Modest Mussorgsky’s Chowanschtschina moves one profoundly — above all through its masterful weaving of Russian folk and church-music elements into grand operatic form. As a member of the circle known as The Five, Mussorgsky and his colleagues endeavored to build a musical language rooted deeply in Russian tradition rather than Western conventions. In Chowanschtschina, this language is charged with history, faith, and tragedy; the result is an opera that bridges past and present in a way that feels timeless, spiritual, and devastatingly human. The opera’s emotional core lies in its characters — such as Dossifey the priest or Marfa — whose love for their homeland, their faith, their ideals binds them to a fate of betrayal, murder, self-sacrifice. Their private suffering becomes collective — a portrait of a nation torn between tradition and reform, loyalty and cruelty. Through choruses and solo arias alike, Mussorgsky evokes the despair, hope, fanaticism, and yearning of those who love their country — even as they face annihilation.
Undoubtedly, the staging of Chowanschtschina at the Staatsoper Berlin Unter den Linden was intensified by the impressive performance of the incredibly talented singers, who created unforgettable historical images: Dossifey, performed by Taras Shtonda, embodied steadfastness, power, and remarkable pathos — almost prophetic in his intensity. Marina Prudenskaya’s Marfa was unbelievably sincere, lyrically poetic, yet steady and powerful; her voice carried both fragility and force. Mika Kares, as Count Iwan Chowansky, portrayed a perfidious authority figure with a strong voice and commanding presence. The chorus added its weight and cohesion, while George Gagnidze as Bojar Shaklowity delivered a brilliant, nuanced performance. Gagnidze — an award-winning singer who studied at the Conservatory in Tbilisi and built an international career from the Semperoper in Dresden to the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Opera Carlo Felice in Genoa — brought gravitas and ruthless elegance to his role.
Unfortunately, the recent staging by Claus Guth, which attempted to draw parallels with contemporary Russia, falls short. The visual references, such as Kremlin-like interiors, feel overly literal — heavy-handed symbolism rather than nuanced commentary. The video projections, racing through revolts, famines, and massacres in a black-and-white montage, undermine the carefully wrought sets, interiors, and costumes instead of enhancing them. Rather than deepening the historical resonance, this approach flattens it — the power of Mussorgsky’s music gets drowned under the weight of didactic images.
Commemoration and the confrontation with historical violence are among the central themes in the work of choreographer and director Ligia Lewis. In her recent piece Wayward Chant she stages grief, memory, and resistance as a visceral ritual: the performance a reckoning with race-based violence, gendered oppression, and the ongoing struggle against the erasure of Black voices. At the Gropius Bau’s vast atrium, bodies chant, convulse, and shift in austere formations — their movements echoing trauma, their moans weaving an elegy for lives exposed to brutal exploitation and invisibility. Lewis does not offer comfort. Instead, her work unsettles. The space was charged with uneasy tension: architectural projections cast onto the historic friezes loomed over spectators, ghost-images flickering above their heads — invoking a past that refuses to remain buried. This site-specific use of projection merged the physical architecture of Gropius Bau with the psychological architecture of collective memory, challenging us to recognize how systemic violence and erasure are embedded in visible and invisible structures.
Lewis repeatedly disrupts traditional spectator passivity. The audience was forced to shift positions as seating was rearranged, the crowd reshaped — a symbolic act of collective reverence and protest, reminding that commemoration is never comfortable. This formal instability echoed the unstable legacy of oppression and racial injustice. Musically and theatrically, Wayward Chant blended liturgical sounds with blues-inflected harmonies; chanting bodies became both choir and cry. The performance unfolded like a delayed hymn — ghostly, fractured, haunting — refusing closure. A cry for recognition, a refusal of silence. Tragic and comic elements collide in this piece, giving it all a lively twist: moments of absurdity or ironic gesture punctuate the horror, as if the work winks at its own theatricality. This self-reflective, tongue-in-cheek movement unsettles us further — reminding that resistance need not always wear the mask of solemn sorrow, but can also challenge through subversion and dark humor.
Wayward Chant is a profoundly poetic and politically urgent piece. It mourns the irreparable loss, laments the unspeakable past, and insists on presence in a world still haunted by race- and gender-based violence, structural erasure, and collective amnesia. It premiered as part of the Performing Arts Season of the Berliner Festspiele. The extensive solo exhibition of Ligia Lewis I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR… at Gropius Bau is on view till 18.1.2026.
By Dr. Lily Fürstenow
