Having already recorded Pimen’s Act 1 narrative and Varlaam’s song, Chaliapin first approached the part of Boris on records in 1911. But those two sides (of the Death Scene) stand as his only samples of the role till after WW1. He did not record the great Act 2 monologue till 1923, the Coronation Scene till 1925 (with the advent of the electric process), or, amazingly, the Clock Scene before 1931. So for nearly all his life, Boris was actually less prominent in his discography than his devils or some of his folk and art songs. He made up for lost time, though, with multiple electric-process sides recorded between 1925 and 1931, at several locations (the Hayes studio, Small Queen’s Hall, and Kingsway Hall) and with several conductors (Albert Coates, Eugene Goossens, Lawrence Collingwood, and Max Steinmann). The Covent Garden performances notwithstanding (and many of those sides did not circulate till much later), these studio recordings have advantages of their own. With the microphone now enabling fuller orchestral and choral participation, the Coronation Scene is feasible, and the effect of the Death Scene automatically advanced in important respects over the acoustical versions, though the 1923 (late acoustical) takes of both scenes are magnificently sung. Of the two Coronation Scenes, the 1925, under Coates, is better than the 1926 under Goossens. The latter is in a mellower acoustic and wider perspective that some may like but I find less alive, and for once Chaliapin’s top, which rings out in ’25, sounds relatively raw and dry. The 1927 take of the Death Scene’s last part (“Zvon! Prognegal’by zvon!“), under Collingwood, has a startling sonority as heard here, the funeral bell registering a visceral impact, the chorus of ample size and in beautiful balance, Chaliapin in tremendous form—certainly the best studio version of this.

Finally, we have the 1931 takes of the Monologue and Clock Scene (Kingsway Hall, the LSO,  Steinmann). There are two takes of each excerpt, all well played and in excellent mono sound, of which the first was withheld and the second released in both cases. Those were the right decisions. In both scenes, Chaliapin’s voice is marginally juicier, his interpretive armament a little more on hair trigger, than in the unreleased takes, and in the Monologue he avoids the high G-flat in the earlier take, then tackles it to great effect (as emotional consummation, not just a high note) on the second. As with the Faust, Rusalka, and Don Quichotte excerpts from this same time period, these are the recordings that had wide circulation on RCA Victor for twenty years here in the U.S., and through which I first became enthralled with both the artist and the music. I still own their now-greyed 78s. They’ve never sounded this good.

The Covent Garden live performance took place on July 4, 1928, thus, twelve days after the Faust performance discussed above. As was still happening up through the 1930s in Europe and America when a prominent guest artist of foreign nationality came a-visiting, the guest sings in his own language and everyone else in some other. This commonly meant that the home company sang in its vernacular, but in London as in New York, it meant a Russian Boris in an Italian-language performance, and with a predominantly Italian cast. This cast was not without interest (Irene Minghini-Cattaneo as Marina, Dino Borgioli as Dmitri, Luigi Manfrini as Pimen, a young Salvatore Baccaloni as Varlaam, and a younger-yet Margarita Carosio as Feodor), but on these surviving sides (more were recorded, but have been lost) we hear of them either nothing or only a snippet, except for the Shuisky of Angelo Bada. There’s an Italian conductor, too, Vincenzo Bellezza. So much for integration at this basic level, and in the last scene we hear Chaliapin from offstage echoing Bada’s “Via, via!” (not “Chur! Chur!“) before entering and switching to Russian. Once he takes over, though, none of this matters much.