Opera ‘Cantos’ by Alexey Sioumak

Cantos ( ‘songs’ in Greek) was inspired by the biography and works  of the American writer Ezra Pound  (1885—1972), one of the founders of modernistic literature, who has written a work under the same title ‘Cantos’. In Cantos one comes across many languages, including Greeks, Spanish, Latin as well as meta-language, lots of allegories. Specially invited to stage the opera, a well-known Russian stage director Semjon Alexandrovsky is one of the founders and ideologists of Pop-up Theater in St. Petersburg, developer of so called ‘documentary theater’.
Teodor Currentzis has asked the composer to create something special, unknown till now for the music world for a not expected line-up, like violin and choir instead of expected orchestra.
‘I was impressed by the attempt of Ezra Pound to realize something like Babylon Tower from different languages. Also interesting was his positive attitude to the contrarily political directions: from Rooseveld to Hitler. Pound saw the politics as a funny game. He was put into a prison by Americans, into a open air cell, and everyone who walked along watched him. Pound gave then a vow of silence. Pound was an Artist, which was seen as insane, mysterious, whose vision no one could share.
Violin solo plays a role of the Artist, who has given a vow of silence and can say something only by not-distingue sounds. Other participants of the opera are a choir (musicAeterna) and percussionists, at the end electronics plays an important role as well.
Opera Cantos is not the first collaboration of Teodor Currentzis and Alexey Sioumak. In 2008 together with famous Russian theater stage director Cyrill Serebrennikov at the contemporary arts festival ‘Territory’ was staged the opera ‘Station’ at Vinzavod, Moscow. In 2010 at Tchekhov Theater Moscow the same artistic team has showed a theater version of ‘Requiem’ by Alexey Sioumak, a time manifest dedicated to the WWII victims.
These websites provide more Russian information about Cantos:
Article M24
Article at the Perm Opera