Khovanshchina, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, review: five stars for WNO's unmissable production

David Pountney revives his thoughtful, Soviet-inspired 2007 production for Welsh National Opera’s Russian Revolution season

Russian revelation: the entire cast sing and act brilliantly (Clive Barda)

Mussorgsky’s unfinished historical epic, Khovanshchina, is one of the most extraordinary examples anywhere of political discourse writ dramatically large. The eloquently sprawling plot relates how aristocrat conspirators failed to depose the reforming Tsar, Peter the Great, in 17th-century Russia.

Director David Pountney has revived his deeply thoughtful, Soviet-inspired 2007 production to compelling effect for Welsh National Opera’s Russian Revolution season. With lethal factional infighting and twisted religious extremism, the wider relevance of the opera to present times becomes brutally clear.

Mounds of grey rubble stand at jagged, constructivist angles beneath a giant wrecking ball. Terrified peasants and once-overseeing Streltsy alike must find ways to navigate shifting power structures or become collateral damage; their travails – and sense of humour – given magnificent voice by the WNO chorus.

The cast sing and act brilliantly. While Marfa (Sara Fulgoni) glides crazily, prophetically between factions, the Khovanskys (Robert Hayward and Adrian Dwyer) sink into degradation. Murder and self-immolation end their plotting, the latter at the behest of the Old Believers, led with disturbing command by Miklos Sebestyen’s Dosifei.

As a metaphor for any people’s fate, it’s utterly chilling. But the WNO orchestra under conductor Tomas Hanus ensure that Shostakovich’s marvellous orchestration (with Stravinsky’s finale) is full of colour and strength, as well as agony. Unmissable.

Wales Millennium Centre (029 2063 6464) until 7 October, wno.org.uk