Debuts in the opera Boris Godunov

Last year acclaimed British director Graham Vick’s production opened the Stars of the White Nights music festival and proved to be one of the highlights of the season. The original version, without the familiar and standard “Polish” act and the battle scene near Kromy, is rarely performed at the Mariinsky Theatre, while the director’s interpretation of the recurrent drama of Russian history – the abyss of mistrust between the people and the authorities – immediately found fervent adherents among both critics and audiences alike.

One of the opera company’s leading soloists, Sergei Skorokhodov will be appearing as the pretender Grigory Otrepiev, who in the guise of the prematurely dead heir to the Russian throne became a weapon in the hands of fate that punishes Tsar Boris for his old sin of infanticide. Skorokhodov, whose repertoire encompasses a wide variety of roles ranging from Lohengrin in Wagner’s eponymous opera to Nemorino in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, is not singing the role of the Pretender for the first time, though he is making his debut in the original version of the opera as staged by Vick. Elena Zheleznyakova, a soloist with the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers, will be performing the role of the unhappy Princess Xenia, Godunov’s daughter who alone apart from her brother takes pleasure in the troubled conscience of the crowned offender.

Also making his debut in this performance is Nikolai Kamensky who will be appearing as the peasant Mityukha.