Pictures at an Exhibition

Mussorgsky aroused

Viktor? Is that you, Viktor?

Doctor

Calm down, Modest Petrowitsch, easy now.

Mussorgsky

Who is speaking? Where am I?

Doctor

You are in the Nikolay military hospital and I am your doctor. You are in a safe place and nobody coerces you into leaving from here.

Mussorgsky delirious

But I have to revise my opera. No, I have to go on duty and afterwards I have to revise my opera. Or no, I will revise my opera at first and then I will go on duty. And I have to meet my friend Viktor. Meeting Viktor at first, then the opera, then the duty. Where is my coat?

Doctor

You aren’t in the civil service anymore long since. And Viktor Hartmann has been dead for eight years. You have to go nowhere. Nurse!

First Nurse

They have kicked him out,

Second Nurse

Because he has drunk like a fish!

First Nurse

They have barracked his opera,

Second Nurse

Because it has arisen from a bizarre mind.

First Nurse

”Mussorgsky is almost an idiot”,

Second Nurse

said Stassow and Balakirew.

Doctor

Stop mocking the sick. quietly While he hasn’t much time left to live.

Mussorgsky

Oh Viktor! Let’s walk down to the Newa together and feed the swans. You take your sketch book along and I my sheet music. Then we go watching the people and the animals and render them just as they are: elegant and ugly, funny and grumpy, happy and disheartened. Then our eyes follow the ships putting out to sea and we lose the measure of time, dozing in the unmeasured.

Doctor

I am leaving you now, Modest Petrowitsch. to the nurses And you take care, that he doesn’t run away again hanging around in the streets like a beggar. This man used to be a talented musician, and a patriot!

Mussorgsky

And when we have seen enough among all the turkeys doing cartwheels, who are asking their wifes out in their Sunday best, we head for the ”Little Yaroslavl” and party until witching hour! Then shall flow champaign until the crack of dawn, mon ami! Then you have to tell me about your travels! France, Italy, Poland! I would die for seeing the Tuileries gardens one day. I myself got just as far as Moscow in my younger days. What a city was that compared to our St. Petersburg! It took me to another world – the world of the past, which is indeed full of abominations, but, I don’t know why, is highly appealing to me. You know what? So far I have been a cosmopolitan, but now I am going through some metamorphosis: all Russian appears close and familiar to me. I think, I am seriously starting to love Russia.

First Nurse

He skipped the army,

Second Nurse

our mister patriot.

First Nurse

He wanted to become a ”musician”

Second Nurse

and was barely able to read music.

First Nurse

Dandified tinkling,

Second Nurse

to impress the ladies.

Mussorgsky

The fair sex is at our feet, dear friend! We can reach everything, really everything! Let our fellow campaigners resign themselves to their bourgeois existences: Cui, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakow. A ”Mighty Handful” I have called them, but how cowardly are they turning to their cheap marriages and life annuities! Without banner, without desires; without looking into the distance and without even trying, they are diligently tinkering with things, that have been done long ago, that nobody is asking for. If I had just as much leisure for my opera! If one agreed to a vacation only – my pen would break into a gallop across the music paper immediately. It’s about time. In my head I have composed almost everything. It just needs to get written down and written down. But the service doesn’t allow this. After all, the creative spirit is so difficult to capture! More whimsical than the most capricious grand coquette! You have to catch it by complying with its unpredictable instructions altogether. A ballet of unhatched chicks in their shells, that is the inspiration!

First Nurse

Quite pompous and self-righteous

Second Nurse

appears this vain gnome,

First Nurse

When he gets into his stride once more.

Second Nurse

He considers himself to be the greatest

First Nurse

and in case of doubt

Second Nurse

he will always tuck his tail between the legs.

Mussorgsky

I don’t go to Liszt. The great Liszt! Invite me to Weimar! But I won’t go there. Stassow would pay for the travel, but I won’t go there. My duties make it impossible for me. I cannot leave my superiors in the lurch. And my opera needs to be finished as well. And in addition: What’s the point of staying with the Germans? There you find the best example of musical servitude: adoration of conservatory wisdom and routine, beer and evil-smelling cigars, music and beer, evil-smelling cigars and music ”into the green”. Liszt indeed, Liszt has composed collosal works only, with few exceptions. But what does he know about the Russian? No, no, I don’t go there. You would set out without hesitation, dear Viktor, I am sure. I am staying here. Composing isn’t a halfhearted business, or loose pastime, is it? Surrender to mankind completely – that is what art is asking for! It leaves me sleepless. Just like the silence. When you hear the whispering leaves at dusk sounding like a harp glissando, how could you sleep then? In addition the invisible moon, that is creeping through the foliage directly to the head end. So gently and silently.

First Nurse

Look, the drunkard is receiving a visit

Second Nurse

by a “singer”!

First Nurse

Looks pretty wrecked

Second Nurse

Darya Leonowa, an ”alto singer”

First Nurse

And with her he is said to have been on tour?

Second Nurse

In Odessa. Well, the ”mature ladies”…

Mussorgsky

Mummy? Do you read again something from Baba Yaga? About the witch with fowl’s legs? With coal eyes? And her wild ride throught night and wind? Like in the old days, when you gave me piano lessons. Rescue your poor son, Mummy! Let a tear drop fall on his sick head!

Leonowa

It’s me, Musinka.

Mussorgsky

A breath of love and warmth comes from this word. Nobody else than you, Dear Ms Leonowa, I want to allow to call me like that. But who can I allow it? Almost all of them are dead. The women died on me one after the other.

First Nurse

”A dark-storm cloud

Second Nurse

Has hidden the little star,

First Nurse

The cold earth

Second Nurse

Has taken the lass.”

Mussorgsky coming to himself, cheerful

That comes from me. I have written that, for my cousin. Back then I was … eighteen, when she died. It was my first song.

Leonowa

Oh Musinka, you are fully conscious! You aren’t delirious anymore. aside Doctor, please come, he has a lucid moment!

Doctor comes running

Can you hear me, Modest Petrowitsch?

Mussorgsky pause, delirious again

Guilt, Viktor, I have incurred guilt.

Doctor

It’s meaningless, he is delirious again.

Leonowa sad

Somewhere else again.

Mussorgsky

When you suffered a stroke, Viktor, I was so helpless. You collapsed, and what did I do? I stood aside and countered with hackneyed commonplaces, with outrageous callousness and all the evil mud of social conventions! This is the whole misfortune, that we don’t recognize the danger for someone else before he is already drowning or else laying down to die. Man is a blockhead. And even if he has a seven spans high forehead, he will remain a hopeless blockhead! In such cases we blockheads usually get comforted by the tunes: ”He” isn’t anymore, but what he has created lives and will live, and few people may be fortunate enough not to be forgotten. This is such a nonsense again! One shall and may not calm down! There shall and may be no comfort – this is a rotten morality! very upset I’m responsible for your death, dear friend, me only, and only I have to grieve for you. The pictures, that you painted, soon will be turned to dust. I give you my pictures, as if they were yours, with notes I’m painting castles, build a golden gate for you, that you can stride through after dark night in the realm of catacombs. With the dead in the language of the dead, one last word, one last embrace – that is, what …dies

Mussorgsky’s death room. View over the Newa.