IT’S perhaps unavoidable for that formidable opera director David Pountney, known for tackling the more obscure Slavic operatic repertoire, not to pursue the somewhat simplistic comparisons of Ivan the Terrible’s reign to that of Joseph Stalin in this production.

This may be an interpretative conceit too far because, at its heart, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera is the tragic tale of an all-powerful ruler rediscovering his long-lost illegitimate daughter Olga.

Ivan, portrayed as a passionate lover in the prologue, in the final scene has laid siege to Pskov, where he discovers that Olga is in fact his daughter. He determines to spare the city but fails and Olga dies in the cross-fire.