Boris Godunov (opera) most part hostile. Some critics dismissed the work as "chaotic" and "a cacophony". Even his friends Mily Balakirev and César Cui, leading members of the Mighty Handful, minimized his accomplishment. Unable to overlook Mussorgsky's "trespasses against the conventional musical grammar of the time", they failed to recognize the giant step forward in musical and dramatic expression that "Boris Godunov" represented. Cui betrayed Mussorgsky in a notoriously scathing review of the premiere performance: Although he found much to admire, particularly the Inn Scene and the Song of the Parrot, he reproved the composer for a poorly constructed libretto, finding the opera
Boris Godunov (play) only in an English translation. This production was based on Meyerhold's design and featured Prokofiev's music, together with supplemental music by Peter Westergaard. Chester Dunning, Caryl Emerson, and Sergei Fomichev's "The Uncensored Boris Godunov" seeks to rescue Pushkin's play from obscurity. The Royal Shakespeare Company staged the British premiere of the original 1825 edition at Stratford on Avon in the fall of 2012. The play had been translated into English by Adrian Mitchell. A familiarity with the historical events surrounding the Time of Troubles — the interregnum period of relative anarchy following the end of the Rurik Dynasty (1598) and