MEDIATHEK

"Nosferatu"opera was written for Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre by modern Russian composer Dmitri Kourliandski. It was premiered in Perm during annual Diaghilev Festival 2014 and afterwards was nominated for the Golden Mask Award, the main national theatrical award. It took three years in order to bring D.KOurliandski workpiece to the stage.

“Nosferatu” is an opera about one of the most notorious antiheroes in the European culture, who has been long popularized in literature and films. In addition to being an original poetic text, the libretto uses a great many factual enumerations, such as lists of items related to human anatomy, to components of human blood, as well as lists of ailments, of poisonous and medicinal plants and herbs, and of many other things. The human circulatory system turns into a symbolical labyrinth.The opera “Nosferatu” is an attempt to immerse into the human organism, to reflect the sounds and images produced inside the body. The action of the opera actually takes place entirely inside Nosferatu, and all of its characters are products of his inner world. That world constantly regenerates and reconstructs itself, showing how desperate human civilization is. From the standpoint of music, the idea of immersion into the human organism is realized not so much through naturalistic means, but rather through an attempt to recreate the rhythmic and acoustic aura of a functioning organism in the structure of the musical score and in the very material of the sounds.As an opera, “Nosferatu” is not typical, be it in form, in substance, or in its comprising elements. It is a modern performance that balances the poetic word with music, theatre, and plastic arts, while treating all these elements as a single and indivisible domain. The vocalists, the actors, and the chorus are at all times present on an empty stage, the perimeter of which is dominated by an installation designed by Yannis Kounellis.