Phaëton

Musical drama in two acts with prologue

Libretto by Mussorgsky, based on the works of Alexander Pushkin and Nikolay Karamzin

The opera was written in 1869. This version was first performed in Perm in 1998. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including 1 interval

The production has been awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation 

The libretto was based on the texts of Pushkin’s drama and Karamzin’s History of the Russian State. Karamzin and Pushkin were both convinced of Boris Godunov’s complicity in the murder of the Tsarevich Dimitry in Uglich, and saw this as the cause of the Time of Troubles. Boris’s thirst for power and tortured conscience, the plotting of the boyars, the appearance of the False Dimitry, and the eloquent ‘silence of the people’ are the four dimensions that give Mussorgsky’s work its epic character. For a long time, the opera was performed in Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s luscious orchestration in the gaudy Russian symphonic style. Only in the late twentieth century did it become evident that Mussorgsky’s ascetic and deliberately uneven orchestration more accurately conveyed not only the composer’s idea, but also the spirit of our time. The Perm production uses the composer’s so-called preliminary version, which does not include the ‘Polish act’. 

Age category: 12+