Mariinsky’s Boris Godunov – a revelation

Anyone who thinks opera singers and orchestral players are overworked should spare a thought for the Mariinsky Opera on its trek round England and Wales this week. After Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery in Cardiff on Sunday, the whole caravan rolled up at the Barbican in the shorter — but not exactly lightweight — first version of Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov. And by the time you read this it will have added Shchedrin’s The Left-Hander and (in Birmingham) the first two instalments of Wagner’s Ring, plus, for the chorus (not required in The Ring till Sunday’s Götterdämmerung), two concerts of Russian sacred music in London and Cardiff.

The mad genius behind this odyssey is of course the Mariinsky’s musical director Valery Gergiev, who is conducting all the operas and, for all I know, hypnotising the singers into performing under conditions that would give most voice teachers a tic douloureux. Gergiev creates the impression that his hectic itineraries survive on a knife-edge of timing.