Sealed in a barrel, then cast out to sea, the tsaritsa and her son wash ashore on an island, where they miraculously bust out. For my father, this moment from The Tale of Tsar Saltan was to remain the high-water mark of all opera. Having caught the show as a boy before the Revolution in Mother Russia, he was still talking about it in America 70 years later. Too bad that over the intervening century, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s delirious shaggy-dog fantasy has so seldom traveled. Even back home revivals have dried up. This new production on Moscow’s grandest stage is long overdue. Here’s hoping the peanut gallery in the sky has an unobstructed view. —M.G.