12 Jun 2005

Mattheson's Boris Goudenow in Boston

AN early-music festival might not seem the likeliest place to witness a world premiere. But that is what the audience at the Cutler Majestic Theater on the campus of Emerson College will do this week when, after a 295-year delay, the Boston Early Music Festival presents the first fully staged production of the opera “Boris Goudenow, or The Throne Attained Through Cunning, or Honor Joined Happily With Affection,” by the German Baroque composer Johann Mattheson.


Tsar Boris Feodorovich Godunov (c. 1551 - 1605)

Enter Boris Goudenow, Just 295 Years Late

By RICHARD TARUSKIN [NY Times, 12 June 05]

AN early-music festival might not seem the likeliest place to witness a world premiere. But that is what the audience at the Cutler Majestic Theater on the campus of Emerson College will do this week when, after a 295-year delay, the Boston Early Music Festival presents the first fully staged production of the opera "Boris Goudenow, or The Throne Attained Through Cunning, or Honor Joined Happily With Affection," by the German Baroque composer Johann Mattheson.

The four-performance run begins on Tuesday evening and ends next Sunday afternoon. From there the production will go to the Tanglewood Festival in Lenox, Mass., this month, and to Moscow and St. Petersburg in September.

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