Caryl Emerson (a literary specialist) and Robert William Oldani (a music historian) take a new and comprehensive look at the most famous Russian opera, Modest Musorgsky's Boris Godunov. The result is both a historical study of a famous work and an interpretive piece of scholarship.

The topics discussed include: the "Boris Tale" in history; Karamzin's history and Pushkin's drama as literary sources; Musorgsky's Innovations as a librettist and as a theorist of the sung Russian word; the strange story of the opera's composition and revision; its first productions at home and abroad; and an in-depth musical analysis. In the process, several often-met errors in Musorgsky scholarship are clarified and corrected. A final chapter speculates on the opera's themes of political murder, guilt, and legitimacy - so important to Russian literary and national identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - and the new role the "Boris plot" and its composer might come to play in more recent open phases of Russian cultural life.

The volume contains a selection of classic texts in criticism, numerous production photographs, a bibliography and discography. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of opera, music history, and Russian literature and culture as well as to opera enthusiasts.