There were two more broadcasts of Boris in the Rimsky-Korsakov version. The second of them, from the 1946-47 season, was the first “complete” Boris I heard, though I was thoroughly familiar with the Chaliapin records. I see it is out there on the net, but have not yet had a chance to re-hear it. Some of the principal elements (Pinza, Moscona, De Paolis) are still hanging in, but others are new (Risë Stevens as Marina, Richard Tucker as Dimitri, and—picking up on the Tibbett/Warren succession—Robert Merrill as Shchelkalov. The above-mentioned Emil Cooper, who was working his native repertoire in St. Petersburg back before World War 1, conducts. So I’ll be checking in with it sometime soon.

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NEXT TIME: I have a some vacation time coming up, so I’m declaring a five-week interval, to Friday, Aug. 14. The subject? I await a sign from above.

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