Ever since Mussorgsky, as he himself declared, “filled in a jotter and called it Khovanshchina” (1872) the opera has been met with both good and bad luck. Mussorgsky almost completed the piano score, omitting only a small fragment in the final scene of self-immolation. After the composer’s death the opera was completed and instrumented by Rimsky-Korsakov.

The path to international acclaim was very roundabout: most of Khovanshchina – repeating the fate of Boris Godunov – was performed in the version produced by Rimsky-Korsakov. While paying their respects to this version, starting in the 1950s musicians began to express their preference for the composer’s original score, lovingly restored by Pavel Lamm (1932) and the orchestral score of Dmitry Shostakovich (1959), the closest to Mussorgsky’s original idea. In its day the Kirov Theatre was the first to turn to Shostakovich’s version (1960). In December 1988 with the arrival of Valery Gergiev as the theatre’s Artistic Director this production was revived. That was Gergiev’s first major artistic production in his new role.