Chornobyldorf: An Archeological Opera in Seven Novellas by Roman Grygoriv and Ilia Razumeiko. PROTOTYPE Festival, at La MaMa ETC, New York City, January 14 and 21, 2024.
Landscapes, in the words of Simon Schama, are constructed from a “rich deposit of myths, memories, and obsessions.”1 Archaeology involves not only unearthing historical artefacts but also reconstructing a landscape that is both material and ephemeral, made up not only of objects but of emotions. Myths, memories, and obsessions may also be an apt description of opera, a form whose beginnings were also somewhat archaeological. The genre arose, in part, from Early Modern attempts to recreate ancient Greek performance. Such reconstructions necessarily evolved and reflected their own political realities, refracted through myth and music. We reconstruct these realities and our own when we stage historical works.
Like myth and memory, landscapes are vulnerable to loss and destruction through war, natural and man-made...