A quick glance at Mussorgsky’s biography might suggest that he was one of the most tragic might-have-beens in music history. Born on his family’s estate in rural Russia in 1839, he soon began to impress as a musician, but a spell in the army instilled a disastrous love of alcohol, which increasingly took its toll on his mental and physical health, resulting in final decline and a lonely death at just 42. Mussorgsky managed to finish only one of his four operas and only one major orchestral work, “Night on Bare Mountain” (1867), usually heard in Rimsky-Korsakov's well-intentioned rewrite that smooths over Mussorgsky's intentional rough edges. His colourful Pictures at an Exhibition (1874), famous in the orchestration by Ravel, was originally composed for piano. The opera Mussorgsky did complete, Boris Godunov (1868-73), sits at the apex of the Russian repertoire. Mussorgsky dug deep into folk music and everyday speech to create an astonishingly vivid and dramatic vocal style far removed from the refined elegance of Italian bel canto. Today Boris Godunov stands as one of the great tragic operas, encapsulating both the futility of the pursuit of power and its terrible consequences for the ordinary Russian people.