St Petersburg born composer Alexander Manotskov has reimagined creation as a cosmic musical event, blending Jewish mysticism with instruments from diverse cultural backgrounds in his new chamber opera, ‘The Creation of the World or Kabbalat Shabbat’. In Berlin audiences have been treated to a spiritual and sensory journey which bridges ancient tradition and contemporary resonance.

In classical iconography God was often depicted with a pair of compasses in His hand, like a geometer drafting the blueprint of a new world. In medieval times, it was an image with which university students were all familiar, their curriculum was centered around the concept of numbers which were understood as reflections of a divine order. Each of the medieval quadrivium’s four disciplines of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, approached the tangible, calculable world from different perspectives. Arithmetic as the science of numbers, geometry as number in space, astronomy as number in time and the highest discipline was music which was number expressed in both space and time. In this way it can be said that God, the geometer, was also a composer, an idea that resonated not only with medieval scholars but today has currency in the realm of contemporary science. The universe is composed of vibrations from quantum particles, a cosmic score with even its lowest note identified: B-flat, 57 octaves below middle C, resonating from a black hole in the Perseus cluster, pulsing at a rate of 10 million years. “God is a composer; His mind is cosmic music,” says physicist Michio Kaku.

In Berlin’s Theater im Delphi audiences experienced a quasi-act of creation in a new chamber opera by Alexander Manotskov (b. 1972) called ‘The Creation of the World or Kabbalat Shabbat’. The scenography was designed around the concept of Shabbat and featured tables that were laid out slowly and with a sense of ceremony – the Kabbalat Shabbat is a Jewish ritual of welcoming the ‘Sabbath Bride’, a part of the Jewish liturgy which precedes a celebratory Shabbat dinner. There were some lucky members of the audience who found themselves sitting at these special tables, celebrating the creation of a new world raising their glasses to toast the event. It turns out that they were not alone because the Theater im Delphi, a historic Berlin theatre from the Weimar era famous as the setting for Moka Efti in ‘Babylon Berlin’, has a real working bar inside the auditorium.

Russian composer Alexander Manotskov has an impressive body of musical compositions including over fifteen operas, both large scale and chamber works, which have been mostly staged in Russia but notably also in Norway, the United States, and Kazakhstan. ‘The Creation of the World or Kabbalat Shabbat´, (in the original language: ‘Erschaffung Der Welt oder Kabbalat Schabbat’) is the first opera he has composed in Germany following his forced emigration in 2022 and remarkably it is the first chamber opera in German music history to be written in Hebrew.

Living in Düsseldorf, isolated from his former professional community and his support network, with no recognition of his past achievements, Manotskov felt that he had arrived at ‘ground zero’, a familiar place for an entire generation of post-war German composers, where like him they had to reevaluate their goals and start afresh. Manotskov did not balk at the challenge and discovered that it even motivated him in his work. ‘The Creation of the World’ emerged from a chain of new acquaintances and jam sessions, resulting in a unique ensemble that brought together instruments from different classical traditions, from the Persian santur to the Indian flute and flugelhorn. It was crafted not for the instruments themselves but for the specific musicians who joined the production, with attention to their own personal playing styles, personalities, and typical intonations.

The results are distinctive with Anton Tsirin on the Indian harmonium, Alexander Manotskov on the cello, Ivano Onavi on the North Indian bansuri flute, Jim Galaxy on the flugelhorn, Anushaant Nainai Vijayan on the ghatam and mridangam (classical Indian percussion instruments), Benjamin Stein on the santur (an Iranian hammered dulcimer). Each performer embodies one of the seven days of creation, while the Shabbat is represented by the opera’s central character, Emilia Kivelevich who also directs and sometimes conducts. Artist Venera Kazarova, doubling as the ‘Divine Presence’, created spellbinding costumes for the production with an overall visual aesthetic subtly referencing Jewish traditions while evoking the cinematic worlds of Armenian cinema director Sergei Parajanov (1924–1990). Each performer also sings, culminating in a complex a cappella section at the end.

Manotskov only met his cast after he had arrived in Germany and the opera came to life with no budget, no institutional backing (which came at a later stage), and in a tight-knit circle of enthusiastic musicians, something completely anathema to contemporary operas. They all agreed together that if they were going to start from scratch on their own terms, why not tackle the biggest theme they could dream up?

The fact that this opera’s unique orchestration was tailored and written for the cast is not unprecedented as the history of music shows us that enduring and iconic works can come from chance collaborations such as ‘Quartet for the End of Time’ by Olivier Messian (1908–1992), born out of the musicians he encountered in a prisoner-of-war camp. ‘The Soldier’s Tale’ by Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) was similarly influenced by the musicians available to him in Lausanne in 1918. “I found myself with nothing, in exile, in the height of war,” Stravinsky recalled. “I had no illusions about musical accompaniment, knowing I would have to settle for a limited number of performers.” Manotskov also has turned his circumstances into fuel for a new phase in his personal and professional life.

For composers, it can even feel natural to take on the role of Creator with each new score being always a fresh act of creation. Hebrew adds a special dimension, as Jewish mysticism teaches that the world itself was created using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In this tradition, letters are divided into three groups: three ‘fundamental’ letters, seven ‘double’ letters, and twelve ‘simple’ letters. Any composer would instantly recognize this 3-7-12 progression like a condensed history of music. Three notes are the minimum required for a chord or a modal cell, sufficient for an ancient mode. Seven notes form the basis of various classical scales, Indian, Arab, and Persian. Twelve steps, of course, make up the modern equal-tempered scale, which shapes much of the music we know today.

Even without looking at the musical score, you get a sense of Manotskov’s fascination with numbers where time is precisely calculated and mapped out, swelling with sound and divided into complex segments. Underneath this opera lies an elaborate clockwork of angular gears, supporting and propelling each other at just the right moments. ‘The Creation of the World’ employs Manotskov’s favorite cumulative technique: musical substance gradually accrues, giving rise to new variations. Creation unfolded this way too, by the time God created Tuesday, Monday was already fully present. Now, we get to hear how that takes shape.

But what does it actually sound like? At first, it seems that this whimsical set of instruments is not being used to its full potential, as if the musicians are only gingerly feeling their way around their instruments, discovering new harmonies and tonal clouds, sometimes peaceful, sometimes jagged, microtonal, with sounds that almost clash. Yet one might think that this is precisely the sonic quality of a new world, where sound is still finding its place, rolling into position like a ball into a pocket, and overtones begin to align before our eyes. The idea of a ‘multicultural opera’ - imagine a santur, cello, and flugelhorn all playing together! – does not seem central here; everything happens in a moment when there are no nations, no Hellenes, no Jews, no scales, and no temperaments. The only certainty is that sound exists; the creation of the world must have been profoundly resonant, if not noisy.

A crescendo of sound builds up gradually. By the fifth day, a distinct rhythm has broken through the haze of the new world expressed by an Indian percussion instrument and the opera culminates in a 21-minute a cappella finale, both exuberant and multi-layered. This moment marks a mystical wedding between Saturday and Monday, or rather, the First day of the week, called ‘yom rishon’ in Hebrew. Tables are laid, wine has been poured into glasses, there are apples and a new day has begun.

‘The Creation of the World’ can be seen as a deeply relevant opera to our times, a work rooted in Jewish traditions, perhaps standing in quiet defiance against the recent rise of anti-Semitism in Germany. However, the composer disagrees. “What music does cannot be confined to the context of any -ism,” Manotskov said in an interview with Bild magazine. “If music fights against anything, it’s against death itself. ‘National’ elements in art matter mainly as expressions of the universal.”

There are many ways to listen to this piece; one is to simply tune into the sound of new life being crafted by an exiled composer living in a new place. This act has its own sonority and lo and behold, it is very good.