The exhibition commemorating one hundred and seventy-five years since Modest Petrovich Musorgsky’s birth and one hundred and forty years since the first production (world premiere) of the opera Boris Godunov at the Mariinsky Theatre is open in the foyer of the 1st Circle at the Mariinsky-II.
The exhibition will display not just stage costumes, sketches and set props reflecting the staggering history of various productions of Musorgsky’s operas Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina at the Mariinsky Theatre in the 19th and 20th centuries, but also rare documents, photographs and the composer’s manuscript scores which are being shown to the public for the first time – including a never-published manuscript score of the opera Boris Godunov.
The original manuscript score of Modest Petrovich Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov, which is retained in the archive department of the Mariinsky Theatre Library is a pearl of Russian culture. When we open the pages of calligraphy today we become convinced yet again how exceptionally unique the composer’s creative gift was. His gift of deep artistic creation meant that Musorgsky rarely used sketches. He himself admitted that he felt reverential terror when “sending between the bindings” his own “pure score without any sketches.”
Possessed with the idea of Boris, Musorgsky was able to “compose ‘for people’”, often “coming to the piano and playing highlights.” That was how he created the monologue of Marina Mnishek – one of the female characters that the Mariinsky Theatre proposed to the composer for the second version of the opera. It was work on Boris that subsequently became a particular measure of artistic merit for the composer himself.
At the exhibition we will literally be allowing visitors to “touch” the manuscript of Boris Godunov (in the form of an interactive screen with the pages of the score) – to turn its pages, to feel history living and breathing and to see the material embodiment of something great. The exhibition will be open to all visitors at the Mariinsky-II for six months.
Mariinsky Theatre projects focussing on the historic legacy of Russian musical theatre and based on its own archives include the organisation of a similar exhibition to mark one hundred and seventy-five years since the birth of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 2015. It is an established fact that many of the composer’s most dazzling artistic works were staged at the Mariinsky Theatre. In the near future, Mariinsky Theatre audiences can expect “interactive” access to the great composer’s colossal legacy — the scores of the legendary Sleeping Beauty, The Queen of Spades and The Enchantress among other great opuses.
TV groups, photographers and journalists are invited to attend the opening on 25 October at 17:00. The press will be admitted via the main entrance of the Mariinsky-II from 16:30.
Accreditation via the theatre’s press service: press@mariinsky.ru;
tel: +7-812-7144164, mobile +7-812-9215673
| user_name | | Exit |
