Three Films, 57 Years: Boris Godunov on Screen and in Protest

By Daniel Okafor

Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov" (1874) has reached cinema screens three times across 57 years — in 1954, 1989 and 2011 — and each adaptation landed at a moment of Russian political strain. OperaWire's four-part series on opera and film reaches its third installment with the most politically combustible opera in the Russian repertoire.

The survey situates the work in a long tradition. Operatic history has fed cinema from Ferenc Erkel's "Bánk bán" (1861), on the 13th-century assassination of Queen Gertrude of Merania, to "Khovanshchina" (1886), "The Death of Klinghoffer" (1991) and "Zar und Zimmermann" (1837). Ukrainian opera has its own screen record: Mykola Lysenko's "Natalka Poltavka" was adapted repeatedly, Semyon Gulak-Artemovsky's "Cossack Beyond the Danube" (1863) made it to film, and Vladimir Bortko's 2009 "Taras Bulba" joined the list — told, the author notes, from the questionable perspective of a Russian. Maxim Kolomiiets' "The Mothers of Kherson," recently debuted at the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, is flagged as a natural next candidate.

What is the opera about?

The plot unfolds in late-16th-century Moscow at Boris Godunov's coronation, the Rurik Dynasty's final voice. The crowd's praise sits uneasily beside collective aggression — a tension the series' author treats as the opera's running theme.

Act 1 closes on the monks Pimen and Grigoriy at the Chudov Monastery (1359–1918). Pimen condemns Boris's regicide; Grigoriy decides to seize the throne himself, escaping to Poland as the future False Dmitry I. Act 2 sets political ambition against family life: Boris, guilt-ridden like Hamlet, sees the ghost of the murdered Dmitry. Act 3 supplies the geopolitical backdrop — the Polish–Russian conflict that eventually folded Kyiv into Muscovy. Ukraine, the author notes, needed another 70 years after a failed 1917–1921 independence bid to escape Soviet occupation.

Act 4 delivers the Holy Fool (yuródivïy), robbed of his only kopeck, refusing to pray for "King Herod." Boris dies in a guilt-ridden stupor; the Pretender marches in with Marina Mniszech; only the Holy Fool sees the truth. The verdict: a tale of "unchecked ambition, false exceptionalism, and religious stupefaction."

How do the three films differ?

• Vera Stroyeva's 1954 film took the traditional, Socialist Realist route; she filmed "Khovanshchina" in 1959.
• Andrzej Żuławski's 1989 version went avant-garde — exposed film crew, historical anachronism, open critique of the Soviet system. Conductor Mtislav Rostropovich sued him over it. The case settled.
• Vladimir Mirzoev's 2011 film reset events in present-day Russia, using Pushkin's 1825 play as text, read against the backdrop of the 2011–2013 Russian protests — the "Snow Revolution."

Sergei Bondarchuk's 1986 adaptation, scored by Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov, sits adjacent: critics found it stuffy, others read it as a rumination on post-perestroika Russia. Ovchinnikov's only opera, "At the Dawn of a Foggy Youth" (1974–78), was recently premiered in Voronezh.

Why does this opera keep returning?

The author's answer: it punctuates interstitial moments in Russian history, when power is the only currency leaders speak. Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Golden Cockerel" (1909) did comparable work at the end of Tsardom. Of Diaghilev's 1914 Paris staging, Simon Morrison noted: "he said goodbye to nationalism and welcomed…an updated aesthetic: neo-nationalism." Rachmaninoff's "All-Night Vigil" followed two years later, an attempt to revive a deadening nationalist mission.

La Scala's decision to open its 2022/2023 season with "Boris Godunov" was, the author writes, no accident. The opera has become a symbol of Putin's ambitions — which suggests the next screen adaptation won't wait another quarter-century.