Tuesday 22 September 2009

Opera painted in sand Ukraine Der heilige Krieg


Amazing video! The beauty of this is that it is so simple, and so ephemeral. Like life. Every performance is different, created relatively spontaneously. That's why it's an antidote to the concept of a "Thousand year Reich" imposed by force. (Not that the Soviets didn't suppress artists and much else.) Kseniya Simonova has a website here where there are several other operas in sand she's made. She may not be Leonardo or Tintoretto. What she does is folk art but vibrant, personal and free. That's what all art really should be about, whatever the "quality". Completely the opposite to imposed and rigid forms.

Everyone has seen this video except me but for those who haven't, isn't it a treat. Most of the audience are way too young to have any idea what the war was like. But one of the songs is the famous anthem "The Holy War",everyone in the Soviet Union knows and then a pop song and then the sounds of battle. They make the connection, no words needed. Below I've added the Ernst Busch version of the anthem. It is worth listening to because even now there are plenty of extremists about in different modes and flavours, who'd just love to impose Reichs of all kinds.

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