Drei Schwestern

• Maxime Pascal Musical Direction/Conductor (in the orchestra pit) 
• Alphonse Cemin Conductor (backstage) 
• Evgeny Titov Direction
• Rufus Didwiszus Stage
• Emma Ryott Costumes
• Urs Schönebaum Light
• Paul Jeukendrup Sound Director
• Christian Arseni Dramaturgy

• Dennis Orellana Irina 
• Cameron Shahbazi Mascha 
• Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen Olga 
• Kangmin Justin Kim Natascha 
• Mikołaj Trąbka Tusenbach 
• Ivan Ludlow Werschinin 
• Jacques Imbrailo Andrej 
• Andrey Valentiy Kulygin 
• Jörg Schneider Doktor 
• Jens Larsen Anfisa 
• Anthony Robin Schneider Soljony 
• Kristofer Lundin Fedotik 

Irina can't take it anymore, it bursts out of her: "My God! Where has it all gone? I've forgotten everything." Then, as if by accident: "We'll never move to Moscow." Neither the past with its memories nor the future with its hopes offer any support. Time erodes and shrinks to the present - and here emptiness, dissatisfaction, pain, loneliness reign. A state that afflicts almost all the characters in Peter Eötvös' opera Three Sisters (1998) - those from Anton Chekhov's drama of the same name. The reactions are varied: repression or relativization, resignation or escape, and of course new dreams, hopes or even plans. Nevertheless, a seemingly unbridgeable gap remains between today and the longed-for tomorrow. Why don't these people get to Moscow, a symbol of a different, better, more meaningful life? What obstacles - internal, external - hold them back? It is a question that we constantly find ourselves in and that brings us so close to Chekhov's and therefore also Eötvös' characters. It is all the more acute in the face of a suddenly spreading fire - a catastrophe that challenges us to take concrete action, that confronts us with destruction and suffering, with death and the awareness that our own life could end more quickly than we thought.

In Three Sisters - his first full-length opera, which was followed by nine more - the Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös (1944-2024) abandons the linear plot of Chekhov's play. By profoundly rearranging the scenes and lines of text, he created three "sequences" in which he focuses on a different main character each time and describes the events surrounding the Prosorov siblings and the soldiers stationed in the town from the different perspectives of these three characters: as subjective memories of Irina and Mascha and their brother Andrei (Olga, however, the eldest of the three sisters, did not get her own sequence). Eötvös presents relationships, conflicts and inner processes that Chekhov develops subliminally throughout the entire play in a condensed form, as if under a magnifying glass. In each sequence he works out a triangular constellation. Irina receives declarations of love one after the other from the enthusiastic Baron Tusenbach and from Staff Captain Solyony, who exerts a dark, disturbing fascination on her. Andrei has given up his self-respect with his big plans for life and is caught between his sisters and his wife Natasha, who tyrannizes those around her and cheats on her husband with his superior. Masha, frustrated by her marriage to the pedantic Kulygin, gives in to her passionate love for the equally married Lieutenant Colonel Vershinin.

Not everything that Chekhov's characters feel and think finds expression in the spoken word - much of it takes place in the pauses that are so typical for the author and noted in the text. Eötvös' music also interprets the unsaid, and it does admirable justice to Chekhov's psychological complexity. It is able to captivate from the first bars of the prologue, intoned by an accordion. The instrumental sound world of the opera is shaped by two ensembles: the 18 musicians in the pit are opposed by a 50-person orchestra backstage. Eötvös has cast the roles of the three sisters and Natascha with countertenors. This unusual decision arose from the desire to achieve truthfulness beyond gender boundaries through an element of abstraction.

Since its premiere in Lyon, Three Sisters has established itself internationally as one of the most fascinating contemporary music theater works. Evgeny Titov was hired to direct the new Salzburg production: after successes in spoken theater, he has been making a name for himself since 2021 with opera productions that are as sensitive as they are insightful, as touching as they are intense. Maxime Pascal conducts his second staged opera at the festival after the award-winning production of Bohuslav Martinů's The Greek Passion.

(Source: salzburgerfestspiele.at)