Riot police on the stage of the Mariinsky, missiles rolling across the Bolshoi – opposition to Vladimir Putin's rule has suffused Russian culture to such a degree that it has reached the stages of the country's most vaunted theatres.

Last weekend, the latest production to allude to the opposition protests that have brought tens of thousands onto the streets of Moscow opened at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, Putin's hometown.

Gone are the tsarist-era costumes favoured by most who put on Boris Godunov, the 19th century opera by Modest Mussorgsky about a ruthless tsar who takes the throne after murdering the rightful heir.

In their stead, police walk the stage wearing their ominous black leather jackets. Camouflaged riot police bearing rubber truncheons hold back protesters begging the tsar for bread.

Opposition activists seized on the production after photographs leaked of a final rehearsal before last Friday's premiere.

"It's as close as possible to today's events," wrote the Facebook account that has been organising the protests. Images of riot police beating back protesters awakened memories of early May, when an anti-Putin protest erupted into violence. Dozens of protesters and riot police were injured, sparking fresh anger at what many believe to be a police state.

"None of the protesters expected that the latest trends of Russian Twitter would be voiced on a conservative opera stage," wrote the newspaper Izvestiya. Shock at the performance was amplified since the Mariinsky's artistic director, Valery Gergiev, is a very public Putin supporter who took part in his presidential campaign this year.

In the opera's final scene, red graffiti adorns the wall of a government conference hall. "The people want change!" it reads, echoing a slogan chanted at opposition rallies today.

"The nation's foremost opera house could not but react to the social cataclysms of recent months," wrote Dmitry Renansky, a critic at Kommersant, the country's leading daily.

Some critics have chided the opera's British director, Graham Vick, for failing to grasp the intricacies of Russia's political moment, when tens of thousands of mainly middle class Russians have taken to the streets to demand freedoms and democratic reform – a far cry from the hungry protesters begging for attention from an all-powerful tsar. Yet others have praised the effect of his view as an outsider on the opera's production and design.

Unlike Vick, "we have become accustomed to the absurd coexistence of imperial and Soviet systems, to the bizarre hybrid of the KGB and the Russian Orthodox church, and it's not unusual to us when the riot police set upon the people," wrote Vedomosti, another respected daily.

"I'm delighted that Boris has created so much interest," Vick told the Guardian, adding that he "sought only to do the clearest and most articulate production of Mussorgsky's masterpiece that I could".

In Moscow, the grand Bolshoi Theatre has put on its own production targeting Putin's stranglehold on power. Renowned director Kirill Serebrennikov has taken the Golden Cockerel, an early 20th century opera written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov as the tsarist regime entered its final death throes, and infused it with references to the present-day regime. One of the tsar's sons carries an iPad – a clear reference to Putin's protege, Dmitry Medvedev. KGB-style bodyguards clear Kremlin halls for the tsar's arrival. A grand parade celebrating the tsar features a Topol-M missile, Putin's favourite addition to yearly Victory Day festivities.

The opera opens with dozens of dignitaries and military men arriving to greet the tsar, a paranoid man divorced from reality.

At a performance of the opera on the eve of Putin's return to power this month, whispers of "it's just like the inauguration" ran through the audience.

"You can take any epoch in Russia and bring it to modern times and it will be the same thing," Serebrennikov said. "That's what happens in Russia – it's the same thing, over and over again."

Russians opposed to Putin's regime have begun calling him a tsar, while some who support him have been calling for a return to the monarchy. "When you read the material published by [the opposition leader Alexey] Navalny, you understand that the scale of the theft happening today is enormous," Serebrennikov said. "This scale has probably never existed in Russia before."

The opera has already come under attack. Fundamentalist Russian Orthodox activists have asked the head of the church to seek its ban, saying it mocks their religion. Boris Godunov and The Golden Cockerel were banned by the tsarist regimes.

Serebrennikov says he is not scared. "People always say they are amazed by the bravery of these productions," he said. "It's not a sign of bravery – it's a sign of the lack of freedom everywhere else. If the press could say what they wanted, no one would speak of bravery."