On 4 June, the Lesya Ukrainka National Academic Theatre will host the opera GAIA-24: Opera del Mondo by Ilya Razumeyko and Roman Hryhoriv, created by their association Opera Operta, which has received a number of international awards for creating and promoting contemporary opera culture.
“In the language of theatre, GAIA-24 tells the story of the war against nature and the war against human nature. The performance combines opposite things: rap and opera, avant-garde and pop culture, folklore and rave.”
After the opera’s premiere on 10 May 2024 in Kyiv, the work was presented at the O. Festival in Rotterdam, Musiktheatertage Wien in Vienna, Schall & Rausch in Berlin, and in Venice at the Church of San Lorenzo as part of the public programme of the Ukrainian National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, organised by the Ukrainian Institute. From the beginning, the project was supported at various stages by the Goethe-Institut. Also, a year ago, the creation of the play was supported by the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund (UEAF) in partnership with UNESCO.
The context of the work is as follows: on 9 October 2022, Bruno Latour — philosopher, anthropologist, and active promoter of the Gaia theory — died in Paris. His last published text concerned Russia’s war against Ukraine. He compared this war to the war of humanity against nature and our planet, recalling Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and speaking of Europe in interregnum — Europe in the times of Interregnum.
On 6 June 2023, the Russian army blew up the dam of the Kakhovka Reservoir, committing another war crime and act of ecocide. Within a week, 18 billion cubic metres of water leaked into the Black Sea. The Kakhovka Sea — and with it the scenery of the Chornobyldorf opera — ceased to exist. The former bottom of the reservoir turned into a new and changing landscape, located on the frontline of the Russian–Ukrainian war. After the drying up of the Aral Sea and the Chornobyl disaster, the destruction of the Kakhovka dam became one of the most visible environmental crimes committed by the Russian colonial regimes.
At the same time — like the regeneration of the Chornobyl forest — 2,000 square kilometres of Dnipro soil, freed from the seventy-year captivity of an artificial reservoir, are gradually returning to their natural state. What can you see now from the high Dnipro cliffs on the right bank, observing both the burning theatre of war and the regeneration of the original river landscape? The slow victory of nature — the quick defeat of man.
Video materials for the opera GAIA-24. Opera del Mondo were created in October 2023 on the southern and eastern coasts of Khortytsya Island. Music, drama and direction by Ilya Razumeyko and Roman Hryhoriv.