Director Dmitri Chernyakov combined three operas by Rachmaninoff with a crossover plot.
Hello, this is Anton. If you don't know Dmitry Chernyakov, I will tell you briefly: he is the most famous opera director from Russia, who has been working in Europe for many years, in the so-called good opera houses (in the sense of theaters). Without this name, it would be unthinkable to talk about a modern "director's opera" - one in which the circumstances of classic plots are changed.
Some examples are from what I have seen myself (both Rimsky-Korsakov operas). Chernyakov turned "The Story of Tsar Saltan" into the story of a little boy with autism, whose mother tries to explain to him in a language that the child can understand what happened in their family. And "The Snow Maiden" became a folk horror film about modern neo-pagans - actually "Solstice", only everyone sings.
Anton Dolin watched a new performance by Chernyakov in Zurich: this time the director staged three operas by Sergei Rachmaninov, "Alco", "The Miserly Knight" and "Francesca de Rimini", which are relatively rarely seen on stage. The first two are based on Pushkin's works, the third is based on Dante's "Divine Comedy" in general, and are connected only by the name of the composer. The director, however, devised a cross-plot for them.
In many ways, this interpretation echoes "Little Tragedies" by Kirill Serbarnikov, where the "miserly knight" was also the "supporting structure" - Pushkin's, of course, not Rachmaninov's. A slightly less obvious analogy is Lynch's Twin Peaks: as Dolin writes, Chernyakov's image of hell is subtly reminiscent of the Black Lodge. Yes, there is hell, and judging by the description, it's a highly effective scene.
___.
The material does not open? Read here or here.