Shostakovich’s buddy, composer of the soviet Winnie the Pooh and an almost forgotten 20th century jewish master composer: Mieczysław Weinberg and his opera The Idiot at Musiktheater an der Wien in the staging of Vassiliy Barkhatov.

Man is like this train. In the same way, he is also doomed to forever drag from the past a chain of dark, terrible coaches inherited from no-one knows who and why. And he calls the meaningless rumble of this random chain of hopes, opinions and fears his life. And there is no way to escape this fate.

Victor Pelevin, Tchapaev and Void

I was surprised and horrified at the same time by the proposal to write about Weinberg and his opera The Idiot, because the production in question feels so personal to me. Not only due to my Russian origin and natural interest for every elaborate, interesting production of soviet operas with such enormously difficult contexts as Weinberg’s one, but also because of personal acquaintances that are involved into the project. Nevertheless, the challenge gives a drive, a motivation to analyse the work of Russian prodigy stage director Vassiliy Barkhatov (as we called him in 2010s in Russia) in combination with the musical lead of Thomas Sanderling – a real connoisseur and specialist of post WWII soviet music repertoire.

Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s music is an emblematic, characteristic phenomena to the post World war epoch in USSR. In the 60s and 70s, Weinberg was one of the most famous and most performed composers in the USSR, who took his place in the matrix of the Soviet music life. He wrote a huge amount of music, which was performed by Gilels and the Borodin’s quartet, violinists like David Oistrakh and Leonid Kogan, Cellists Rostropovich and Shafran.

Yet, it is worth noting, that Mieczyslaw Weinberg isn’t soviet by origin, but by the horrible circumstances of the Second World War: He was born on the 12th of January 1919 in Warsaw to a Jewish family of conductor Samoel Weinberg, just 26 days after Poland got its freedom from Russia. He studied and worked there until Nazi Germany attacked Poland in 1939, when he escaped to the Soviet Union (his parents died in the Trawniki concentration camp), where he subsequently settled in Moscow, married Natalja Wowsi-Michoels (daughter of the most renown Jewish stage director in Russian theatre, Solomon Michaelovitch Wowsi-Michoels, who was killed in Minsk on Stalin’s order 1948 with antisemitic motives).

Teacher, friend, and defender: Dmitry Shostakovich

Inevitably, he became involved into soviet music circles thanks to his teacher, friend, and defender Dmitry Shostakovich, whom he met in Tashkent in 1941, when they were both evacuated from the frontline, that was approaching Moscow. In post-war years, he could continue his musical career only after Stalin’s death in 1953. He wrote more than 150 opuses in almost all genres. Songs and cantatas, ballets and operettas, music for drama and radio performances, circus performances, music for children, 26 symphonies, concertos and other works with orchestra, 17 quartets, piano quintet, trio, vocal cycles, chamber ensembles, about 30 sonatas and solo pieces for various instruments, 7 operas, 2 of which were premiered posthumously - Passanger was premiered in 2010 in Bregenz Festival by Teodor Currentzis and The Idiot in 2013 in Nationaltheater Mannheim by Thomas Sanderling.

Weinberg gained particular fame in the USSR during his lifetime as an author of film music. Widely known are his piercing melodies from the films Flying Cranes 1957, The Last Inch 1959, On Thin Ice 1966, lyric-comedy musical images - in the films Tiger Tamer 1955, Honeymoon 1956, Aphonya 1975, charming "puffers" and "nozzles" from the soviet cartoon Winnie the Pooh 1969, the lovely music of the cartoons Twelve Months 1956 and Vacation of Boniface 1965.

Unfortunately, due to the extremely difficult life he had and weak positions within the soviet system of music production (he never was a professor) and weak interest for officially formal music of USSR, his music still doesn’t occupy a proper place in repertoire programming across Europe. That is why this production of The Idiot is so important, especially in the context of the new war, that Russia launched against Ukraine.

Weinberg’s last Opera The Idiot of 1985 is characteristically outstanding to its time piece. The material Wienberg created is fragile, intimate, at the same time unstable, with difficult colourful orchestration, that demands lots of attention from the conductor. The characters do have some kind of leitmotifs, but it doesn’t work in the Wagnerian way, it doesn’t have such a strict system to it. Secondly, The Idiot is a classic literaturocentric ‘Russian Opera’ - throughout Russian opera history until 1980s, when the USSR was considered ‘the foremost reading country’, many operas were very much literaturocentric: intentionally based on grand Russian literature. It was a kind of a virtuous tradition to write an opera, for example, after Pushkin’s Boris Godounov or Eugene Onegin, or after Gogol’s Nose, or after Lev Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Weinberg’s choice ironically fell on Fyodor’s Dostoyevsky’s roman The Idiot (1869). To remind, Dostoevsky already was set in operatic form by Prokofiev for his Gambler (1929) and by Leos Janacek in his Z mrtveho domu (1930).

The 80s in the USSR were in many ways time of idiots…

People lost trust in the communist ideology, because the reality and proclaimed values were antonymic. Because of the above-described complexity of The Idiot, it has quite a difficult staging history. In fact, the truly first performance happened in 1991 on the chamber stage of Bolshoi Theatre by Boris Pokrovski - it had huge coupures and was half-concert staged. Then, in GITIS theatrical academy in 2010 Dmitry Bertman made staging with students, finally, in 2013 Thomas Sanderling alongside with stage director Regula Gerber realised a full opera and the music recording followed 2 years later!  In this new Viennese production only maestro Sanderling and tenor Dmitry Golovnin (role of Prince Myshkin) participate for the second time.

Destination: nowhere? 

As Vassiliy Barkhatov himself stated: “The Idiot of Weinberg isn’t The Idiot of Dostoevsky, for me the most important is the musical dramaturgy of the opera”. Indeed, the opera differs strongly from the original book as much as Massenet’s Werther resembles the one by Goethe. Also, the opera is huge, almost of Wagnerian scale, even if the Austrian premiere made several insignificant cuts. Weinberg's style is heard in The Idiot at its best, his love for building long and uncomfortable periods, for climaxes on a weak beat, for dissonances.

The dramaturgy of his opera is very particular: scenes invading each other, stories that become events, and events that flow into a story about them. Librettist Medvedev makes characters the harbingers of fate, multiplied by passion for moralizing, balancing on the border of reality narrative. The main feature of The Idiot is not an impeccably built form, as in The Passenger, not the ultimate expressiveness of each note, as in The Portrait, but it’s very inclusion in the Russian operatic tradition and the desire of the authors not to argue with it, but to go further. The main focus concentrates on, perhaps, the rarest in his kind character in Dostoevsky’s literature - a young good idealist, who wishes to fix the world, prince Lev Nikolaevitch Myshkin. Unfortunately, this sincere idealism comes in total disaccord with the Russian reality, that’s why numerous times prince Myshkin is called by others an idiot. Add to this multiple iconic situations which includes marriage deals, money etc, and you get the most galvanised picture of that époque. Such a complex, introspective oeuvre demands no lesser deep interpretation.

The truly congenial Viennese staging resolution of The Idiot, imagined by stage designer Christian Schmidt – a train coach – is a true chronotope for Russia, omnipresent in our cultural heritage. A replica of a classic 2 class wagon of late XIXth century, exactly from the times of Dostoevsky. And this space is spectacularly used at its best abilities. The opera is quite fast, and scenes change promptly as if it was a film, organised in 4 acts - Weinberg and his librettist Medvedev were required to fit a huge novel into one evening. So, the stage solution must be equally flexible and not overloaded with narrative, this Barkhatov and his team nailed perfectly, because the train as a metaphor superinduces the context and the main drama lines. As in the original novel, the staging of Barkhatov is organised in two parts: the first part, before the break, focuses on the love triangle between Myshkin, Nastassja and the rake Rogozhin; the second part deals with the one between Myshkin, Nastassja and the pure Aglaia (centred in both cases on the divine love of Myshkin and the love with the carnal imprints of Nastassja, figure of Mary Magdalene whom he wishes to redeem).

A Groundhog Day for Lev Myshkin

Schmidt-Barkhatov’s train space is predominantly cinematic with a very catchy move – the opera starts and finishes with a line by Myshkin “I’m cold”. Barkhatov goes further and creates a Groundhog Day for Lev Myshkin - around 7 times Prince Myshkin (interpreted by Golovnin) wakes up, drops playing cards, finds himself with his fellow train companion Rogozhin (Dmitry Cheblykov), who opens a bottle of vodka, alongside his servant Lebedev (Petr Sokolov). Then, step by step, dynamically and gradually from scene to scene this train coach becomes not only an introducing set, but rather a space of study survey about the above mentioned relations, that reflects the inner worlds of Dostoevsky’s characters, thus enhancing the whole atmosphere. There are also some particularly perfect findings: general Epalchin appears to be dead; letters appear in staging as nightmarish visions carved on the characters’ bodies, Lebedyev shoots himself and resurrects, Rogozhin’s song performed on the roof of the train seems to be a requiem about everyone. And the scene where Aglaia meets Nastassia Filipovna happens in this empty train with videos in the windows of grey screens of death… These exquisite moments help to deepen the deceptive, ironic, self-looped and self-doomed world of Dostoevsky’s word and Weinberg’s music.

After 3 and a half hours, you do have an impression that this train, this world, pictured and reflected by the train coach that incarnates it in the most beautiful Russian dramatic traditions, go to nowhere. The question is, if Russia is doomed to finish in ‘Nowhereness’ or a ‘Void’, as writer Victor Pelevin puts it, is painfully important today again due to the war it launched against Ukraine. And, unfortunately, as it appears, Dostoevsky, Weinberg, Barkhatov are all concord about the final destination. What is most horrendous is that it is for people to carry this struggle, this train chain of terrible human passions, and one idealist could never redeem all of us. This, of course, takes us to the eternal philosophic and theological problem of Peccatum Originale formulated by Saint Augustine.

 The cast: first-class

All of these Pearl-like ideas and operatic experiences couldn’t be possible without a first-class cast. Dmitry Golovnin as poor and doomed prince Myshkin catches all our attention by his fine voice and play, he exists perfectly on stage with so much emotional nuances, as if Weinberg wrote this role for him. The same could be said about Ekaterina Sannikova, who jumped in 6 weeks prior to the premiere, and created a perfect bitchy femme fatale character of Nastassia Filipovna. Her party became a benefice of her acting abilities. Petr Sokolov (Lebedyev) adds particular spiciness to a Sancha Pansa like drama. Baritone Dmitry Cheblykov (Rogozhin) is a strikingly natural antinomy to Golovnin’s character. In fact, the whole ensemble exist together naturally. In the same way Ieva Prudnikovaite (Aglaia) counterweights Sannikova’s character - both give a catching chemistry on Barkhatov’s stage. Finally, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say, that without Thomas Sanderling the whole production would not see the light. Under his professional and naturally nuanced lead of RSO Wien, who luckily recently escaped the ‘nowhere destination’, exhaustively executes this soviet but Wagnerian sized work. If I might say so, this opera with so many difficulties to it has found its best maestro.

The Idiot at Theater an der Wien continues the intendant Stefan Herheim’s program line of highly unusual, routine-escaping performances that give an unique experience and provocative ground for thinking about the world, we live in. It is a rare opportunity to make ourselves think about some of the most dark categories of human existence, even if it wasn’t an initial intent of the creators. Vienna was truly fortunate to be able to harbour such a production.