DAS RHEINGOLD

Myth. It is older than the history, for it speaks of times when the human did not yet exist; and it is wiser than the mankind, for it can speak of what will come after the end of the world. Just as a ring has neither beginning nor end, yet is finite and perfect, so myth has no author, does not become obsolete with time and remains unchanged in essence.

It is the archaic myth as the basis of Wagner's epos that primarily interests Kirill Serebrennikov. Beliefs that simultaneously blind and elevate the spirit to unattainable heights; rituals that are sometimes bizarre, sometimes terrifying; relics of vanished cultures, with their silent masks predicting the world's end – all are integral parts of myth, all are origins. These very origins mesmerized Wagner: »When our earth's Northern hemisphere was as much covered by water as now is the Southern, the largest island of this northern world-sea would have been the highest mountain-range of Asia […] Here is the ancestral seat of all religions, of every tongue, of all these nations' Kinghood«. (from: »Die Wibelungen«, 1848) 

*Photo by: © Frol Podlesnyi