The Red

The choral opera The Red (Dreams of the Deceased about Spain) is the final part of the trilogy of the Novaya Opera Chamber Choir’s performances The Ebony — The Ivory — The Red, created by stage director Alexey Veiro and choirmaster Yulia Senyukova. The concept of The Red is based on two paintings: Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, made under the impression of the night bombing of this Spanish town by the German Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War on 26 April 1937, and Salvador Dalí’s Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. 

Alexey Veiro, stage director:

The town is sleeping. During the sleep,as a dream the bombing begins. A second before death the Guernica people see in their dreams the whole of Spain with its myths, songs and sounds coming alive. It is the feeling of the organic whole at the moment when the division into good and evil, into life and death is seen from outside. What does the organic whole mean? Now they have fallen asleep and are seeing dreams, but the planes are already above them, the hatches are open and the bombs are falling down on the ground. A second before the strike, a split second before death the dreams burst into different colours. This unity is Love. It is our riddle, our paradox. This second is our opera.

Tatyana Shatkovskaya, composer:

Life begins with breath, and it ends with breath. Breath as a symbol of transformation from one condition to another plays an important part in 'The Red'. The tragedy of Guernica shook me to the core. And as a composer I needed to feel and to describe the superfine border of life and death, the fragile beauty of life and the tragic certainty of death, their paradoxical love and unity. And a dream is the result of their relation, reflection of their love, confirmation of their unity.