FIRST NIGHT

Opera review: Khovanshchina at the Millennium Centre, Cardiff

Despite there being no Russians in the cast, the whole show is sung in Russian, and the difference to the vocal sound is incredible
Robert Hayward is immense as a ruthless Prince Khovansky in the WNO’s performance of Khovanshchina
Robert Hayward is immense as a ruthless Prince Khovansky in the WNO’s performance of Khovanshchina
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★★★★★
Wales has gone very big on the centenary of the Russian Revolution, and among the dozens of events in the principality’s R17 season, nothing is bigger that Mussorgsky’s epic five-act opera Khovanshchina.

Welsh National Opera first staged it in 2007, but David Pountney has revived his magnificently cinematic production with an added twist. Despite there being no Russians in the cast, the whole three-and-a-half-hour show is sung in Russian. The difference to the vocal sound, especially when WNO’s augmented chorus is hurling out Mussorgsky’s baleful, spine-shuddering climaxes, is incredible. Medals all round — Order of Lenin perhaps — for learning all that.

Of course, Mussorgsky composed the piece (between quintessentially Russian bouts of alcoholic depression) about 30 years before the revolution. And the