What is Boris Godunov (opera)?
{{italictitle}} [[File:Modest Musorgskiy, 1870.jpg|thumb|upright|Mussorgsky in 1870]] '''''Boris Godunov''''' ({{lang-ru|'''Борис Годунов'''|links=no}}) is an [[opera]] by [[Modest Mussorgsky]] (1839–1881). It was the only opera that Mussorgsky finished. It is his most famous work and one of the most famous of all Russian operas. It was composed between 1868 and 1873.<ref>Calvocoressi, Abraham (1974: pp. 98, 138)</ref><ref>Brown (1986: p 31)</ref> ==What the opera is about== The story of the opera is based on something that really happened in Russian history. The Russian people were ruled by a [[tsar]] (an emperor). The previous tsar [[Tsar Ivan IV]] was known as “Ivan the Terrible”. He was terribly cruel and the Russian people suffered badly under his rule. They were hungry, they were [[torture]]d and killed. When he died his son became Tsar, but he was mentally retarded, so a group of powerful people including [[Boris Godunov]] had to rule for him. Ivan also had another son, but he disappeared. He was almost certainly murdered, and Boris Godunov, who wanted to become tsar himself, had probably ordered him to be murdered (for the sake of the opera, Mussorgsky assumes that he was indeed guilty of his murder). Then he persuaded the Russian people that they should choose him to be their tsar. Some years later a young [[monk]] escapes from his [[monastery]] and pretends to be the murdered son of Ivan the Terrible. He gets a Polish army to help him to fight Boris Godunov. Boris Godunov feels terribly guilty about the murder. He suffers so much that he dies. The young monk arrives in [[Moscow]] and makes himself tsar (Tsar Dimitri II). The ordinary Russian people remain desperately poor. It is their [[fate]] to suffer, ruled by cruel tyrants. ==How the opera was composed== The composer wrote the words (the [[libretto]]) himself. It was based on a [[Play (theatre)|play]] by [[Alexander Pushkin|Aleksandr Pushkin]]. Mussorgsky also read a famous book on the history of Russia: [[Nikolay Karamzin]]'s ''History of the