How Boris got under his skin

Henrietta Bredin talks to Edward Gardner, English National Opera’s music director

There is a ridiculously tiny, narrow room carved out of the foyer of the London Coliseum, known as the Snuggery. I think it was originally intended as somewhere for King Edward VII to retire to for a touch of silken dalliance or simply to use the lavishly ornate mahogany facilities. At any rate it’s a handy place in which to settle for a conversation with English National Opera’s music director, Edward Gardner, who is fresh — and he does look it — from a rehearsal with the chorus for a new production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, opening on Monday.

This is a challenging opera for any company to perform and the first thing to be settled is the choice of version. Gardner and director Tim Albery are going for the original, seven-scene version, which was rejected by the Russian committee of Imperial Theatres in 1870, members of which were, in Rimsky-Korsakov’s opinion, nonplussed by the ‘freshness and originality’ of Mussorgsky’s music.