Fine arts' collection

 

 

Khovanshtshina

by Gennady Pugachevsky

84×72 mm, X6/7, 1997, op. # 90
owner (customer): Emil Kunze

Modest P. Mussorgsky: Khovanshtshina

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (March 21 [O.S. March 9], 1839 – March 28 [O.S. March 16], 1881, age 42), one of the Russian composers known as the Five, was an innovator of Russian music. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music.

Khovanshchina is an opera (subtitled a 'national music drama') in five acts by Modest Mussorgsky. The work was written between 1872 and 1880 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The composer wrote the libretto based on historical sources. Although the setting of the opera is the Moscow Uprising of 1682, its main themes are the struggle between progressive and reactionary political factions during the minority of Tsar Peter the Great, and the passing of old Muscovy before Peter's westernizing reforms. The opera was unfinished and unperformed when the composer died in 1881. It received its first performance in the Rimsky-Korsakov edition in 1886.

 

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