Boris Godunov (opera) to exhibit a lack of cohesion between scenes. He claimed that Mussorgsky was so deficient in the ability to write instrumental music that he dispensed with composing a prelude, and that he had "borrowed the cheap method of characterization by leitmotives from Wagner." Other composers were even more censorious. Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote in a letter to his brother Modest: Of the critics who evaluated the new opera, only the 19-year-old critic Vladimir Baskin defended Mussorgsky's skill as a composer. Writing under the pen name "Foma Pizzicato", Baskin wrote, Although "Boris Godunov" is usually praised for its originality, dramatic choruses, sharply
Ballad of the Little Soldier the Sandinistas. Herzog has said that the film is about child soldiers, and could have been made in any of several countries where child soldiers exist. Ballad of the Little Soldier Ballad of the Little Soldier () is a 1984 documentary film directed by Werner Herzog about children soldiers in Nicaragua. The film focuses on a group of Miskito Indians who used children soldiers in their resistance against the Sandinistas. Herzog made and co-directed the film at the request of his friend Denis Reichle, who himself served as a child-soldier in the Volkssturm at age fourteen in the aftermath of