Poetry against power

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"During those awful years of terror, I spent 17 months standing in line outside the prison in Leningrad," said Anna Akhmatova, a renowned Russian poet who lived during the Stalinist era. Her son was taken away for the sole crime of bearing the surname of his father, the well-known dissident poet Nikolai Gumilev, who was shot "for suspicious activities." A statue of her still stands there, staring at the river, the snow falling on her motionless bronze eyelids and melting like the tears of all the Russian mothers.

Anna A. is Silvia Colasanti's new piece for La Scala. Following the success of Francesco Filidei's Il Nome della Rosa (The Name of the Rose) a few months ago, La Scala audiences will once again be captivated by a contemporary production. And once again, a great literary work takes centre stage, making literature the protagonist.

AE Silvia Colasanti, How did your interest in Anna Akhmatova come about?

SC I have always been fascinated by Russian literature, and for several years, I have followed Paolo Nori, a writer, scholar, and translator of Russian literature. At the time, the last book of his that I had read was Sanguina ancora, which is about Dostoevsky. He had not yet published his beautiful book on Anna Akhmatova. Since I love poetry, I reflected on Akhmatova's interesting character and incredible life story. She was a mother, had three husbands, and had many lovers, including Modigliani. She also had many friendships and profound connections with prominent figures in the art world. The crown jewel of her exceptional body of work is Requiem. In this poetry series, history and politics enter her verses for the first time. Her previous poetry was very beautiful, yet private and intimate.

AE: It's never easy to stage a novel, let alone a collection of poems.

SC: But I liked the idea of setting something from Requiem to music. Without knowing how the work would be structured, I contacted Paolo Nori, who revealed that he was about to write a book about Anna Akhmatova. We agreed immediately. There was something prophetic about this coincidence.

AE So the idea came from you, while the libretto is by Paolo Nori?

SC Yes, the libretto is by Nori, and it is his first for an opera; Fabrizio Sinisi is the playwright.

AE: How do you summarize a human, artistic, and political story spanning more than 50 years?

SC: First, I tried to decide what to include in the stage production because her life was very rich. I was particularly interested in the relationship between art and power. I chose the following topics: her imprisoned son, her first and third husbands (both of whom were censored), and her friendship with Mandelstam, another uncomfortable intellectual. When we started working on the libretto, Paolo and I—Fabrizio joined us later—encountered difficulty integrating so many episodes from different periods. For me, it's always important to understand the subject matter of a piece, to contextualize it historically, and to understand why it's being discussed.

AE: With Paolo Nori's vast knowledge of Russian literature and history, this risk didn't exist on paper.

SC: It's as if Paolo had lived in Akhmatova's house. He knows everything. He knows what her house was like, how a certain party unfolded, and even where they cooked that egg. However, there was a great risk of exaggerating the "story." To me, a work of art is a place where people act and experience feelings. I am interested in expressing an emotion that the viewer experiences deeply rather than something that is narrated or remembered.

AE: What was the solution?

SC: To satisfy both requirements—understanding and experiencing—I told myself, 'Let's split Anna in two.' On the one hand, there's Anna at the end of her life, as captured through the beautiful memories of her friend Lidia. Anna and Lidia are in the hospital during last year of the poet's life in 1966, and Anna is waiting for her son to visit her. Anna and Lidia are the common thread that sometimes “is reactivated,” while at other times, their memories become real actions. This is the heart of the piece.

AE: Without giving too much away, what is the sequence of memories that materialize on stage?

SC: It's not linear. First, we go back to 1938 when Anna stands in line with other mothers in front of a prison in St. Petersburg, waiting for news about her imprisoned son. Then, we flash back to 1911 and the era of cultural unrest, when Anna made her debut as a poet. Next, we move forward to 1941, when she finishes Requiem, which she started in 1939 and continued writing while her son was in prison. The Requiem is at the centre of this piece because, as a mother, her feelings for her child are those that run deepest.

AE Which Anna has in common with the other Soviet mothers in the piece.

SC Yes, the others are waiting with her, and this collective character has become a chorus, partly because Anna was also the voice of a people. She became the bearer—especially in the Requiem cycle—of this choral drama, giving a voice to all mothers.

AE This is a true story, and it is also a piece of history. Do you take a side?

SC After imprisoning or shooting her family members, the regime later restored their honour. Posthumously, of course. The text lists them over a single drumbeat to ensure they are remembered: this is the regime, the dictatorship, the senselessness of declaring through their actions that life means nothing.

AE: In addition to lived history, the other protagonist is poetic language—Akhmatova's verses—which alternate with the narrative language of the libretto. How do you set two types of language with such different densities to music?

SC: There are three distinct musical situations in the opera. The narrative, which is full of information and news, is entrusted to speaking voices accompanied by evocative orchestral music because maximum clarity is required here. Then, there is the actual narration, which is woven around the relationships between the characters. I resolved this with a sort of "conversational singing," where the melodic aspect is entrusted to the orchestra. It would be absurd to sing everyday words and phrases in a highly lyrical manner. The most expansive singing occurs only when poetry by Anna or Mandelstam is recited or during other moments in the story that have special expressive and emotional value. In general, a good opera libretto must use few words to immediately establish a poetic, evocative image, offering the opportunity for lyrical expansion.

AE And the characters?

SC Anna, as an elderly woman, and Lidia are the actresses. Then, for the past, there's Anna as a young woman and two of her husbands; Lev, her son, is implied; then Mandelstam, a great poet and friend of Anna's. But also important figures from the Russian cultural world, such as Pasternak, Berberova, Tsvetaeva, and other roles useful for describing the contexts. There is a concertato with all the ‘-isms’ of Russian literary currents, which I resolved with a dance/concertato and many secondary characters on stage. When Anna discovered she was a poet, there was incredible cultural unrest, and I express this with a polka.

AE Is there a predominant tone or hue?

SC I felt a strong Russian overtone in this story. I'm not interested in folklore, I look at Russia from where I am, from where the audience is, from here. Russian folk songs, however, meander like a melancholic, tragic hue. Essentially, it's what Nori says, that he likes Russians because they hurt you. And we also left room for moments of irony, which are very much in keeping with Nori's own vein.

AE: Art, Poetry, Power. How do you portray these concepts?

SC: With music. With Lenin and Stalin, there was no need to put them on stage or give them a face. In moments when power manifests itself, even indirectly or through its consequences, I used a leitmotif: a harmonious timbral colour that alludes to something looming and ambiguous. However, when the piece was almost finished, I decided that the true protagonist of the opera had to sing. So, I invented "The Power of All Time," an impersonal figure from Baroque theatre. I decided to have him sing an aria for baritone, based on the text of the Grand Inquisitor's scene from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, just before the finale. In the scene, the Grand Inquisitor says that man wants to be relieved of choice, does not want freedom, and wants someone to decide for him. This is an eternal temptation that periodically recurs throughout history. In the end, Power addresses the audience and asks everyone to submit to his will and seductions. "Freedom," he says, "is just a word."

AE: When you talk about your work, it seems as if you can see it and imagine the situations. Did you give any instructions to director Giulia Giammona? Akhmatova was born in Ukraine, and today's Russian power is no less relentless than it was then.

SC: We decided to stage the story in its historical context. We studied the era visually, including its places and customs. Every story is also symbolic and offers a lesson for the present day, even if this is not explicitly stated. We also believe that the events we recount should be clarified and explained and remembered by people who are not Russian and are not familiar with them.

AE Is it also a female story?

SC Yes. Actually, I don't like these labels. But all in all, in think about myself in relation to Anna, I feel the female element very strongly, especially in relation to motherhood. The fact that it was a woman who opposed Stalin in those years, I think, is worth emphasizing. Politics makes its entrance, but it does so through the pain of a mother, of mothers.

AE Like Akhmatova's verses, should opera communicate emotions and reach everyone?

SC In 2025, we cannot afford any form of naivety, so when I compose, I tread a very delicate line: I have to strike a chord and move people, but with refined means. Opera audiences go to hear Verdi and Puccini; they have sophisticated tools for decoding musical language. After Verdi, Puccini, or Berg, you can't be banal. But you have to make yourself understood. So, it's a matter of working on the threshold between complexity and comprehensibility. A mother's pain will never be banal, but it must still reach and touch the depths of the soul.

Andrea Estero