Boris Godunov (opera) ("Flow, flow, bitter tears!") of the arrival of the enemy and of woe to Russia. Russian opera of the early 1870s was dominated by Western European works—mainly Italian. The domestic product was regarded with skepticism and sometimes hostility. The playwright Tikhonov wrote in 1898: As the most daring and innovative member of the Mighty Handful, Mussorgsky frequently became the target of conservative critics and rival composers, and was often derided for his supposedly clumsy and crude musical idiom. After the premiere of "Boris Godunov", influential critic Herman Laroche wrote: Reviews of the premiere performance of "Boris Godunov" were for the
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