Faktura 10, a core initiative of RIBBON International, announces Prolegomena to an Opera: Songs for the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

In a major new work, Prolegomena to an Opera: Songs for the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy revives the musical life of one of Eastern Europe’s oldest academic institutions, founded in 1632, through a contemporary chamber song cycle conceived as a draft for a future opera. 

Commissioned by Faktura 10, a core initiative of RIBBON International, and curated by Marta Kuzma, Artistic Director and Chief Curator of Faktura 10, the music is composed by Maxim Kolomiiets, with concept and texts by Sasha Andrusyk, and performed by Ukho Ensemble Kyiv & friends with conductor Olga Prykhodko.

The project unfolds in dialogue with Untitled, 1997/2025 by Jannis Kounellis, a seminal work first realized nearly three decades ago and, in June, reinstalled on the ground floor of the Old Academic Building of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy as curated by Marta Kuzma and as a central project of Faktura 10. 

The project draws directly from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’s storied history. While the official curriculum emphasized theology, philosophy and classical languages, music occupied an informal yet crucial place in its scholastic life. This is articulated in Ivan Kuzminsky’s research into historical music practices at the Academy, which served as the basis for Songs for the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Building on his findings, Sasha Andrusyk developed the project as both a historical inquiry and a creative response — reimagining how music, singing, and choir might have shaped the intellectual and emotional life of the early eighteenth-century institution. In this period, multivoiced partesniy spiv(part singing) matured into the choral concerto—a distinct Ukrainian Baroque polyphonic form, noted for its expressive breadth and structural clarity.

The cycle has a seven-part structure, each drawn from historical situations that reveal how song was embedded into student life and the ceremonial rituals of the early 1700s. At the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, choirs and musical ensembles served not only as vehicles of worship but also as tools of education, rhetorical training, and social bonding. The episodes range from liturgical and disputational settings—where choral singing functioned as an extension of scholarly debate—to drinking songs, begging-for-alms cantos, and farewell laments performed at student gatherings and funerals. The performance includes nine instruments alongside three vocalists: Denys Sahirov (tenor), Ruslan Kirsh (baritone), and Kostiantyn Lenchyk (bass).

The production features scenography by Kyiv-based artist Katya Libkind, developed in dialogue with the Songs for Kyiv-Mohyla Academy libretto and in collaboration with artist Stanislav Turina. Libkind draws on the architectural memory of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy—specifically the renovation and near-erasure of the eighteenth-century congregation hall ceiling—to reflect on what has been lost, forgotten, or left unrealized. Her scenographic design embraces absence as a generative space where memory, imagination, and renewal converge. Turina’s contribution, Чаші для милостині (Alms Bowls), invites the audience into quiet presence with twenty-one hand-crafted bowls, each made from a different material. His work echoes the Academy’s historical tradition of student alms-seeking, deepening the performance’s connection to its layered cultural history.

Prolegomena to an Opera: Songs for Kyiv-Mohyla Academy is a project of Faktura 10, curated by Marta Kuzma, Artistic Director and Chief Curator. It is written and conceived by Sasha Andrusyk, composed by Maxim Kolomiiets, and performed by Ukho Ensemble Kyiv with guest collaborators. Scenography is by Katya Libkind.

The project has been made possible through an important cooperation with the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.