This famous production was created at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, by the great Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris, Andrei Rublev, etc.), when in exile from his homeland in 1983. In the late 80s, after Tarkovsky's death, Valery Gergiev, as Artistic Director of the Kirov Opera, specially requested that the London staging be loaned to the Kirov, so that Russian audiences should have the chance to see Tarkovsky's only opera production, since all his work was banned in the USSR during the last years of his life. And in order to give audiences worldwide the opportunity to see this unique staging, a performance were televised live from Leningrad (as it then was), as well as videotaped for future release. It is this, now celebrated, performance which forms this DVD.

Robert Lloyd, the distinguished British bass, was invited to sing the title role of Boris Godunov, and was supported by a premiere cast of Russian singers, including Olga Borodina and Sergei Leiferkus. Robert Lloyd first sang Boris Godunov on stage when Tarkovsky created his production in 1983, and together they worked on a highly imaginative and original concept, not at all in the traditional style then well-known in Russia and the West. The production, of course, famously restored Mussorgsky's original orchestration, rather than adopting the then more familiar Rimsky-Korsakov edition.

This new DVD will present Boris Godunov for the first time in 5.1 DTS surround sound (in addition to LPCM stereo), and subtitles in no less than six languages will also be included.