The Royal Opera’s 2016 production of Boris Godunov, in Richard Jones’ psychologically probing staging, returns for the third time with the Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel once again offering his tormented but magisterial reading of the title role.
The production is of Mussorgsky’s original 1869 version of the score: less epic in feel than with the later well-meaning retouching by Rimsky-Korsakov and unfolding in seven austere tableaux. There are sacrifices: we lose the two Polish scenes, the Kromy forest finale and much of the writing for solo female voice. But in Jones’ riveting staging (revived by Ben Mills), impressively focused for all its dark eccentricities, the concluding scene of Boris’s death has an undeniable emotional pull.
