Leben mit einem Idioten

As punishment for a lack of compassion, the writer «Ich» (or «I») is supposed to take in an idiot at his home. Seems easy enough: «Ich» heads to the psychiatric ward to choose an idiot; he’s quite impressed with himself and his willingness to take in a «holy fool». The idiot seems to fit in well with the life of the writer and his wife. The only thing that doesn't work is speaking, apart from the occasional «Ech!», he doesn’t utter a single word. But when the idiot suddenly and without warning poops on the carpet one day, an uncontrollable spiral of violence, passion and anarchy begins. Alfred Schnittke’s opera Leben mit einem Idioten was premiered in Amsterdam in 1992. Wowa, the idiot in the title, was quickly understood to be a caricature of Lenin, the absurd and grotesque story a bitter parody of everyday life in the Soviet Union. However, the composer has stated that his opera is «by no means solely about communism» but far more about a general state in which «the irrational dominates the rational». And so stage director Kirill Serebrennikov will bring the piece to the stage as the dystopian, contemporary story of a married couple for whom the idiot catalyzes the breakdown of their already toxic relationship – bringing the darkest, most destructive human instincts to the surface, alongside a predisposition to aggression and violence. Schnittke’s music, with quotations from Bach’s Matthäus-Passion, the Communist International, a folk song about a birch tree, a tango from the 1930s, and further echoes of Chopin, Mahler, Shostakovich, and others, uses a polystylistic collage technique. All of this will unfold with the Philharmonia Zürich under the direction of Jonathan Stockhammer. Susanne Elmark, Bo Skovhus, as well as the Chor der Oper Zürich – which appears on stage for the duration of the evening – will rise to the enormous challenges the presented by the score.

In German with German and English surtitles