Review: THE RED at The Kolobov Novaya Opera

Stop for a moment and think about the sound your breath makes.

Is it quiet? Is it strained? Is it pleasant? In The Red, at Moscow's Kolobov Novaya Opera Theatre, breath is an instrument, and so is water, and shoes, and feet, a violin, drums, guitar, and a chorus of human voices. Modestly billed as a "choral opera", The Red is a monumentally inventive take on the operatic form; a short supper of unusual but familiar sounds, and a range of emotions from bitter to joyous.

Inspired by the art of the Spanish Civil War, The Red was conceived by stage director Aleksey Veiro and choirmaster Yulia Senyukova to represent the dreams of the sleepy people of Guernica before the bombing of 1937. The choir sing in Spanish and play castanets; the music seeps with Iberian influences (even if the cast look like the court of Peter the Great). There are moments of happiness and desperation, community and separateness, but there is no plot, only moments. A modest orchestra made up of one violin, one drum, and one guitar add texture to the choir.

Watching The Red is kind of a trippy experience, grounded and stratospheric at the same time. There are no named characters, but the bright, expressive faces of the cast, so close to the audience you can hear their socks slide on the stage, quickly become familiar, and you start to think, I've seen him before, haven't I? I think I've known her since childhood. You know you should be thinking about the Spanish Civil War, about war in general, and you are thinking about that, but every new movement of the opera, every shift in tone or tempo, pushes your mind to something else, something unrelated, or many not so unrelated. One of the sources for this show was Dali's "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening", and, like in a surrealist gallery, the audience are invited to draw connections that don't make sense, but do.

The Red is primordial and pretty, historical and surreal. It embraces contradictions and holds them warmly, tightly, tenderly.