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This chapter provides a detailed description of Prokofiev's scores for the 1937 Pushkin centennial, specifically his incidental music for theatrical productions of Boris Godunov and Eugene Onegin, and his score for a filmed version of The Queen of Spades. For political reasons, these three prestigious commissions went unrealized, obliging Prokofiev to recycle the music in other, later scores. The chapter details Prokofiev's collaborations with Meyerhold, the director Alexander Tairov, the writer Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, and the filmmaker Mikhaíl Romm. Attention is paid to his theatrical and cinematic innovations, and to his effort to distance himself creatively from the operatic influences of Musorgsky and Chaikovsky.

This chapter examines the question of legitimacy that arose in Muscovy in the seventeenth century when Tsar Fedor Ivanovich died in 1598 without leaving an heir and was replaced by Boris Godunov. It first considers the election of a tsar as a strategy for dealing with the break in dynastic succession occasioned by Fedor Ivanovich’s death and cites two examples: the proclamation of Vasilii Shuiskii as tsar in May 1606 and the election of Mikhail Romanov by the Land Assembly in February 1613. It then discusses the political phenomenon of “pretense” and looks at two imposters claiming a right to the throne: the First False Dmitrii and the Second False Dmitrii. It also analyzes the letter sent by the archpriest Terentii to First False Dmitrii in which he attempted to relate royal legitimacy to Church authority over the rite of anointment. Finally, it explores two accounts that explain the chaotic succession to the throne of political figures standing outside the old dynastic line: Avraamii Palitsyn’s Narrative and Ivan Timofeev’s Chronicle.

The two authorial versions of Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov reflect contrasting historiographical and ideological traditions that were being debated in the 1860s and 1870s, when the opera was being written. The difference is epitomized by the St. at St. Basil’s shrine in the original version, which depicts the crowd (i.e., the Russian people) according to the tradition of Nikolai Karamzin, the autocracy’s official historiographer, as submissive and dependent; and the so-called Kromy Forest scene which replaced it in the revised version, which depicts the crowd as actively rebellious and as a powerful agent, according to the then recent revisionary writings of Nikolai Kostomarov. What then of the widespread custom, dating from the Moscow Bolshoy Theater revival of the opera for Mujsorgsky’s centenary in 1939, of including the two scenes in a conflated version of the opera that the composer never imagined? Despite its manifest incoherence from an historiographical standpoint, it has become popular owing to its aesthetic and dramatic qualities. It thus crystallizes a key problem in academic reception studies, which have generally followed a modernist bias that upholds authors over audiences.

This chapter examines Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov. It discusses how the opera became a tangible presence in the culture of European modernism. It also explains that it took time for Mussorgsky's innovative dramatic design to be adapted in Western theater and it was Giacomo Puccini's Turandot that introduced a Musorgskian unruly crowd to the Western musical drama.

This chapter explores the reasons why Modest Musorgsky's Boris Godunov was introduced with a new orchestration by Igor Buketoff to supersede the composer's original scoring and the life of Modest Musorgsky. He died suddenly and tragically, with both his later operas unfinished and Boris in limbo, unexportable to any other house than St. Petersburg's Mariyinsky Theater. Musorgsky's friend Rimsky-Korsakov then stepped in, completing and revising his works, assuring their survival and, in the case of Boris, eventual triumph the world over. It meant acknowledging the deficiencies of his technique and the necessity of revision, thus implicitly ratifying the value, and final victory, of the traditions Musorgsky had once so proudly flouted. An immediate result was the republication of the original Russian vocal score, followed by the first publication anywhere of the 1872 orchestral score as edited by the outstanding Soviet musicologist Pavel Lamm.

This chapter focuses on Stalin Prizes awarded to performers, both for individuals and for production teams in opera. It begins with an overview of the politics involved in opera and dramatic theatre awards and goes on to discuss what was perceived as Iosif Stalin's preferential treatment for the star singers of the Bolshoi. It then considers the Stalin Prizes' glorification of opera productions, along with the problematic Stalinization of Modest Musorgsky's works like Boris Godunov. It also examines the Stalin Prize selection process for instrumental performers such as pianists and string players. It argues that the Stalin Prize remained out of reach for some performers who were major figures in Soviet musical life, including Alexander Gauk and Yakov Flier.