down. However,  since most of the role had been shot with the lead, they couldnt  cut it out entirely, so the audience can catch glimpses of a young  woman, looking different in every scene, hanging around Boris for no  particular reason. It was not enough to tone the controversy down:  the purists felt that the director meant to portray Boris as  incestuous, and the producers sided with them against the director  in the press, ultimately disowned the film and kept its release to a  strict minimum. Kaline Carr (qv) as Xenia is generally not  mentioned in the credits, although she was widely mentioned in the  press as such and is on one of the posters for the film with  Ruggero Raimondi (qv) (Boris).