to huge tea samovars at the end of each corridor. One of the funniest memories is that our fellow Intourist travellers couldn’t understand why we were there in January. All the others had various clandestine purposes for their visit – distributing Christian literature, seeking Jewish families to persuade them to leave for Israel, people doing dodgy deals with Russians - while we were on holiday looking for the soul of Russia, and for a good time. This little digression had a purpose (really, you say?), in that I am trying to evoke, through our visits, that essential Russian character that exists so poignantly in the music of that great country, and in particular, Mussorgsky.
The music of ‘Boris Godunov, especially in the original version, is infused with that Russian soul (‘Dushé’). Having only ever sung it in English, I wanted desperately to perform it in the original Russian. During the 80s, I worked hard on my Russian language and studied with Vishnevskaya, and Dimitry Makarov, the Russian coach at Covent Garden. I learned and performed Mussorgsky’s fabulous song Cycles, ‘Songs and Dances of Death’ and ‘Sunless’ several times, notably with Jeremy Sams and Graham Johnson on BBC Radio 3 and was suggested in the national press as a future Boris Godunov. Sadly, for me at least, the Soviet Union collapsed and suddenly the opera houses of Western Europe were flooded with excellent and quite cheap Russian basses with whom I couldn’t hope to compete. It was fortuitous that, at this point in my career, I was taken up by the Baroque Music renaissance, and my career path took an altogether different direction!
However, it might be worthwhile, at this juncture, to write about what it is like to sing Mussorgsky, in any language. There are three great bass roles in ‘Boris Godunov’, a luxury only rarely offered to my voice type. Interestingly, as in Wagner, the roles are not really interchangeable. On the two occasions I sang in the opera, both in English, I sang Varlaam, the wandering, impecunious and boozed up monk, who appears in the scene at the Lithuanian border, and in the final scene in the forest outside Moscow. His big number is when he tells the story of the siege of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible, which is something of a shout with loud orchestration, but good fun. Better is the moment at the end of the scene when, accused by the false Dmitry of actually being the traitor Grigory, he painstakingly spells out the words of the official warrant for the arrest of same traitor. It is a clever scene, both words and music, being funny and menacing at the same time.
I found this engagement frustrating because I was playing Varlaam in a restaging of the opera at Opera North, replacing a singer well-known for his comic roles. I wanted to bring a bit more menace into the part, but the director kept saying “No No. xxxxx played it like this. Can’t you do the same?” The frustration lay in the fact that the previous singer was completely different from me, both physically and vocally, and it was impossible to copy his performance, which was what they wanted. Had I been somewhat older, I would have told them that I was an artist in my own right and wished to bring something new to the role. Instead, I stayed stumm, and sulked inwardly!
The role of the aged monk Pimen is much more of a singing role, but I always found that it lay uncomfortably for my voice. It is quite high for a bass role, and should have fitted me perfectly, but it needs those higher notes to be sung rather quietly and with a lot of heaviness in the voice. When I reach the top of my range, my voice naturally lightens, and I found it difficult to achieve the correct effect for Pimen.
Conversely, I found singing Boris (which I only sang in understudy rehearsals) much easier, and dramatically it is a fantastic role, with scope for all sorts of nuance. Indeed, many of the reviews of various recordings mention whether the singer playing Boris is a singing Tsar or a speaking Tsar. By this, they mean to differentiate the two traditional performance styles - the dramatic, parlando type, personified by the great Feodor Chaliapin, or the more lyrical type, like Nicolai Ghiaurov. As you would probably guess from my writings over the past year, I would favour the more lyrical approach, although both have their merits. Boris’ final death scene is one of the finest scenes in all opera, and I was lucky enough to sing it a couple of times in concert. The dying Tsar speaks directly to his son, Feodor, warning him of the dangers awaiting him as he assumes the throne (as we know, he does not become Tsar as the false Dmitry usurps the crown), and his narration moves through churchlike music, warlike music and tender familial tones, until in a final dying blast, he cries out “I am still the Tsar”, before collapsing in convulsions and groans to his death. It is a wonderful scene, beautifully balanced, with a telling text. The libretto of the opera was Mussorgsky’s own adaptation of Alexander Pushkin’s play, which had been banned in Russia for years, and it is very fine, but really difficult to translate into English successfully. Like Debussy with Maeterlinck’s French, I personally find English translations lose an enormous amount of the actual sound of the Russian language, with its two types of consonants and vowels. Pushkin was a genius and rendering his beautiful poetry into another language is almost sacrilege. It is fascinating to note that the two most famous, and dare I say it, the finest, Russian operas ‘Boris Godunov’ and ‘Eugene Onegin’ are both musical settings of Pushkin.
I never sang in ‘Boris Godunov’ again, nor in Mussorgsky’s other great opera, ‘Khovanshchina’, but I do occasionally return to the songs, especially “The Songs and Dances of Death”, which are terrifying in their various descriptions of the personification of Death as a creepy babysitter, a serenading lover, an old crone and the figure of Death, the war general collecting his victims after battle. He was not much interested in using Russian folk melodies, as many of his contemporaries did, but rather in the essential sadness and difficulty of life in this great but complicated country, forever stuck between East and West, and never reconciling itself to one or other. I mentioned the Holy Simpleton in ‘Boris Godunov’ - he appears in one or two scenes towards the end of the opera, depending on the version used, and Mussorgsky gives him the most plaintive music possible. In the scene outside the Kremlin, he is tormented by a group of children who steal his one kopek. Boris sees him and shows compassion. He asks the simpleton to pray for him but is told that this is impossible because the Tsar is a murderer. In the original final scene (I know, the complexity of the different versions is mind-boggling!), after we see the Pretender, the False Dmitry, setting out to take control of the crown, the scene is cleared to leave the Holy Fool alone, lamenting the fate of Russia. It is one of the most moving and deeply sad endings to any opera, its apparent simplicity masking its profundity.
The deterioration in Mussorgsky’s health due to alcohol abuse was wretched, and the cutting short of a life of extraordinary creativity was cruel. He died at the age of 42, and there is a terrible portrait of him, painted just before his death by the great Russian painter Repin, in a state of complete disarray and confusion. It is a great shame that this painting is usually the one used to portray Mussorgsky, as it surely distracts us from his genius. A wild haired, red nosed madman is hardly the way to remember this titan of music.
Mussorgsky by Repin
It is hard to recommend a perfect recording of ‘Boris Godunov’, as I don’t believe one exists. I like the Bulgarian set recorded in the late 80s with Nicolai Ghiaurov, but the tenor who sings Grigory/Dmitry is poor. There are lots of recordings to choose from, of course, and many use the Rimsky Korsakov version. In this version, there are great basses who should be heard, including Chaliapin, Boris Cristoff, Nesterenko and Ghiaurov again.
The songs have been recorded by some great singers, including the astonishing Galina Vishnevskaya, as well as some of the basses above. Seek them out – they will repay the effort.
