MEDIATHEK

The opera was premiered on November 1, 2012 in St. Petersburg in the Atrium of the General Staff Building of the State Hermitage in the framework of the Year of German in Russia 2012/13 and was performed by the German ensemble Mosaik with conductor Enno Poppe. "Two Acts" is the Grand Prix winner of the Sergei Kuryokhin Award (2013) and was nominated for the Russian National Theatre Award "Golden Mask" (2013). Characters from the history of culture often appear as protagonists with writer Dmitry Prigov. Here we have Hamlet and Faust. Prigov acknowledges them as two types of reflexing consciousness, deeply rooted in European culture. Yet here the reflection does not have the same intensity as the primary source, rather only the inertia of fading motion. They are not to be mistaken for heroes – they are ordinary, and even marginal; their reflections are awkward and out of place. The sad truth is that contemporaneity sets a framework which does not allow these characters to live up to their destinies. The rules of life are not in discord with the pathos of “lofty thoughts”, but fully compatible with this pathos as a prop of behavioural routine, a mere unobtrusive habit. Today they are the rustling whisper of language. Nothing more than that.