The Bolshoi Theatre gave back the costumes of the legendary production of Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov to the Hvorostovsky Krasnoyarsk Theatre. This is due to the plans for the stage restoration of the archival show.

In February 2014, the Krasnoyarsk audience was given a unique opportunity to hear this work in the original author's version. The production of Boris Godunov (music director and conductor is Dmitri Volosnikov, directed by Nadezhda Stolbova) in Krasnoyarsk has become a joint project of the three theatres: the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Bolshoi, and the Moscow Music Theatre Novaya Opera. The premiere was dedicated to the 175th anniversary of the composer Modest Mussorgsky and happened in Krasnoyarsk exactly 140 years after the first performance of this opera on the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre.

In January 2014, two huge trucks left Moscow for Krasnoyarsk: they delivered costumes, stage sets, and bells for the show to the Hvorostovsky Opera and Ballet Theatre. Real Orthodox bells with a total weight of about a ton were specially cast for this production at the one-of-a-kind factory of Nikolai Shuvalov in the city of Tutaev, the Yaroslavl Region.

Costumes and sets were transferred for free use in Siberia during three years according to the order of the Russian Ministry of Culture. Unique authentic costumes and stage set were made according to the sketches of famous theatre designers Pavel Kaplevich and Yuri Kuper and created for Boris Godunov by the film director Alexander Sokurov who staged the famous opera on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre in 2007. This is more than eight hundred costumes: a special well-ventilated room was prepared at the Theatre for such a number of brocade and fur coats embroidered with precious stones, beads, and silk. Specialists from the Bolshoi Theatre came to help our costume designers to sort out a colossal amount of expensive and heavy garments. However, the lease period ended: in 2018, the costumes went back to the Bolshoi Theatre, only the bells stayed in Krasnoyarsk.

And in 2023, a fresh round of the history of Boris Godunov at the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theatre began: the very costumes carefully preserved at the Bolshoi Theatre returned to Krasnoyarsk, and the production itself will be resumed in the upcoming 46th season and shown not only on the Theatre’s stage, but also in towns of the Krasnoyarsk Region.