It was with a Barbican performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Invisible City of Kitezh that the Mariinsky Theatre established its international reputation. The concert was, by all accounts, an epoch-making event, revealing the power of an ensemble company then unequalled in the west, and restoring to the repertoire a work that many declared to be a masterpiece. Ten years on, Kitezh has resurfaced at the Barbican as the opening work of the Mariinisky's brief London residency.

The piece itself is something of a conundrum. Written by a confirmed atheist, it nevertheless advocates mysticism in times of political catastrophe. The eponymous city, rendered invisible by God to prevent its destruction in wartime, is a Platonic ideal lost to mankind and an otherworldly refuge from a blighted universe.

The dramatic conflict focuses on the relationship between Grishka, the embittered nihilist who betrays Kitezh to its enemies, and Fevronia, the city's saintly queen, whose husband is killed in battle. The score is ultimately contradictory. Rimsky takes Grishka through a psychic nightmare of Dostoevskyan proportions. Fevronia, whose anguish at Vsevolod's death is rendered on a lower inspirational level, remains something of a cipher.

The performances reinforced the problem. As Grishka, Vassily Gorshkov presented us with a vivid portrayal of his descent into psychological and spiritual hell. As Fevronia, Tatiana Borodina was vocally immaculate but dramatically too cool. The work's chief glory lies in its orchestral writing, with its astonishing evocation of the natural world from which Fevronia is wrenched and in its depiction of the eerie beauty of Kitezh itself, as the memory of its tolling bells both destroys Grishka and becomes for Fevronia the symbol of the paradise that awaits her. The work was remorselessly exposed by Valery Gergiev, still the finest interpreter of Russian opera.