Salzburg Festival

Russia’s society celebrates its downfall

Turbulent Las Vegas show in St. Petersburg: Prokofiev's "player" Alexei (Sean Panikkar) breaks the bank.(Bild: Salzburger Festspiele / Ruth Walz)

Peter Sellars staged Sergei Prokofiev's opera "The Gambler" based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. A success for Violeta Urmana, audience favorite Asmik Grigorian and conductor Timur Zangiev

A disturbed world in the wake of the incipient Russian Revolution, a society that denies all values and believes only in the power of money in a mad gambling addiction: Peter Sellars staged Prokofiev's 1917 opera "The Gambler" as a turbulent Las Vegas show at the Felsenreitschule. Set designer George Tsypin created a world of mirrors between flashing gambling tables that go up and down, with floating figures in a gambling frenzy, obsessed losers who despair.

Sellars is not sparing with allusions to our present, to our protesting activists, to the revaluation of all values. But in the end, the restless work and Sellars release us into the unknown, into a doomsday scenario in which the revolutionary Alexei, as if in delusion, sees only red, on which he has bet and won 50,000 dollars.

Love that breaks because of money: Asmik Grigorian, Sean Panikkar.(Bild: Salzburger Festspiele / Ruth Walz)

The young Moscow conductor Timur Zangiev and the Vienna Philharmonic unleash a gripping circus of sound in bright colors that characterize the opera's predominantly declaiming protagonists.

The brilliant Violeta Urmana as the merciless grandmother Babulenka, perfect in her aggressive portrayal, stands out from the huge cast; Asmik Grigorian as the unpredictably moody Polina and Sean Panikkar as Alexei, her tutor and unsuccessful lover with a large tenor with little differentiation in expression. Solid: Peixin Chen's General, Juan Francisco Gatell's Marquis, Nicole Chirka's Courtesan Blanche.