Eugene Birman’s Russia: Today — a documentary opera with an ear on the present

The political and economic partnership between Europe and Russia was already crumbling in 2017, but for composer Eugene Birman the continued cultural exchanges offered a tempting opportunity. Born in 1987 in Soviet Latvia but raised in Moscow before moving abroad with his family, he returned to the country to learn more about Russians’ views on their homeland and set his findings to music.

The result is Russia: Today, a documentary opera juxtaposing video with singing inspired by his research. It premiered in the Estonian city of Narva, on the Russian border, in September 2021 and will be performed at Kings Place, London, in February by the Exaudi vocal ensemble, followed by a discussion at Pushkin House in April.

During trips to Moscow, Vladivostok, Riga and Helsinki, Birman collected more than 500 interviews with ordinary Russians and those living in neighbouring countries, seeking out their little-heard and sometimes suppressed but often premonitory private thoughts, which mix pride and insecurity, victimhood and impotence.

“I travelled after the Russian occupation of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk [in 2014], and the discussion at the time was: where will Russia attack next?” he recalls. “We often hear the Russian propaganda machine and the western media trying to predict the future. But, for me, what was interesting as an ex-Russian [resident] was what people in Russia believe.”

The composer, who left Moscow aged six in the mid-1990s when his parents emigrated to the US, sought out answers to these questions: “What is Russia? What was Russia? What will it become?” Many of his interviewees, whom he agreed not to name, were critical and pessimistic. One former dissident living in Finland refused even to be recorded. “The question of anonymity is very important, because your name was always known in Soviet times,” says Birman.

Russia: Today includes extracts from his recorded interviews. The opinions of others form the basis of the libretto, written by Scott Diel. They are set to Birman’s requiem in the style of the Russian Orthodox panikhida, a prayer to repose the soul after death. “The music is just a trick to get one to listen,” he says. The result is a powerful hour-long immersion in the complexities and contradictions of contemporary Russia, with the quasi-religious multilingual chants at times reminiscent of Tuvan throat singers.

“The music demands a lot of the musicians. Eugene really understands vocal sonority,” says James Weeks, Exaudi’s artistic director, who is bringing one Latvian singer to London to perform a particularly long, deep bass part. “Unlike a lot of contemporary composers, he doesn’t hold back emotionally. It’s very, very immediate.”

The singing takes place against the potent backdrop of lingering countryside shots by Russian artist and photographer Alexandra Karelina. These evolve over the performance from harsh snow-covered plains to lush summer forests, lakes and trails. The images include a freshly broken ice hole briefly pulsating with water before refreezing, and a spade digging into earth alive with ants. Karelina describes this as showing “life and activity in something that we expect to be lifeless”. In the wake of Russian war crimes in Ukraine and the discovery of mass graves, it feels more sinister.

“My starting point was that Russia: Today is a place of some paradox and mystery that can be solved. Everything happening here has a certain reason,” says Karelina. “[But] in the end, there is no clear answer. Everything is going back to the beginning. It is the endless riddle.

“I wanted to find . . . archetypal Russian landscapes. This is a territory that has witnessed many different events and is able to absorb them entirely. This is where the mystery of the place comes from.”

Birman already played with some of these delicate historical themes in a previous work in 2014. The Estonian National Male Choir sang his project 289, named after the League of Nations treaty document defining the border between the newly independent Estonia and the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

He returned to Estonia for the premier of Russia: Today, choosing Narva for its symbolism as both one of the easternmost cities in the EU and arguably its most Russian one, with a large diaspora population and regular exchanges between the two countries.

Reactions to the 2021 performance were mixed. “It was probably the most uncomfortable post-concert feeling I’d ever had,” Birman recalls. “I thought people would deeply appreciate it, but in fact it was very complicated and unpredictable . . . Many people wanted and welcomed it; many more didn’t, and thought they were not ready. It touched everyone in various ways.”

A recording of the documentary opera and its accompanying film were subsequently screened in Russia, including in Vladivostok, although the hosting arts institutions requested the removal of the subtitles describing the libretto, for fear someone might take photos to use in a clampdown.

“It’s much harder to be held accountable for music [than writing],” says Birman. “The idea was to present this as an artwork, rather than a way of questioning the system of government. It was to give a voice to people who were never interviewed.” There were even plans for a performance of Russia: Today in Moscow and to take Russian singers abroad for performances in Europe. But neither idea was practical after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

Prophetically and disturbingly, one of the final interviews in the performance is with a schoolgirl from Vladivostok talking to her mother. “Russia is the most awesome country,” she says. “Before we had Belarus, Ukraine. Yes. It used to be one country. Then some guy came — Yeltsin, I think — and broke everything up.”

Still Birman remains optimistic. “The hope is that one day we can perform in Moscow and have a totally open discussion on what it means to be Russian.”

‘Russia: Today’ will be performed at Kings Place, London, on February 16, kingsplace.co.uk, russiatoday.live