Yevgeny Mikhaylovich Levashyov

Yevgeny Mikhaylovich Levashyov (born Moscow, 19 August 1944) is a Russian musicologist whose work focuses on the history and editing of Russian music between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. His name is associated with the recovery of lost or altered scores, a body of work that has placed him among the most important researchers in Russian musicology in recent decades.

He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1970, the same year he began teaching at that institution. In 1974 he completed his postgraduate studies under Yuri Keldïsh at the Institute of Art History in Moscow, where he was immediately appointed to a senior academic post. In 1994 he obtained a second doctorate with a study of the editorial problems posed by the reconstruction of works by Russian composers. In time he became a professor and corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of Moscow, and he serves as chief editor of the complete works of Mussorgsky.

His principal interest lies in the relationship between music and its sources. He combines academic rigour with practical experience, and his reconstructions have served as the basis for numerous opera productions in Russia and Western Europe. These include Pashkevich's The Miser and St Petersburg, the Bazaar, Glinka's A Life for the Tsar, various versions of Borodin's Prince Igor, and the original version of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. He has also written about the musical traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church and about the chorus An Angel Clamouring, by Mussorgsky, which he discovered and edited.

His bibliography ranges from studies of Russian musical theatre of the eighteenth century to analyses of the work of Borodin and Mussorgsky, as well as studies of Orthodox sacred music. His editions include those of Pashkevich, the 1869 version of Boris Godunov, and the Kozlovsky orchestra edition. His work has made it possible to restore to the stage repertoire that had been hidden or distorted, and his philological rigour makes him a point of reference for those studying Russian opera.