Скачать или смотреть Singing Truth to Power: Politics, Opera, and the Russian State

Our new collaboration with filmmaker Graham Riach, about directing, performing and seeing the opera 'The Life & Death of Alexander Litvinenko'.

'Singing Truth to Power: Politics, Opera, and the Russian State' explores artistic representation, truth and political assassination in Putin's Russia. It focuses on the opera by Anthony Bolton (music) and Kit Hesketh-Harvey (libretto), which premiered in 2021 at Grange Park Opera.

The 15-minute video features director Stephen Medcalf and mezzo soprano Olivia Ray - who sang the role of journalist and mediator Anna Politkovskaya - with writer-journalist Owen Matthews, Russian politics expert Ben Noble and anthropologist Michal Murawski.

Who were Litvinenko and Politkovskaya? What do their stories tell us about Russia under Putin? 

The film traces how Ray approached the role, and Medcalf came to direct an opera on the topic, while investigating the understandings that govern life under Putin, and the relationship between theatrical and historical truth. 

The film was created by filmmaker by Graham Riach in collaboration with the EI's Claudia Sternberg.

Many thanks to @GrangeParkOpera for letting us use their recording.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/european-instit...