Boris Godunov (play) opera, "Boris Godunov" (1874), is based on this play. Having finished the play, Pushkin famously wrote to his friend Pyotr Vyazemsky: "What a Pushkin, what a son of a bitch!" . Pushkin wrote of the play: "The study of Shakespeare, Karamzin, and our old chronicles gave me the idea of clothing in dramatic forms one of the most dramatic epochs of our history. Not disturbed by any other influence, I imitated Shakespeare in his broad and free depictions of characters, in the simple and careless combination of plots; I followed Karamzin in the clear development of events; I tried to
Boris Godunov (opera) – First performance of the Shostakovich orchestration The premiere of the Shostakovich orchestration of 1940 of Pavel Lamm's vocal score took place on 4 November 1959 at the Kirov Theatre. Sergey Yeltsin conducted. The cast included Boris Shtokolov (Boris). "Note: Musicologists are often not in agreement on the terms used to refer to the two authorial versions of "Boris Godunov". Editors Pavel Lamm and Boris Asafyev used "preliminary redaction" and "principal redaction" for the 1st and 2nd versions, respectively, and David Lloyd-Jones designated them "initial" and "definitive." This article, aiming for utmost objectivity, uses "original" and "revised."" The differences in