Soon after completing his first opera, Boris Godunov, Musorgsky began work on a second one, which he called Khovanshchina. The title, not easy for English speakers to pronounce, is even harder to translate. The word is derived from the name Khovansky, borne by two of the opera's protagonists (father and son), and can be rendered approximately as "The world of the Khovanskys," "The times of the Khovanskys," or "The ways of the Khovanskys." The older Prince Khovansky, Ivan, is the leader of the Old Believers, who are opposed by Prince Vasily Golitsyn, head of a more progressive (but hardly more democratic) faction. Their conflict is part of the complex political situation in Russia at the end of the 17th century, preceding the reign of Czar Peter the Great. The younger Khovansky, Andrei, almost becomes a traitor to his father’s cause due to his infatuation with a German girl, but is ultimately brought back to the fold and dies a martyr’s death along with the Old Believers. Musorgsky conducted extensive historical research on this period before writing the libretto of his opera. In Boris, he had used Pushkin's drama as his starting point. For Khovanshchina, there was no literary source for him to rely on; the drama was created directly from the history books.
"Dawn on the Moscow River" is Musorgsky's own title for the prelude. It is based on a single melody of strong Russian flavor. In the course of the prelude, this melody gradually grows in intensity and then fades back into silence.
The relationship of this prelude to the opera has given rise to some debates. After all, Khovanshchina is a rather gloomy work about the struggle of various political parties for control over Russia, while the prelude is a gentle lyrical piece with no hints at dramatic conflicts of any kind. The theme of the prelude returns only once in the portions of the opera completed by Musorgsky, and the symbolic meaning of that quote is not entirely clear.
Traditional Russian and Soviet historiography held that the peaceful prelude symbolized the reign of Peter, supposedly a golden age that put an end to decades of political turmoil and laid the groundwork for a modern, more Europeanized Russia. But that was not Musorgsky's view. The composer was keenly aware that Peter's Russia had been a police state that dealt with the warring factions by suppressing them all. It is telling that Musorgsky chose not to include Peter among the opera's characters (although the future Czar's guards do appear). He portrayed each of the other characters with great empathy, not siding with any but understanding them all, never losing sight of the complex human emotions beneath the political surface.
In general, Musorgsky had no illusions about political progress, as we know from a much-quoted letter to Vladimir Stasov (the critic who was a major influence on the ‟Mighty Handful,” the group of composers to which Musorgsky belonged, and who had initially suggested the topic to the composer). Musorgsky explained to Stasov that as far as he was concerned, there could be no talk of progress "as long as the people themselves could not see with their own eyes what was being done to them and as long as they did not formulate their own will as to what should happen to them." Musorgsky did not believe in reforms, even in positive ones, if they came from above, against the will of the people.
The meaning of the prelude, then, if it can be put into words at all, is an abstract expression of hope for a better world, a dream of happiness that never comes true in the opera, or indeed, according to Musorgsky's pessimistic philosophy, in real life.*
*I wish to thank Musorgsky expert János Bojti of Budapest for his kind advice during the preparation of this note.
Notes By Peter Laki