Opera in two acts
Music Director: Evgeny Samoilov
Conductors: Evgeny Samoilov, Vasily Valitov, Valery Kritskov, Jan Latham-Koenig, Alexandru Samoilă
Stage Director: Andrejs Žagars
Stage Movement Director: Elita Bukovska
Set Designer: Andris Freibergs
Costume Designer: Kristine Pasternaka
Chief and Stage Choirmaster: Natalya Popovich
Choirmaster: Maria Chekrkchieva
Lighting Designer: Kevin Wyn-Jones
Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes with one intermission
Premiered on 2 December 2006
Recommended for 12+
Performed in Italian with Russian surtitles
This production gives unusual treatment to the biblical story about the defeat of the Jews by the Babylonian King Nabucco and the conflict between the two nations. The story is transferred to the mid-20th century, when the dictatorial regimes in Europe (Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, and Stalin in the USSR) severely persecuted and repressed the Jewish people.
The action is set at a metro station, where people come to hide from hostilities, bombing and the cruelty of the outside world. But the place gives an ambivalent impression: on the one hand it is safe, while on the other hand the closed space makes the characters’ inner and outward conflict still more piercing and tragic.
