Dmitry Volkostrelov, a unique voice in Russian avant-garde theatre, has expanded his artistic reach into opera, bringing unconventional approaches to traditional works. From Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin to Barber’s Vanessa, his productions challenge traditional storytelling and blend time, space, and contemporary themes in pioneering ways.

Director Dmitry Volkostrelov (b. 1982) is perhaps the only true representative of the avant-garde left in Russian theatre today. A disciple of Lev Dodin (b. 1944), together with some former classmates and friends, Volkostrelov created an independent theatre group called Theatre Post, whose work has focused on the field of experimentation, a search for radical language and form, and has attempted to push the boundaries of theatre and bring it into the realm of contemporary art. The group has staged plays based on contemporary drama by innovative playwrights such as Irkutsk-born, Warsaw-based Ivan Vyrypayev (b. 1974), and Belarusian Pavel Pryazhko (b. 1975).

In 2021 Dmitry Volkostrelov made waves amongst his colleagues with a startling opera debut when he staged ‘Éugene Onegin’, Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece from the sacred bible of Russian opera. The premiere took place at the Ural Opera Ballet in Ekaterinburg and that production has become now one of three operas that he has produced as a director, marking a new chapter in his professional career.

It was not a complete first as Volkostrelov had already been dabbling in musical theatre as a director with productions based on ‘Lecture on Nothing’ by John Cage (1912–1992) and ‘I Am Sitting in a Room’ by Alwin Lucier (1831–2021), both classics of the American avant-garde. Asked how these musical performances fit into his personal quest as a director, Volkostrelov says: “They complement one another. 20th century avant-garde music is important for me as a director in terms of thinking about time and space. For me there is a deep connection between theatre based on a play and the performance of ‘A Lecture on Nothing’ based on Cage’s score. It structures and broadens my thinking in some way.”

It was Bogdan Korolyok, a curator at the Ural Opera Ballet who approached Volkostrelov with the idea of producing ‘Éugene Onegin’, which he describes as a breathtaking moment of synergy. “It felt like there was a subtle understanding of themes and ideas that I also care about. And Pushkin’s novel in verse has always been important to me.”

Volkostrelov’s production of ‘Éugene Onegin’ has an unusually complex structure with three quartets of protagonists acting simultaneously in different eras, from the time of Pushkin to the modern-day with each cluster of characters in a different age. “What is important to me is the space of language and culture in which we find ourselves. It is the realisation of how much has been lost and how much has not been preserved, the feeling that there is already a third country on this territory and each new one negates the previous one. And I wanted to reflect on these temporal connections,” says Volkostrelov.

He tries to give the actors a different way of being on the stage, creating expressiveness and sensuality through an unconventional opera technique. “I don’t like the word doppelgängers, although we used it. They are not doppelgängers; they are people who are living in different epochs who experience the same situations in different ways. The production starts with the famous scene of Tatiana’s letter. For the soloists this was a revelation and an interesting experience – they had all sung the role of Tatiana more than once, each time experiencing this long scene with some variation, but this approach was totally new. In a scene which they have always acted alone where suddenly they have a partner, and a completely different story emerges”.

Following Onegin, Dmitry Volkostrelov staged ‘The Human Voice’ by Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) in Perm based on the eponymous play by Jean Cocteau, (1889–1963), a one-woman show with Nadezhda Pavlova (b. 1980), a theatre soloist and opera diva first discovered by Teodor Currentzis (b. 1972), and who has sung in productions by renowned international opera directors Robert Wilson (b. 1941) and Romeo Castellucci (b. 1960) among others. “It was a wonderful experience working with Nadezhda Pavlova. We had a total understanding and trust between us, there was a sincere attempt to understand one other, she is very open minded”.

Volkestrelov’s approach brought a fresh twist to the production: the melodrama of the abandoned woman is acted out here on stage as a rehearsal for the opera singer, where she gradually immerses herself into the material and experiences with such empathy that she is pushed to the verge of suicide. At the same time, a video screen shows a recording of a performance based on a play by Franz Xaver Kroetz (b. 1946) ‘Request Concert’ about an unremarkable evening in the life of a lonely woman that ends in suicide – both score and drama interlock. “Cocteau and Poulenc were both homosexuals. Cocteau wrote the play when he was breaking up with his partner and Poulenc was in the same situation. And I thought – why can’t the heroine be together with her lover, why do they break up? And then I thought what if we take this woman and replace her with a man? Then everything falls into place, it is clear to me why they could not be together, neither in the 20s and 30s nor in Russia today”.

The director has just staged his third opera ‘Vanessa’ by American composer Samuel Barber (1910–1981) at the New Opera Theatre in Moscow. Also a melodrama, she is a woman who spends her life in voluntary isolation waiting for a lover who left her. When his son Anatole appears, he seduces Vanessa's niece, Erika, but she eventually turns him down. Anatole switches to Vanessa, the latter loses her mind and leaves for Paris, and then it is time for Erika to stay closed up in the house, the story loops around. “In ‘Vanessa’ there is an interesting theme of obsession with the past, the inability to let go of the past, and therefore because of that, there is no future. It is the repetitiveness of that story.” reflects Volkostrelov.

There is again a complicated structure, the stage divided into different layers all working in parallel, “Of course, we were concerned it would be difficult to follow but in the second act the puzzle comes together. This approach dictates partly what is happening in the world: it is becoming more complex before our eyes. If we told Shakespeare about how we understand Hamlet today he would say, I didn't write it! Our understanding of human beings and of our world, has become complicated over time. Today Donald Trump wants to simplify it by saying that there are just two genders, but this will not work. Complexity has entered this world, and it cannot be simplified, it cannot be rolled back. So the complexity in this production is deliberate.”