Schnittke’s Life with an Idiot: a tragic and powerful parody of Russian political life
Written during Brezhnev’s “Great Stagnation”, the work is heavily charged with dissident political satire.
Great place Zürich. In the Opernhaus bar, before Alfred Schnittke’s rarely performed (that’s a bit of an understatement! - Ed.) opera, Life with an Idiot, just when you need one, up pops a cheery psychotherapist. To spare his blushes, let’s call him “M”.
Psychotherapy was needed in Zürich last Friday night. The character of Idiot is monosyllabic. He can intone only one word “Ekh!”
M is accompanied by the charming Madame M. Whose sister turns out to be a supernumerary in the production. Wafting to and fro meaningfully in the backdrop chorus. Madame M. is a music teacher. So, she, too is a bit of an insider. Seren-blowmysocksoff-dippity!
“Do join us in Collana afterwards.” Collana is a trendy fairground glass-walled restaurant on the snowy, teeming Christmas square in front of the Opernhaus. I couldn’t get a table. “How kind. We can discuss what Schnittke means.” Irresistible opportunity.
The experience of a cast member and an analysis of this totally dystopian opera from a leading Zurich shrink. Talk about falling on your critic’s feet!
Russian composer, Alfred Schnittke wrote Life with an Idiot as recently as 1992. The libretto comes from a story by Victor Erofeev, written during the “Great Stagnation” Soviet era of Leonid Brezhnev. The work is heavily charged with dissident political satire, the grotesque, Kafkaesque absurdism and personal psychological collapse.
Observant readers will have already concluded that if a fun, seasonal night out is the thing there is no bargepole long enough with which a distance from Life with an Idiot can be safely maintained.
Perhaps a performance of light-hearted Rossini’s The Barber of Seville in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia would offer immunity by proxy.
This work is a deadly satirical polemic which draws parallels between the Idiot, who has been imposed on a couple by the state, enslaving and ruining them, and Vladimir Lenin, who did much the same to the nascent Soviet Union between 1917 and 1924.
That Lenin coincidentally shares his first name, Vladimir, with his successor, that Russian pedlar of absurdist war and callous disregard for human life, Vladimir Putin gives the opera some delicious contemporary oomph.
Schnittke, a hugely prolific film composer – 60 flicks – makes ironic use of easily recognised revolutionary and folk songs, suggesting a constant turmoil of reassessment and possible devaluation of Soviet ideological icons.
But it is by no means all relentless proselytizing. In a tale of harrowing tragedy there runs a rich vein of musical humour. One moment we recognise pious themes from the Russian Orthodox liturgy, only to be discombobulated by a Shostakovich-like take on a chorus extolling the virtues of sausage output from a grim local factory the next.
The opera was commissioned and premiered in Amsterdam by no less a global titan than Mstislav Rostropovich, the dissident cellist and conductor, exiled from Russia between 1984 and 1990.
Rostropovich famously provided the musical soundscape to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 and was the catalyst for many new works performed by a post-Soviet generation of talented musicians.
Life with an Idiot is complex, incomprehensible, shifted in time, pornographic, even scatological (Idiot inconveniently and inexplicably defecates on the carpet), and brutally violent. The wife of the household has her head removed with shears.
This is the most disturbing presentation I have ever encountered on an operatic stage. But its genesis and powerful political purpose means it cannot easily be dismissed as posturing shock-guff.
There is serious purpose in this method of describing the regime of the old Soviet Union and the chaotic structures that emerged following its collapse.
So, what happens when you, a functionary of the state who has offended in some unexplained way, are told to pop down to the local IKEA and pick up an Idiot of your choice to nurture in your home as punishment?
There are three principal characters, Ich, his wife, and The Idiot. Hovering amusingly in the background is the black-trilby-hatted character of Marcel Proust, whose works are cited by the characters throughout the opera. And, literally at several points, ripped apart. Proust is miffed.
In this production a strong commentating chorus, Chor der Oper Zürich, is present throughout. They form a white -clad backdrop ranked rear stage. A naked dancer doubles with The Idiot and acts out some of the vulgar bits. The set is modernistic, sparse and, like The Idiot, picked up in IKEA. Fortunately, no carpet was soiled in this performance.
What happens? As punishment for a lack of compassion, a writer, Ich and his wife have to take in an idiot at their home. Easy-peasy. He’s quite impressed with himself and his willingness to take in a “holy fool”.
At first Idiot seems to fit in well with the life of the writer and his wife. Can’t speak, though. The only thing he utters is the occasional “Ekh!”.
Idiot embarks on an affair with the wife. She becomes pregnant but has an abortion. Idiot and Ich then turn against the wife, who has her head summarily removed with shears.
They then embark on a homosexual relationship. But when Idiot suddenly and without warning poops on the carpet one day, an uncontrollable spiral of violence, passion and anarchy begins.
Russian stage director, Kirill Serebrennikov, can’t resist adding the Regietheater dimension of a dystopian, contemporary story about a married couple for whom Idiot catalyses the breakdown of an already toxic relationship. The darkest, most destructive human instincts rise to the surface, alongside a predisposition to aggression and violence.
Serebrennikov is an in vogue avant garde director, head of Moscow’s Gogol theatre, has worked at Paris Opera and is preparing versions of Mozart’s three Da Ponte operas at Komische Oper Berlin. Can hardly wait!
Schnittke’s music is suffused with quotations. Bach’s Matthäus-Passion, the Communist International, a folk song about a birch tree, a tango from the 1930s, and further echoes of Chopin, Mahler, Shostakovich,
The Philharmonia Zürich under the direction of Jonathan Stockhammer, took on this challenging score with vigour and precision. There was no respite. The sound world and the action it supported were relentless.
At supper Supernumerary Sister – she is a Zurich Opera regular who had gamely responded to an advert in the local press – told of the intensity of the rehearsal process. Unusually for a European house, where corners are often cut, staging rehearsals had been running since September.
The result was an immaculate co-ordination of the hugely demanding series of onstage actions. What wouldn’t I have given to be at the first “blocking” sessions. Serebrennikov’s thoroughness of approach is admirable.
Opernhaus Zürich, built in 1891 is a jewel. Beautifully proportioned, 1,100 seats so intimate, warmly decorated, excellent acoustics. Its predecessor became the focus of Richard Wagner when he was exiled from Germany for twelve years until 1862 because of his revolutionary proclivities.
In the post-opera Collona confessional I confided in M that there was much of the show I simply didn’t “get”. What was it with all the mirrors the cast were waving about? “Is that meant to be us, bringing us into the action?” “Possibly”. Helpful.
Probably the Saturday queue of operagoers outside M’s surgery would be long. All with their own mirrors.
Schnittke, either in orchestral or operatic form, is not entertainment. In deciding to stage it, Opernhaus Zürich was not courting popularity. The slickness of their production made what might have been an unbearably depressing evening strangely compelling.
It took some time to come to terms with what I had witnessed. My first opera in Zürich. Shall I return? “Ekh!” Only if M agrees to ride shotgun in the bar.