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The triumph was Gergiev and the orchestra. The elegant 144-year-old Mariinsky Theatre (smaller than Symphony Hall, never mind the humongous Met) holds 2200 persons, who sit on back-breaking wooden chairs, the seats padded in turquoise cloth that sets off the gilt-trimmed, white-edged rings of balconies, each with its delicate crystal chandeliers. No seat is farther than two rows under any overhang. The warm, round, rich-textured sound rising from the large, uncovered pit fills the hall without straining yet doesn’t drown out the singers. Grandeur and intimacy are in perfect balance. (You can see images of this fabled theater, inside and out, on the splendid DVDs of Gergiev conducting Russian operas, including the Andrei Tarkovsky production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov.)

Gergiev turned out to be a marvelous Wagnerian. Not a note passed that didn’t get his insightful attention. The pace was slow but never flagged. And the big set pieces — preludes to acts, the Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla, the Ride of the Valkyries, the Magic Fire Music, Siegfried’s Rhine Journey — all had both immediacy and sweep, a sense of discovery and surprise. The stunning drum beats opening Siegfried’s Funeral Music lifted me off my chair. I’ve rarely heard this powerful music express so fully the devastation of its heroic loss. And the final music of Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene both ached with her tragic self-sacrifice and soared with the ecstatic nobility of that gesture.

The most consistent cast was in Die Walküre, with Kit as the conflicted god whose own laws force him to sacrifice the two figures he loves most, his son Siegmund (the hunky, big-voiced Oleg Balashov) and his favorite daughter, the demi-goddess Brünnhilde (sung with riveting intensity and heat by the attractive and athletic Olga Sergeyeva, who’ll join Kit and Gergiev at the Met). Soprano Mlada Khudoley was a radiant and touching Sieglinde (Siegmund’s twin sister, mother of their son Siegfried); three nights later, she performed the leading role — heroine and villainess — in a spectacular concert version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s gorgeous "magical opera-ballet" Mlada (a major source of Stravinsky’s Firebird, and also led magnificently by Gergiev), revealing her ability to sing idiomatically in both German and Russian.

As the gnome Alberich, who sets the whole cycle in motion by renouncing love in order to get the Rhinemaidens’ gold, baritone Viktor Chernomortsev, a popular character star with the Mariinsky, proved how much more effective it was to have one singer repeat his role in each opera. It was odd to have Brünnhilde almost double in size between Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung (though Larissa Gogolevskaya finally overcame her Russian glottalism for a searing Immolation Scene) and to see Wotan getting younger when he was supposed to get older and weaker in each opera. There were also excellent performances by the pouty young bass Mikhail Parenko (in a floor-length dress) as Alberich’s devilish son Hagen, Yevgeny Nikitin as the weak-willed but strong-voiced social-climbing Günther, and the deeply resonant mezzo-soprano Olga Savova as both the earth goddess Erda and the wicked witch in Mlada. Neither the two effortful tenors who sang Siegfried nor the tenor in Mlada pleased me much. But Hagen’s creepy retainers delivered some of the most exciting choral singing I’ve ever heard.

The night of a ballet gala — Chopiniana followed by seven bravura pas de deux (including one by Balanchine) — Gergiev was a member of the audience until he raced across the street for an impromptu go at the Brahms Double Concerto with the conservatory student orchestra. He’s tireless.

My last night in St. Petersburg, I got to see the Mariinsky Ballet in a glorious Swan Lake. The swans enter with a nice touch: their reflections glide across the lake with them. I was less happy with the sappy ending instituted during the Soviet era — happily-ever-after on earth is not what Tchaikovsky’s music indicates. The dancing, though, was airborne, the corps a model of effortless ensemble perfection. Mikhail Agrest conducted both ballet evenings with an energy that made me admire Gergiev’s eloquence all the more. Odette/Odile was a very young corps ballerina, Alina Somova, whose pliant arms are almost as long as her elegant legs, and whose yearning tenderness as Odette was as moving as her self-satisfied Odile was brilliant. I think she won’t remain in the corps long.

Those were my sunlit evenings. Daytime it was hard to keep from going back to the Hermitage (for Rembrandt’s heartbreaking Return of the Prodigal Son, the two exquisite Leonardo Madonnas, the rooms of eye-popping Cézannes, Matisses, and Picassos). Or to Peter the Great’s Kunstkammer ("chamber of art"), his touching attempt to demystify abnormality with scientific exhibits of fetal deformities. In the vast Palace Square, outside the Hermitage, where the Bolsheviks gathered to bring down the Romanovs, workers were already setting up chairs for the next week’s Paul McCartney concert. And directly opposite the Fantasyland onion domes of the Church of the Spilled Blood, a rare sign in English read: "Meet your Russian princess here — parties with beautiful women — stylish apartments for rent from $40 to $150 per day." Russia is full of contradictions — but maybe only a little more obviously than we are.