Opera of the Week

Boris Godunov, music and libretto by Modest Mussogorsky

Note: I am working on a libretto right now, and the best way to learn to write something new is to study examples. I thought it might be interesting for you to watch the process of learning a new art form, and then, when my libretto is done, perhaps someone will do a close reading of it and see if it’s successful!

In this series, I give a brief history of an opera (with a link to a synopsis) and then share some of my observations about the libretto. What I’m looking for is dramatic force: when and how does a libretto provide the dramatic force to sustain an opera and to inspire a composer? What themes are particularly suited to opera? I’m also interested in pacing: how much story can a libretto reasonably hope to tell? I’m not primarily interested in commenting on the music, though of course some musical observations will arise in my close look at the words.

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The opera Boris Godonov lives squarely in a tradition I call the drama of statescraft. This opera has a PLOT, my friends, so do yourselves a favor and familiarize yourself with the basic goings-on before you proceed further. Be aware: there are multiple finales to this opera and many summaries (like this one) don’t even try to pick one. The version of the libretto I studied this week concludes with what is called the “Council Room finale” (summarized nicely here in by this disgruntled viewer of the alternative finale) in which Boris dies, repentant (?), after making his son Feodor his heir.

A powerful theme in Boris Godunov, and what I’m going to explore in this close reading of the libretto, is duality. Duality pervades the entire opera. Identity, both for individual characters and for whole groups of people, is a fluid and shifting thing, sloshing between poles. This doubleness isn’t just a theme. It’s a powerful force within the opera, pushing the plot forward.

About the opera

Boris Godunov is based on a poem by Alexander Pushkin, which in turn was likely modeled on Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Incidentally contributing to the theme of duality, there are (at least) two versions of the opera—a one-act from 1869 and the four-act from years later, with Mussogorsky penning both the libretto and the music for both. Pushkin’s poem retells the story of a 16th-century Russian nobleman, the titular Boris Godunov, who rose to power as a member of Ivan the Terrible’s court (and secret police). He murders the Tsarevitch and ascends to the throne himself—but all that happens before the opera even starts. The real drama begins after his coronation. The plot is dense, hair-raising, and almost comically Russian, involving assassinations, boyars run amok, missing royalty, a chronicler-hermit, conniving Papist priests, and of course, a Holy Fool.

Duality is evident in both the individual characters in the opera and in crowds, masses, and peoples. Boris’ identity throughout the opera melds with the identity of Russia; Grigori’s identity becomes entirely muddled up with Dmitri’s. There are multiple Feodors, multiple princesses, multiple Tsareviches. Everyone in Boris Godunov is trying to become someone or something he (or she) is not—a Tsar, a prince, married, a political heroine, a monk, not a monk. Only two characters in the opera are whole, and only one has been able to unite his own dualities into that wholeness (the other is simple and has no duality to battle). You, of course, must endure this essay to find out who they are (because you, good opera lover, would never skip to the end).

Politics and salvation: the first duality

The idea of the unity of the ruler and the state has mesmerized artists for as long as there has been art—and especially dramatic artists. Greek tragedians are obsessed with these questions: how do immoral actions on the part of the ruler affect the people? how should a ruler balance his obligations to the gods, his family and friends, and the people as a whole? is truly just rule possible in such a contingent world?

Plutarch’s Lives delved into these questions within the lives of historical individuals—Alexander the Great, Romulus, Cato—and inspired dramatic artist, including Shakespeare. Shakespeare based many of his ancient histories, from Coriolanus to Anthony and Cleopatra, on Plutarch’s recountings, and developed his own idiom for writing about the history of England through tales of its kings. No drama, the best artists have long known, is quite so piquante as the drama of power.

That’s exactly the drama at the heart of Boris Godunov, with one addition twist: in 16th-century Russia, politics and salvation were intimately connected. That’s the first great duality at the heart of the opera: the duality between the power of God and the power of men, the ways of God and the ways of men, the justice of God and the justice of men. The drama slips back and forth between the halls of power in Russia and Poland, and between a hermitage, where Do these two modes of rule correspond? Can a state flourish if it denies the power of God? Or will a godless leader inevitably face God’s judgment on his rule? Let’s see what the opera says.

Headless body, bodiless head

We encounter the theme of internal division, or duality, immediately: the lengthy and gorgeous Prologue begins with conflict within the Chorus. The abusive Police roam the crowd, striking and beating the people, but even without their intervention the Men and the Women are turned against each other. There is chaos within the body politic. The anguish of the Tsar’s death and the lack of an clear heir has disrupted the whole state.

Some clues to the chaos emerge in the language of the opening. “It is useless to command!” shouts one character, underscoring the fact that rightful authority is absent from Russia. The Police strike out with their lashes and clubs, saying, “Have your backs forgotten the cloud?” Only violence can control this leaderless people. During the scrum, the people censure the dead Tsar for his failure to appoint an heir; “To whom have you entrusted your people?” they ask rhetorically. The answer is: to no one, and the consequences are evident.

This is the setting for Boris’ ascendency: a headless body politic writhing in agony, a leaderless people crying out for a ruler—more than that, a father. When Boris is crowned a few scenes, the people sing ecstatically, “Glory, glory, glory!” In calling down glory on Boris, they are calling down glory on themselves, for the Tsar is, in a real sense, Russia itself. Glory to the Tsar, glory to Russia!

But the great political exchange works both ways. If glory acrues in the head and disperses throughout the body, so indeed does sickness and evil—and it doesn’t take long for the evil of Boris’ past to catch up with him. This is another of the dualities of the drama: Boris is a man divided because his intense desire for goodness (seen in his desire to rule Russia well and his love for his own children) and his past dalliance with great evil (begun in his work in Ivan the Terrible’s secret police and culminating in his murder of the Tsarevich Dmitri—I warned you to read the synopsis, didn’t I??). Boris spends most of the opera on the verge of madness, pushing the horrors of his past out of his mind. “I am good!” he declares, moments before warning someone that if they lie to him, “I will invent a torment so cruel/that Ivan himself would shrink with horror/within his grave!” If this is goodness, I don’t want to see evil.

As the memory of the murder of the young Dmitri intrudes on Boris, he feels as though he is being strangled himself, indicating that he has become psychologically entangled with the dead prince—when Boris killed Dmitri, the libretto seems to say, he killed part of himself as well. But even then, he refuses to acknowledge his crimes. “I am not… not… the assassin!” he protests. “But the people were…” A good ruler takes the sins of his people on himself and prepares to suffer for them. In a tragic reversal, Boris does the opposite; he pushes his sins on the people, with terrible consequences.

The past in the present

After the Prologue, the libretto moves to a hermitage, where a monk named Pimen is hard at work, writing the chronicles of Russia. Pimen is wise, meditative. He recognies that there is evil in the world but he does not despair. He has devoted himself to recording the past, and in the act of faithfully recounting what came before him, he seems to have found a way to exist in the present.

He is accompanied by a young novice, Grigori, who has most certainly not found peace. Grigori wakes from a dream in which he mounts the throne of Russia, and when Pimen tells the story of the death of the Tsarevitch Dmitri, Grigori decides that the cloister is not the place for him. He longs for adventure, and sets out into the world to seize his fortune.

Fractured state, fracturing selves

From here, the opera shatters like a mirror. Grigori, the failed monk, takes on the role of the false Dmitri and makes his move for the throne (an intriguing juxtaposition of religion and politics). As Dmitri, he wooes the Polish princess Marina with the help of Marina’s conniving Jesuit advisor Rangoni. The split in Grigori/Dmitri’s nature makes for difficult wooing, however, and when Rangoni (falsely) assures him that Marina loves him, Grigori/Dmitri protests, “Marina does not love me!” The statement is entirely true—even if she does love the man she thinks is Dmitri, she does not love the man he really is (Grigori).

There are two Marinas in the play, both powerful: the Marina of Grigori’s imagination, a woman of warmth and loveliness, and the beautiful but rapacious real Marina, who says to her lover, “I came to you/to speak of things the gravest, but not of love./Alone, you may if it please you/rave and pine of love for me!” She wants Dmitri only because he might make her Tsarina of Russia. She withholds for confessing any kind of love for him until he casts her aside, threatening to mount the throne of Russia without her, and even when she finally does beg him to accept her, she pledges her love not to Dmitri, but to “my Tsar!”

In Act III, as Boris’ rule is collapsing under the weight of famine, rebellion, and intrigue, the same People who sang “Glory!” at his coronation prepare to murder a Boyar while mockingly singing “Glory to [the] Tsar Boris! Glory!” All the glory has turned to blood and dust. Even the children of Russia are tainted by their Tsar’s wickedness; the libretto depicts them mocking and robbing the Holy Fool, instead of paying him right respect.

This is the situation into which the conspirators introduce the false Dmitri. Under the evil regime of Boris, they say, “Sun and moon shine no more! All the stars are spent… tremble and start, o earth, at the misdeeds of Boris! […] to honor the excellent reign of Boris the Devil!” The reversal here is complete; the earth itself, by withholding crops, has rebelled against the Tsar. (This whole Act III, Scene II is just terrific and you should read and view it in its entirety.) The scene concludes with everyone—People, the Boyar they threatened to kill, various Jesuit priests, everyone—following Dmitri on his way to Moscow, all swept up in his promise to restore justice to Russia. Only the Holy Fool does not go; only he perceives that Dmitri does not offer legitimacy, but further chaos and death.

One chaos ends, another begins

In the closing scenes, there is little resolution. When Pimen comes before the Duma, the council of boyars, Boris’s sins are finally revealed. Pimen says as he enters that he has “come to shed the light,” and he certainly does so—his words drive Boris to confess to the murder of Dmitri. The task of seeing clearly, of discerning the true thing amidst a maze of doubles, falls not to the rulers of the realm but to a chronicler who has kept the past.

Interestingly, Boris does not ask forgiveness for his sins until after he has transferred his power to his son. He declares his son the “rightful Tsar” and gives him a good deal of sound advice that he himself did not heed. Feeling his body collapsing from what looks like a heart attack, Boris cries out, begging God to have mercy—but not yet on him! Rather Boris asks for mercy for his children. He knows that with the transfer of power, he has also transferred the consequences of his own sins to his son. “Mercy to the son of the great transgressor!” he sings. It is only at the very end of opera, when there is clearly no hope of survival, that Boris finally prays for forgiveness for his sins… and there is no indication within the libretto of whether that forgiveness is granted or not. Forgiveness, it seems, is not within the scope of politics.

Overall…

When people say “tragic opera” (I know, not something people say very often), Boris Godunov is what they mean. This libretto is absolutely loaded with drama. The number of lies, reversals, betrayals, disguises, and doubles had to be handled with extreme care by the librettist, because the plot is always only a slip away from becoming incomprehesible melodrama. But it never quite slips—and the reason for that is actually present within the libretto itself.

I said at the beginning that only two characters emerge from this opera with their selves intact, and only one of those manages to unify a duality within himself, while the other is simple and has no duality to master. The simple character is, of course, the Holy Fool. He sees through all the schemes and chaos and is never deceived. But here is the interesting move of the opera: the Holy Fool, by virtue of his own simple nature, cannot influence the political realm. He is “innocent as a dove,” to quote the Scriptures, but not “wise as a serpent,” and politics requires serpents.

The character on whose word the whole opera turns is Pimen, the chronicler, the humble monk who dares to expose the Tsar Boris’ sins. Pimen, the libretto reveals, was not always a monk; he spent his youth as a soldier (something Grigori envies him). Only after a life in the secular world did he retire to the monastery. Pimen’s life is split between the world and the monastery; his past belongs to the profane, his present and future to the sacred. But he has somehow managed to unite these two elements of himself into one whole: by studying the past. Pimen, immersed always in the past that is chronicling, has taught himself to see clearly, to not be deceived, to follow the truth through tangles of lies.

That is, it turns out, what Mussogorsky himself has done. He offers us a chaotic tale of madness, lies, rebellions; of a sundered state, a fatherless people, a cowardly and failed king. Yet the libretto does not collapse under the strain; it believes that a true tale can be told about lies. Just as Pimen is able to bring clarity to madness by attending to the past, so Mussogorsky’s libretto can become a whole, though fraught with dualities.

I am not going to attempt a libretto as massive as Boris Godunov—not for a good long time, at least. But Mussogorsky’s accomplishment is worth studying. Someone will have the task one day of chronicling the madness of our own time, of “coming to shine the light.” Mussogorsky gives us technical insights into how to do this, but he also prods us towards what kinds of people we must become: only people like Pimen, who have dedicated our lives to becoming whole, to chronicling the past, can adequately see the present.

Drop me a comment or send me an email via www.jcscharl.com with any operas you’d like me to write about!