Boris Godunov

Prologue 

The Russian people are urged to implore Boris Godunov to stay in power and accept the throne. 

A day of national celebration arrives. Boris Godunov has chosen to remain in power to preserve the country’s stability. The people praise their tsar and rejoice. 

First Act 
The life of ordinary people 

The elderly Pimen is writing a history of Russia. He is visited by Grigory, who confides in him about the nightmares that haunt him. In response, Pimen recounts stories of former rulers, including the tale of the murder of Tsarevich Dmitry — an event that cleared the way for Boris Godunov’s rise to power. 

Shaken yet exhilarated, Grigory leaves Pimen and falls in with two wandering drunkards, Varlaam and Missail, who are pestering the Hostess for more to drink. She warns Grigory that the authorities are looking for a fugitive and that the police have become increasingly ruthless. Just then, patrolmen arrive. Grigory manages to slip away. 

Second Act 
The ruled and the rulers 

Xenia mourns the death of her fiancé with unrelenting grief. Her younger brother Fyodor tries in vain to comfort her. Only the presence of Tsar Boris brings her some peace. But Boris himself is deeply troubled — all around him he sees ruin, betrayal, and denunciation. Worse still, Prince Vasily Shuisky arrives with grim news: a man claiming to be Tsarevich Dmitry is laying claim to the throne. The very mention of Dmitry sends Boris into a steep mental decline.

Third Act 
Intermedio 

Marina Mnishek, a proud and ambitious noblewoman, dreams of ruling Russia. She has no interest in romance; talk of suitors falling at her feet only bores her. The scheming courtier Rangoni spins a web of intrigue: Marina must form a romantic alliance with the Pretender — the False Dmitry — and together they will seize the Russian throne. Marina cannot resist Rangoni’s persuasion and agrees to play along. Surrounded by allies and advisors, she celebrates the coming downfall of Boris — and her own rise to power. 

The Pretender, however, trembles with love for Marina. She means more to him than the throne.

Fourth Act 
The Time of Troubles 

Boris continues to rule, while the people endure a life of strife, toil, and deprivation. A group of children mocks the Simple Man, who scolds them — but then hears a rising chorus of voices crying out for help, and for bread. Their plea swells into a demand. In the crowd, the Simple Man sees Boris himself. 

Prince Shuisky tells his subordinates that he has recently seen the tsar — and that Boris’s mental state is a cause for grave concern. As if to confirm his words, Boris appears and begins to ramble incoherently. Shuisky summons Pimen, supposedly to soothe Boris. But Pimen’s tale of the murdered Tsarevich Dmitry delivers the final blow: Boris’s illness overwhelms him, and after prolonged mental and physical torment, he dies. 

With Boris’s death, the Time of Troubles descends in full. The Simple Man foresees the catastrophe to come — and weeps for Russia’s fate.

In the lead-up to the rehearsal process of Boris Godunov, Olga Surkova—journalist, film scholar, and close collaborator of the Russian film legend Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986)—had an extensive conversation with Kirill Serebrennikov about the opera.

Text: Olga Surkova 
 

Olga Surkova: “Kirill, I’m eagerly awaiting your Boris Godunov — considered by many the greatest Russian opera. I was fortunate to attend the 1983 premiere, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky at Covent Garden, and wrote about it for the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant. That was a different era, with its own challenges. At the time, classical opera was only just beginning to modernize — cautiously. Yet even the liberties Tarkovsky took, without altering the historical setting, raised doubts among some critics…” 

Kirill Serebrennikov: “Today, of course, the world of opera is entirely different. For me, the composer of the opera I’m staging is my co-author. We create the production together — he is one of us. That sense of co-authorship with truly great composers is vital to my work. No matter how talented a director or designer may be, he must abandon the urge to look up at the classics from below. Otherwise, he’ll be paralyzed by fear of an unattainable ideal, by the idol — and in this case, there are two: the composer Mussorgsky and the poet Pushkin, whose play forms the basis of the libretto.” 

“Boris Godunov, the play, was written by Alexander Pushkin in 1825. Mussorgsky began work on the opera more than forty years later, in 1868 — after the formal abolition of serfdom in Russia in 1861, which was essentially slavery. Slavery that, in reality, continues to this day, merely in different forms.” 

“In Boris Godunov, Pushkin followed the structure of Shakespearean drama. He was captivated by Shakespeare’s dramaturgy and sought to recreate his historical chronicles of power on Russian soil. For both Shakespeare and Pushkin, power is a panopticon of villains and a cascade of monstrous crimes. Power is sinful and guilty in all its deeds, and the blood it spills seeps into the earth — soil made fertile by futile sacrifice.” 

“Pushkin’s Boris ascends the throne — as the people believe — by murdering the rightful heir. His wounded conscience, stained with a child’s blood, denies him true happiness or peace, leaving him unable to fulfill the vision he once had for his reign.” 

“During the Time of Troubles, power hung from the tree of history like an overripe, rotting apple. Anyone — any chance figure — could pluck it. And so, in a clash of forces, two men converge, drawn by the same burning desire for supreme power. Boris claims the throne through murder; Grigory Otrepyev — a man from the lower ranks — declares himself a pretender, blindly driven by the tide of history. The cynical calculation against belief in random possibility. In the end, neither triumphs. Both are swallowed by the swamps of Russian ambiguity.” 

Olga Surkova: “Was staging Boris Godunov at DNO your idea, or did the theatre propose it?” 

Kirill Serebrennikov: “As a rule, in large opera houses, the administration itself creates the future repertoire of the theater and then offers the director the opportunity to stage a particular production if it interests him. But Boris Godunov is the first — and so far the only — case where I proposed it myself. Sophie de Lint asked what I most wanted to do, and I told her I had long dreamed of staging Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. She said they hadn’t done it for some time — and that’s how the project was born. After working on Der Freischütz and collaborating with the extraordinary Amsterdam chorus, I was even more certain I’d made the right choice.” 

Olga Surkova: “I remember how freely, elegantly, and with such humor you reimagined Weber’s Der Freischütz in Amsterdam in 2022! The Dutch audience loved it. Now you offer them Boris Godunov — an epic, deeply philosophical, historical work with a far more tragic tone…” 

Kirill Serebrennikov: “This opera has always been on my personal list of works I had to stage. I feel that its plot touches something fundamental in the Russian matrix. Russia has always lived — and continues to live — by its own set of rules, hard to explain from within and almost impossible to grasp from outside. I now find myself in a unique position: I know Russia from within, but after spending the last three years outside the country, I can also see it from the outside.” 

“My Boris Godunov unfolds in a Soviet-era concrete apartment block, somewhere in the impoverished Russian provinces — a typical panel building. All sorts of people live there — the narod. In every room of every apartment, there’s a television. Through it, the authorities broadcast everything happening in the country. Everyone watches the same thing: about greatness, the lives of tsars, how life is getting better and richer. They watch passively, waiting to see which tsar will be replaced by another. The wheel of existence — endlessly turning.” 

“Pushkin’s play ends with a line that mesmerizes me: “The people are speechless.” There is silence at the crossroads of history. The people are asked: “Why don’t you rejoice at the new tsar?” And they answer with deathly silence. How to interpret that silence? Does it mean rejection — a form of protest? Or does it reflect apathy, paralysis, exhaustion — silent submission? The meanings vary, but the silence remains a powerful symbol of the Russian paradox.” 

“Mussorgsky offered his own version: in his opera, the people don’t stay silent. They tear down the fragile state structure and cast it to the winds. The Time of Troubles erupts into revolt — not revolution, but riot: senseless and merciless. It’s a very Russian rebellion, senseless and pitiless.”  

“Through his music, Mussorgsky conveys — even more precisely than Pushkin’s words — what the Russian people are living through. Even today. For him, the people, not Boris with his tormented conscience, are the true protagonists. It is the people who drive the action and inspire Mussorgsky’s powerful, hypnotic, Shakespearean music.” 

“As someone shaped by Russian culture, I was taught to love and pity the people. All the great Russian writers did — with awe and compassion. One was Nikolai Nekrasov, whose long poem Who Is Happy in Russia? I staged years ago at the Gogol Center. Nekrasov showed that, even after the abolition of serfdom, village life remained horrific. Nothing really changed. The instinct for servitude proved stronger than the will for freedom.” 

“In Tarkovsky’s time — you mentioned his Godunov earlier — the Soviet people raised their hands in unanimous support for whatever the government said, without even listening. Any dissenters — “holy fools” — were removed, imprisoned, or exiled.” 

“In Putin’s Russia, people remain speechless out of self-preservation — or swear loyalty to the regime. The state literally buys loyalty, offering the poorest villagers money to go to war and kill neighbors — sums they never imagined before. There is no resistance. Those who protested are now imprisoned or exiled. But what’s wrong with people who send loved ones to war for a paycheck? Why do the widows thank the state instead of cursing it? How did we get here — where complaints are about rusty rifles or bad food, not the killing of innocents?”

“This war has deeply sobered me. It has opened my eyes. For many, it’s a moment of truth. That’s why, now more than ever, I feel compelled to stage Boris Godunov.”

Olga Surkova: “It seems no one before you has brought Godunov so close to today’s grim newborn reality — to the unsettling present of provincial Russia that seems to remain unchanged. That world is so vividly captured in the work of the remarkable photographer Dmitry Markov, whose images you incorporated into the staging. You collaborated with him, helped bring attention to his work — and it’s heartbreaking that he left this world so suddenly, on the same day as Navalny, no less.” 

Kirill Serebrennikov: “Yes, it was devastating. Dima Markov was a friend — someone I felt deeply connected to. We didn’t see each other often, but we did a major exhibition of his work at the Gogol Center, had long conversations, and recorded one of our public dialogues. I helped him publish his first book.”

“He was extraordinary — soulful and incredibly fragile. From the start, he warned me: “I’m a real addict. Don’t get involved with me.” But I told him I would anyway. I kept offering help: “Dima, let’s get you into treatment, find good doctors.” But he’d been through rehab a hundred times. He said it was beyond fixing.”

“And maybe, precisely because of that fragility, Dima was able to dissolve completely into the Russian reality he photographed — to the point where people stopped noticing him. He’d arrive in some provincial town with just his phone, go to a market or military unit, and people would accept him as one of their own. That allowed him to take truly unique, intimate photographs.”

“His work had such authenticity and intimacy that it seemed as if people posed for him. But it was his skill — capturing that fleeting moment of absolute beauty. Like Cartier-Bresson: what seems like a casual snapshot becomes art.”

“Dima showed unvarnished Russia with love, compassion, and a tender inner light. His portrait of the people was honest, never flattering — but always loving. That’s why I invited him onto this project. He was deeply inspired and planned to shoot new photos specifically for Godunov. But he didn’t make it in time… Literally the day before he died, we were messaging about the production. Then, suddenly, he was gone.”

“It felt like a double nightmare — his death came on the same day as Alexei Navalny’s, February 16, 2024. One died in a Russian prison in Yamalo-Nenets, the other in Pskov. With Navalny, a fragile hope for change died. And with Dima, the country lost a remarkable artist — someone who saw it as no one else could.”

“I want to dedicate this opera in Amsterdam to Dima’s memory. That means a great deal to me.”

“Boris Godunov is an opera about the people”

Modest Mussorgsky’s epic opera Boris Godunov had its premiere in 1874 at a sold-out Mariinsky Theatre, after the management of the Imperial Theatres in Saint Petersburg had rejected his first version a few years previously. Although it was misunderstood and deemed too radical by many contemporary critics, over time Boris Godunov gained a reputation as the quintessential Russian opera. Conductor Vasily Petrenko is making his house debut at Dutch National Opera, breathing life into Mussorgsky’s rich, powerful and highly individual score with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. 

Text: Benjamin Rous

When Mussorgsky set out to compose Boris Godunov, a heated debate was raging about the direction Russian culture should take. Mussorgsky was one of a group of five composers – together with Mily Balakirev, Alexander Borodin, César Cui and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov – known as the ‘Mighty Handful’. “There were two main factions at the time in intellectual circles. These five composers formed part of the faction that wanted to follow Russian folk traditions and folk music. The other faction was focused on Western Europe and soon became influenced musically by Wagner in particular.”

“The arguments were quite fierce, sometimes even resulting in physical altercations during concerts. But while the ‘Mighty Five’ were trying to revive interest in ancient Russian culture, they were still absorbing quite a lot from the West. That’s also what we see in Boris Godunov: there is music that is clearly rooted in the Russian tradition, but there are also influences from Western composers such as Berlioz and Verdi.” 

Individual style

Mussorgsky’s musical style and use of harmony have always been regarded as highly individual, to such an extent that Rimsky-Korsakov felt the need to correct the harmony and instrumentation of Boris Godunov after Mussorgsky’s death. “I think that of the Mighty Five composers, Mussorgsky was the most radical and the least compromising. Probably because he just cared less; by all accounts he was a very difficult man.”

“You can hear these individual touches from the start of the opera. The coronation scene, for instance, starts with a very dissonant chord, which then loses dissonance in the filling. But even before that, the opera starts with a single bassoon in quite a high register that has similarities with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring some forty years later. Mussorgsky often combines a harmony at the bottom of the range with a completely opposite one at the top, together creating a new chord.” 

Change and continuity 

The key design in the opera has been studied closely and, for all Mussorgsky’s idiosyncrasies, seems to betray careful planning, something that is less apparent when you look at the music from close by. “In the nineteenth century, opera composers were usually careful to avoid sudden key changes because it creates difficulties for the singers and the musicians in the orchestra. But in Boris Godunov we see such changes all the time, corresponding to shifting emotions. Mussorgsky establishes one key, and within two or three bars he is already switching to another. You see that in the music of Marina Mnishek, the false Dmitry and Pimen, and even more so in the music of Boris himself. Towards the end of the opera, the periods of similar emotions become a bit longer, sounding somewhat more organic and less radical.” 

Boris Godunov is a long, complex opera with many scenes of contrasting colour and mood. Within this setup, Mussorgsky uses musical means to create unity. “There’s a system of recurring musical themes that ensures continuity in the piece. Most of them are introduced at the beginning and then used throughout the opera. I wouldn’t call them true leitmotifs in the Wagnerian sense, because in Wagner’s operas the whole orchestral fabric ensues from the motifs and they are adjusted and transformed continuously.”

“In Boris, the musical themes stay more or less the same, although they are not as static as with some other composers. For example, in the Kromy forest scene at the very end, some of the themes become deformed to symbolise the changed mood of the crowd. Even the orchestral timbres have clearly recognisable meanings. When the bassoon sounds, it often signifies the cries of the crowd, while the strings are largely associated with Boris and his sense of guilt. And when the bells sound, they are usually a presage of something important.”

Balance and light relief 

After the management of the Imperial Theatres rejected Mussorgsky’s first version, the composer decided to revise the opera, adding an entire new act set in Poland. This ‘Polish act’ introduces the ‘female element’, in the character of Marina Mnishek, that was deemed to be lacking in Mussorgsky’s original version. “The act is very important for the plot. What happens to Grigory when he leaves the country and why does he come back? This new act explains that much more clearly to the audience than the original version did. There is a lot of beautiful music there, and it also finally gives Grigory, the false Dmitry, some solo music. I always feel sorry for the singer in the original version. You need a strong voice and personality for the role, but after the scene at the inn it’s basically over.”

“The addition of the ‘Polish act’ not only provides more musical material, but it also creates a better balance in the piece. I think there are very few operas that stay in this continuously dark, dramatic mood. If you look at the great operatic tragedies, or even Shakespeare’s tragedies, there are always some comic moments or love stories for light relief. I also have the feeling that Mussorgsky wanted to use the Polish characters to say things he was not allowed to express through the Russian characters. Especially for that time, there are quite a lot of insults and offensive language being uttered by Marina, and later by Rangoni.”

Mixing up versions

Although the original version of Boris Godunov was never performed during Mussorgsky’s lifetime, the existence of two versions of the opera offers the possibility of creating composite variants that combine music from both versions. But cuts can also be made. “I think it would be interesting to do a complete version with all the available music, but that would result in a very long opera indeed. In Amsterdam we basically follow the revised version, with some small cuts here and there. Conductors have made cuts throughout the performance history of the opera. However, we have also revived the scene at the Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed, which is normally only in the original version. That’s because it’s easier to follow the story with this scene included than when it is omitted.”

Including the Cathedral scene does mean the character of the Holy Fool now appears twice to sing his lament for the fate of Russia. “He is probably the only truly innocent character in the entire opera. Everybody else have something a bit dark, either in their background or through their participation in the events unfolding. In a way the Holy Fool represents the truth, and if that truth is more prominent on stage in this way, it creates a different perception.” 

An opera about the people

The music included from Mussorgsky’s original version also adds more material for the chorus to sing. “Boris Godunov is very much an opera about the people, about the crowd, and the more they can be on stage, the more they can become the true protagonists. Mussorgsky didn’t want the opera to finish with Boris’ death. The scene in Kromy forest was already in his mind as the conclusion to the opera; this historical narrative and framework were very important to him. But he was either not brave enough, or did not feel free enough, to end the opera like that originally. However, the Kromy scene gives the opera a beautiful symmetry and cyclical feeling: it begins with the people and it ends with them.”