Here’re a few photographs taken at the exhibition commemorating 175 years since Modest Musorgsky’s birth and 140 years since the world premiere of his opera Boris Godunov at the Mariinsky Theatre. On Saturday, Valery Gergiev has introduced this exhibition to journalists. It is located in the foyer of the 1st Circle at the new Mariinsky Theatre (Mariinsky II) and will be open to all visitors at the Mariinsky II for six months. The exhibition displays 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 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 Godunov, 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 Godunov that subsequently became a particular measure of artistic merit for the composer himself. At the exhibition visitors can literally “touch” the manuscript of Boris Godunov (in the form of an interactive screen with the pages of the score) — can turn its pages, feel history living and breathing and to see the material embodiment of something great.
Posted on: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:18:40 +0000
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