George Hall [The Guardian, 3 August 2005]

The Kirov Opera's week-long visit to Covent Garden opens with Mussorgsky's great historical epic, Boris Godunov. It is played in the original 1869 version, in a staging first seen in St Petersburg in 2002. The souvenir programme credits Valery Gergiev and designer George Tsypin for the "stage conception", which implies that the Kirov's artistic supremo and chief conductor holds responsibility for the visual as well as the musical side of the show. If so, he should have left it to the others.