The Production of Modest Musorgsky’s Opera Khovanshchina at La Scala (1933) as an Attempt to Reconstruct the Authentic Image of an Artwork
abstract
The 1933 production of Khovanshchina at La Scala Theatre, conducted by Vittorio Gui (1885-1975), was the second time this opera was performed on the Italian opera stage. In studying the Italian productions of Khovanshchina, the 1933 stage version is usually overshadowed by the Italian premiere of this opera, which took place in 1926. However, Vittorio Gui made his own stage version of Khovanshchina, changing the structure, orchestration and tonal plan of the full score of this opera in Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s edition in order to get closer to Musorgsky’s authorial text. The paper uses archival materials from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, the Russian National Museum of Music, the Archive of the Museo Teatrale alla Scala, and articles from Italian periodicals of the 1920s-1940s.
Keywords: Boris Godunov • La Scala • Russian opera • Mary Tibaldi Chiesa • Pavel Lamm • Vittorio Gui • Boris Asafyev • Modest Musorgsky • Russian opera in Italy • Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov • Khovanshchina