Idiot is Salzburg’s biggest hit

Mieczysław Weinberg’s opera on Dostoievsky novel The Idiot has received audience ovations and ecstatic reviews at the Salzburg Festival.

The director Krzysztof Warlikowski updates the story to Putin’s Russia, replete with characters selling their souls for a ruble. Aušrinė Stundytė stars as Natasha, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

Jan Brachmann writes in the FAZ: ‘When Bogdan Volkov, as Prince Myshkin, sits alone on the huge stage of the Felsenreitschule, staring into the darkness around him and singing in a half-voice, childishly bright: “What a breathless, strange day. Everything rushes and flickers before my eyes,” then you can feel what Weinberg’s music has captured about this character from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel: it gains clarity about the world by becoming quiet in the midst of the noise.’

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