Music: Boris at the Met, At Last

Part spectacle, part Sophoclean tragedy, part historical drama, part revolutionary tract, Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov is a truly original epic that brings old Russia startlingly to life. It is the semihistorical tale of a Kremlin politician who attains his country's throne by murdering the czar's only heir, the boy Dimitri. Filled with remorse, fear and delusion, Boris dies a crazed death as a people's revolution, led by a false Dimitri, prepares to overthrow him. Powerfully scored, Boris has no peers in Russia and precious few in all of opera. Yet for close to...