Idiot is Salzburg’s biggest hit

Mieczysław Weinberg’s opera on Dostoievsky novel The Idiot has received audience ovations and ecstatic reviews at the Salzburg Festival.

The director Krzysztof Warlikowski updates the story to modern Russia, replete with characters selling their souls for a ruble. Aušrinė Stundytė stars as Nastasia, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

Jan Brachmann writes in the FAZ: ‘When Bogdan Volkov, as Prince Myshkin, sits alone on the huge stage of the Felsenreitschule, staring into the darkness around him and singing in a half-voice, childishly bright: “What a breathless, strange day. Everything rushes and flickers before my eyes,” then you can feel what Weinberg’s music has captured about this character from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel: it gains clarity about the world by becoming quiet in the midst of the noise.’

Shirley Apthorp writes in the FT: ‘There are times when you leave the opera house unable to speak. When the combination of text, music, motion and imagery reaches a level of such complex perfection that you can’t find words for the way you feel.’