With its spikily uncompromising score and haunted, schizoid anti-heroine, The Fiery Angel scared off even the initially interested Bruno Walter in the 1920s, and was swiftly relegated to the rarely explored fringes of the repertoire, some of its themes recycled in Prokofiev’s Third Symphony. In fact, both the opera and Valery Bryusov’s original novel belong squarely to the Russian tradition of psychological supernatural stories. For less squeamish modern audiences it’s no less stage-worthy, and it’s hard to imagine a more compelling case for it than David Freeman’s classic 1993 Covent Garden/Mariinsky co-production.

Its medieval world is an island isolated in darkness through which near-naked demons prowl, blue-skinned and blank-faced, constantly clawing in to disrupt human existence. They torment the young woman Renata, obsessed with a ‘fiery angel’ she sees incarnated in the handsome Count Heinrich. Into her bedevilled quest she draws the knight Ruprecht, to their eventual ruin. He ends up an associate of Faust and Mephistopheles, no less, while she infects a convent with hysterical possession and is condemned by the Inquisition.

Galina Gorchakova tackles Renata’s literally fiendish part with vocal brilliance and fierce commitment, embodying her blend of derangement and almost innocent allure. Sergei Leiferkus’s warm-voiced Ruprecht radiates a rugged decency, swiftly ensnared in what may or may not be a shared delusion. The cast reads like a roster of rising Maryinsky stars, notably Larissa Dyadkova’s seedy Fortune-teller, Vladimir Galusin’s sinister Agrippa, and Vladimir Ognovenko’s chilling Inquisitor. Gergiev convincingly emphasises the score’s lyricism, without underplaying the demonic; the final frenzy of the nuns, punctuated by unerotic nudity, is chilling. Brian Large’s video direction captures the queasy atmosphere superbly, and the stereo sound is excellent.

Altogether a cathartic but darkly beautiful performance, not to be missed.