Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.There are times when you leave the opera house unable to speak. When the combination of text, music, motion and imagery reaches a level of such complex perfection that you can’t find words for the way you feel.Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-96) fled the antisemitic pogroms of his native Poland for discrimination and censorship in Russia; his family was murdered by the Nazis and his best-known opera, The Passenger (1968), directly addresses the subject of the Holocaust.For his final opera, which was first performed in full nearly two decades after his death, Weinberg and his librettist Alexander Medvedev tackled Dostoyevsky’s sprawling, ambiguous novel about innocence and corruption. Inevitably, even a four-hour opera loses much of the detail of a long novel, but Weinberg’s music, dense and bittersweet, returns depth and nuance to his characters.Prince Myshkin, the holy fool of the opera’s title, returns to the savagely manipulative intrigues of St Petersburg society after a purifying stint at a Swiss sanatorium. The opera focuses on the love triangle between him, the “fallen” Nastasya Filippovna and society daughter Aglaya; but also that between Nastasya, the merchant Rogozhin and the prince. Weinberg’s music owes much to the influence of his mentor Shostakovich, who saved his life more than once. But The Idiot leaves behind the flinty angularity of his earlier work in favour of a lush, intoxicating expressionism. Like Mozart, he paints characters full of humanity, each haunted by personal ghosts. Through the score, we share Myshkin’s agonising compassion for everyone he meets, and we feel the inexorable violence that underpins a flawed society.This time, Salzburg gets everything right. Director Krzysztof Warlikowski is overbooked, and some of his recent work has been slapdash or derivative. But this time, he has leaned in and there is an extraordinary depth of attention for detail, a breathtaking talent for the use of space and an underlying melancholic lyricism to his work. Despite the vast space of the Felsenreitschule’s unforgiving stone stage, we are drawn into the lives of these characters with intimacy and empathy.Małgorzata Szczęśniak’s sets are spaced with spare eloquence across the entire stage, with moving elements and subtle projections (video: Kamil Polak) suggesting a train journey, cityscapes, interiors; her costumes vaguely imply the present, infused with a fog of post-Soviet decay. The casting, too, is superlative. In the title role, Bogdan Volkov dominates with delicate sweetness and fragility; as the worldly Nastasya, Ausrine Stundyte has the perfect blend of seduction, calculation, exhaustion and desperation. Xenia Puskarz Thomas is an impetuous, frustrated and irresistible Aglaya, while Vladislav Sulimsky turns the doomed character of Rogozhin into a kind of Wozzeck, more victim of circumstance than perpetrator, his actions not justified but part of a bigger tragedy.There is not a single singer on the stage who does not match the demands of their roles perfectly in terms of vocal timbre, technical prowess, charisma and an almost supernatural sense of being part of a greater whole. Rarely is an ensemble performance so gut-wrenchingly interwoven.None of it would hit as hard without the presence of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla on the podium. She directs with a command and sophistication well beyond her years; her grasp of architecture, texture, dramaturgy and orchestration is staggering, and the Vienna Philharmonic plays with extraordinary discipline and commitment for her. She has been something of a Weinberg expert for much of her short career, and her achievement with this production is incredible. Did that just really happen? How was it possible? The audience stands and cheers. But some of us limp out as if we had received a punch to the solar plexus, struggling to breathe, beyond tears.The Idiot is so good that it hurts. See it if you can.★★★★★To August 23, salzburgerfestspiele.at
