Octavia. Trepanation investigates the bloody mechanisms of the revolution. This opera, which had its world premiere at the Holland Festival, was created by composer Dmitri Kourliandski and director Boris Yukhananov, the artistic director of Moscow’s Stanislavsky Electrotheatre. They call it an ‘opera-operation’. On stage stands a giant replica of Lenin’s head, the skull of which is being trepanated. Kourliandski’s music consists of socialist hymns stretched out in time, texts by the Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky and excerpts from Octavia, a play attributed to Seneca about the Roman emperor Nero. Is art capable of explaining tyranny?
More about Octavia. Trepanation
More about the performances in Moscow
Photos of the premiere
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