This screening will be followed by a discussion with Royal Opera team members Dan Dooner, who worked as assistant director on their recent revival of Richard Jones’ production of Boris Godunov, and Patrick Milne, who works as a répétiteur at The Royal Opera and previously worked on a production of Boris Godunov in Munich.

Based on the musical recording of the famous opera by Modest Mussorgsky, whereby a possible impostor torments a newly crowned medieval czar who may have ordered the real successor’s death. Never before screened theatrically in the UK, Andrzej Żuławski’s adaptation of Boris Godunov is about the tragic events surrounding the ruling of the Russian tsar in the early 17th century. The recording itself was made two years before the filming with the participation of the Washington Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich, and several opera stars including Ruggero Raimondi.

Żuławski’s film situates the viewer inside the metafictional space of the opera house, just as if the audience were watching the performance live. Highly controversial at the time of release, the director deliberately fills the picture with a plenty of anachronisms, commenting on Soviet history and other dictatorships of the 20th century.

About the speakers:

Canadian Dan Dooner is a Staff Director (stage director on staff) at Covent Garden. For The Royal Opera he has directed many revivals (La Fille du régiment, Carmen, Don Carlo, Les Vêpres siciliennes, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Macbeth, Fidelio, Un ballo in maschera, Die Zauberflöte, L’elisir d’amore, Rigoletto, Cosí fan tutte, La traviata, Simon Boccanegra, Don Pasquale, Der fliegende Holländer, Falstaff, La Bohème and Madama Butterfly). He has also directed revivals for major opera houses such as La Scala in Milan, Glyndebourne, ENO, Opera Australia, and Teatro Massimo in Palermo. He co-directed Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s production of Elektra for the Salzburg Festival.

Patrick Milne is a pianist and conductor, currently on the music staff at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he was previously a Jette Parker Young Artist. He has conducted operas and concerts with the Royal Opera, London Handel Festival, Opera North and Scottish Opera orchestras among others. As a pianist, Patrick has performed across Europe and the UK, including on BBC Radio 3 with Ermonela Jaho. In 2022-23 he worked at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich as staff pianist and coach on several different opera productions.

You can find our other (regular) screenings of Boris Godunov here.