With its unwieldy title, Wagnerian allusions and less-than-coherent symbolism, The Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh is one of those epics that often seems on the verge of revealing itself to non-Russian audiences as a masterwork but not quite getting there. The Mariinsky Theatre toured with the piece, though in budget-compromised circumstances. This deeply felt production, designed and directed by the controversial Dmitri Tcherniakov, is a significant step further in the internationalisation of the opera, though it may always be a special-occasion piece for only the most sympathetic settings.

Updated to modern dress (avoiding the potentially distancing effect of story-book Russian costumes), the production certainly shows the sublime side of Rimsky-Korsakov but can’t disguise its theatrical blind spots. The Kitezh plot involves a prince discovering the innocent maiden Fevroniya in the woods, taking her back to the city to be his bride only to have the city sacked by Tartars. Your favourite characters meet again in an afterlife, suggesting that the city of Kitezh is also a less pretentious version of Valhalla. But while Wagner gave mythological depths to his plot-lines amid structural schemes that cast hypnotic spells on audiences, Rimsky mainly wrote beautiful music, not always sustaining the long spans of stage time. The final scene’s apotheosis, for example, can leave you simultaneously struck by how incredibly drawn out it is (Fevroniya takes time to send a conciliatory message to the living) while also not wanting it to end.

With the story told in modern imagery, Fevroniya’s pastoral home is an appropriately lovely clearing amid tall grass and the Tartars are truly brutal skinheads resembling something out of the Mad Max movies. (When Fevroniya asks the traitor Grishka if he’s the Antichrist, it’s a reasonable question.) After the poor girl expires, she enters the sort of wide-open spaces that suggest Kitezh is an ethereal realm that one experiences not visually but from within. Along the way are familiar Tcherniakov tropes: provocative aphorisms begin key scenes. Elemental imagery includes fire for purging, water for cleansing and earth for healing. Plot liberties are thoughtful.

The committed theatricality of the cast (which has the luxury of some major singers in minor roles) goes far to making the production convincing on its own terms, especially tenor Maxim Aksenov’s vocally hail, boyish prince, John Daszak’s devoured-from-within madness as Grishka and, most of all, Svetlana Ignatovich as Fevroniya, a long role that she portrays with a nervous air of often joyful expectation and sings without strain or fatigue. This could be a career-making performance – and one achieved with the inspired support of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra under Marc Albrecht.