To the History of the Production of Musorgsky’s Opera Khovanshchina in Vittorio Gui’s Stage Version (La Scala, 1933)

The 1933 production of Khovanshchina at La Scala conducted by Vittorio Gui (1885–1975) was chronologically the second one on the Italian opera stage, the first being the 1926 premiere. In studying the Italian productions of Khovanshchina, the 1933 stage version is usually overshadowed by the premiere; however, the performance under V. Gui’s direction was not a remake, but an independent work of artistic expression. The period of seven years between the first and second Italian productions marked a significant shift in academic and artistic attitudes to studying and performing author’s versions of M.P. Mussorgsky’s legacy in the Soviet Union, as opposed to the creative arrangements by N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, which up to that time had been considered the standard versions. Thus, P.A. Lamm, with the support of B.V. Asafyev, initiated the publication of Mussorgsky’s Complete Works based on the composer’s autographs. The first volumes of this collection were published, including the piano-vocal score and the full score of the opera Boris Godunov and the piano-vocal score of the opera Khovanshchina. Additionally, there were several productions and concert performances of Boris Godunov based on sheet music as revised by Lamm. V. Gui was aware of the work carried out by Soviet scholars but did not have access to the manuscript of the orchestral score of Khovanshchina created by Asafyev. For this reason, he created his own stage version of the opera, having built it upon Rimsky-Korsakov’s score but changed its structure and, in individual fragments — the orchestration and the tonal plan.