Vienna makes an opera of Orwell’s Animal Farm

It’s a collaboration between three major opera houses and the iconoclastic Moscow composer Alexander Raskatov.

A Russian composing Animal Farm? The age of irony is not over yet. Here’s the press release:

The Vienna State Opera, the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam and the Teatro Massimo di Palermo have announced the world premiere of a new opera that has been jointly commissioned by the houses in a co-produced production.

Animal Farm, based on George Orwell’s novella, composed by Alexander Raskatov, will premiere on March 4, 2023 in Amsterdam. The Vienna premiere will follow on February 28, 2024, with a new line-up and musical direction by Alexander Soddy. Damiano Michieletto is responsible for the production.

George Orwell wrote Animal Farm as a parable about the perversion of the goals of the Russian Revolution, particularly under Stalin’s dictatorship. … Different events confront us with ever new variations on the same theme, in Orwell’s words: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

Director Damiano Michieletto has long harbored the desire to bring Animal Farm to the opera stage; he is fascinated by the scenic potential of the fable’s surprising complications and sharply defined actors. Alexander Raskatov, born in Moscow in 1954, has already caused a stir with the setting of another literary masterpiece: A Dog’s Heart (2010), based on Bulgakov’s short story Dog’s Heart. Raskatov’s opera focuses on the core question of Orwell’s book: How is it possible that so-called leaders of the people successfully use rhetoric of freedom and equality in pursuit of ruthless power and self-interests? Raskatov employs musical references to the history of his country.