ooked upon with admiration as a dramatic element by the ordinary opera
lover. There was a lack of the feminine element in the opera, and to
remedy this Moussorgsky had to introduce the Polish bride of the False
Dmitri and give the pair a love scene, and incidentally a polonaise;
but the love scene is uninteresting until its concluding measures, and
these are too Meyerbeerian to call for comment beyond the fact that
Meyerbeer, the much contemned, would have done better. As for the
polonaise, Tschaikowsky has written a more brilliant one for his
"Eugene Onegin."

The various scores of the opera which have been printed show that
Moussorgsky, with all his genius, was at sea even when it came to
applying the principles of the Young Russian School, of which he is set
down as a strong prop, to dramatic composition. With all his additions,
emendations, and rearrangements, his opera still falls much short of
being a dramatic unit. It is a more loosely connected series of scenes,
from the drama of Boris Godounoff and the false Dmitri, than Boito's
"Mefistofele" is of Goethe's "Faust." Had he had his own way the opera
would have ended with the scene in which Dmitri proceeds to Moscow amid
the huzzas of a horde of Polish vagabonds, and we should have had
neither a Boris nor a Dmitri opera, despite the splendid opportunities
offered by both characters. It was made a Boris opera by bringing it to
an end with the death of Boris and leaving everything except the scenes
in which the Czar declines the imperial crown, then accepts it, and
finally dies of a tortured conscience, to serve simply as intermezzi,
in which for the moment the tide of tragedy is turned aside. This and
the glimpse into the paternal heart of the Czar is the only and
beautiful purpose of the domestic scene, in which the lighter and more
cheerful element of Russian folk-song is introduced.

At the first American performance of "Boris Godounoff" the cast was as
follows:--

Boris.....................................Adamo Didur
Theodore....................................Anna Case
Xenia..................................Lenora Sparkes
The Nurse...............................Maria Duchene
Marina...................................Louise Homer
Schouisky.................................Angelo Bada
Tchelkaloff......................Vincenzo Reschiglian
Pimenn...................................Leon Rothier
Dmitri......................Paul Althouse (his debu