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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Innovative Australian composer Michael Smetanin joins forces with award-winning writer and librettist Alison Croggon to tell the incendiary story of Stalin’s favourite poet - Vladimir Mayakovsky. Fusing the life of Russian futurist writer and artist Mayakovsky with the development of the totalitarian Soviet state, Sydney Chamber Opera’s world premiere production brings the pulsing energies of rebellion to Carriageworks.' (Production summary)
Notes
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Judges report 2015 Victorian Premier's Literary Award : That anyone would attempt to pen an opera based on the life and work of Stalin’s favourite poet is remarkable. That the result could be so lively, witty and thought-provoking is an astonishment. Croggon’s libretto is both formally playful and artistically sincere, invoking the spirit of a revolutionary era while at the same time skewering the vanity of any such historical project. It is neither a biography nor a history, but rather akin to an exorcism, summoning all of the wonder and folly of a century-old futurist project in order that we may recognise its more dangerous ideological underpinnings. That their contours seem strangely familiar today is only one of the lingering effects the work leaves in its wake.
Production Details
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Presented by Sydney Chamber Opera and Carriageworks. Performed : 28 July -2 August 2014
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Awards
- 2015 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Prize for Drama
Last amended 12 Dec 2014 07:12:41
