Writing the libretto for Anna A.

DISCOVER THE SHOW

1. The music

I never thought I would write the libretto for an opera.

I am not a melomaniac; I am a literary enthusiast. I must have seen a dozen operas in my lifetime, the first at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1991, Prokofiev's Obručenie v monastire, of which I remember almost nothing.

I remember more from a ballet I saw, also at the Bolshoi, also in 1991, because my Russian teacher had highly recommended it. I had told her that I found ballets boring, but she told me that Anjuta, inspired by Chekhov's story Anna on the Neck and set to music by Valery Gavrilin, was anything but boring.

I went – it was my first time at the Bolshoi – and I will never forget it. It was a wonderful ballet even for someone like me, so ignorant about dance and music.

The only opera I know a little about is Gounod's Faust because of Bulgakov, who was obsessed with it and included it in almost everything he wrote, as well as a little bit of Monteverdi's Orfeo, and some symphonies by Šnitke. While I was writing my thesis, I listened to a lot of Šnitke and I thought I liked it, but I'm not sure, because I truly know nothing about music.

I have also been trying to play the trumpet for more than 40 years. I have a passion for the trumpet, which unfortunately is not mutual. One evening in February 2022, while I was in my kitchen working on a novel that was later published, entitled Vi avverto che vivo per l'ultima volta, my phone rang. It was Silvia Colasanti telling me that she was thinking of writing an opera about Anna Akhmatova and that she had thought of me. I was stunned for at least two reasons: first, because the novel I was writing was about Anna Akhmatova, and almost no one knew that, certainly not Silvia; and second, because they were asking me to write the libretto for an opera.

I remember telling Silvia that I was honoured, but that I didn't think I was capable. She replied, “I'll teach you,” and I said, “Okay.”

And so we began.

 

2. The writing

Have I learned?

I’m not sure.

All I know is that I started writing books – trying to put together novels or meta-novels – in 1996. I had never done anything like what Silvia was asking me to do in the last 30 years.

I chose the job of writing books, and I chose it because I like it. I like that within the novel, in what I'm trying to unfold page after page, I'm in charge.

Or rather, the novel is in charge, but I decide what happens.

Or rather, the novel decides, but through me.

I don't have to ask anyone anything. It's a relationship between me and the novel, and I'm the boss – after the novel. There's no one else while I'm writing.

But in writing Anna A., this wasn’t the case.

Silvia was in charge, or rather, the music was in charge.

I had to adapt what I was writing to Silvia’s music.

Let me give an example.

 

3. Two poems

I had thought of organizing it as a dialogue between Lidija Čukovskaja and Anna Akhmatova in 1966, shortly before Akhmatova's death, while she was in a sanatorium awaiting a visit from her son, Lev Gumilev, with whom she had quarreled and was convinced would not come.

Lidija Čukovskaja, an acquaintance of Anna Akhmatova, left behind three invaluable texts full of memories from their encounters. In the first text, The Akhmatova Journals 1938-1941, Čukovskaja describes who Akhmatova was to her on page 21: "Akhmatova's words, her actions, her head, her shoulders, and the gestures of her hands possessed a perfection that typically belongs only to great works of art in this world." Akhmatova's destiny—something greater than her own personality—was being sculpted before my eyes from that famous, abandoned woman who was strong yet defenceless, a statue of pain, loneliness, pride, and courage. I had known Akhmatova's old poems by heart since childhood, but the new ones entered my life with the same irrevocable naturalness with which the bridges of Leningrad, St. Isaac's Cathedral, the Summer Garden, and the embankments had long since entered it."

In the book, the two retrace Akhmatova's life, evoking her friends and enemies who, on stage, become characters and singers.

One of the events Anna recalls is about a poem that Osip Mandelstam wrote about Stalin, a poem that would lead to Mandelstam's arrest and ultimately his death in a gulag.

Before writing this libretto, I had translated this poem into Italian, which went like this:

Noi viviamo e non sentiamo più il paese,

I nostri discorsi non raggiungon dieci passi,

E dove c’è posto per mezza discussione,

Ti parlan sempre del montanaro del Cremlino.

I suoi ditoni sono grassi come vermi

E le parole giuste, pesi di ginnasta,

I suoi occhiacci ridono

E i suoi gambali scintillano.

E intorno a lui gentaglia col collo sottile

Si trastulla con corvées da ominicchi.

Chi fischia, chi miagola, chi singhiozza,

Solo lui mazzuola e dà spintoni.

Come ferri di cavallo dà via decreti su decreti

In grembo, in fronte, a un sopracciglio, in faccia.

Ogni tormento è per lui una pacchia,

E ampio è il torace dell’osseta.

(We live and no longer feel the country,

Our conversations don't make it ten steps,

And where there is room for half a discussion,

They always talk to you about the provincial man from the Kremlin.

His fingers are fat as worms

And his words right, like the weights of a gymnast,

His eyes laugh

And his boot legs sparkle.

And around him are rabble with thin necks,

They stay busy with the labour of petty little men.

Some whistle, some meow, some sob,

Only he beats and shoves.

Like horseshoes, he strikes decree after decree,

To the lap, the forehead, an eyebrow, the face.

Every torment is a joy to him,

And broad is the chest of the Ossetian.)

And so I put it in the libretto.

When Silvia read it, she called me and told me that it needed to be translated into rhyme (the original is in rhyme).

I told her I couldn't do it.

She didn't say anything.

I felt guilty and translated it.

She read it and told me it was better but that I needed to reduce the number of syllables to adapt it to the music.

So, I reduced them.

Now the poem goes like this:

Il paese non si sente, non ci siamo,

Non si sentono i discorsi che facciamo,

E se chiedi a cosa pensa il tuo vicino

Ti risponde “Al montanaro del Cremlino”.

Dita grasse, come vermi,

dà frustate sugli inermi

Ride come i maiali,

luccicanti i suoi stivali.

Schiavi succubi camerieri servi,

Gente senza cuore, senza nervi

Lo compiace in ogni cosa, giorno e notte,

E lui, solo botte.

I decreti che lui firma sono schiaffi,

Sopra il naso, sulle orecchie, sotto ai baffi,

Se si soffre lui sta bene,

un paese così a lui conviene.

The country cannot be heard, we are not there, 

The speeches we make cannot be heard,

And if you ask what your neighbor thinks about

He replies, “The provincial man from the Kremlin.”

Fat fingers, like worms, 

He whips the defenseless

He laughs like pigs,

His boots glistening.

Slaves, subjugated waiters, servants,

People without hearts, without nerves

They please him in everything, day and night,

And he, only beatings.

The decrees he signs are a slap,

On the nose, on the ears, under the moustache,

If you suffer, he is fine,

a country like this suits him.

 

4. Imagining

Whenever I think about Anna Akhmatova's life, I remember what Chekhov said in The Steppe: "Life is horrible and wonderful." Many of the events in Anna A. are fictional. I invented the dialogue, but the people and events discussed in Silvia's opera are real, horrible, and wonderful.

I don't know what impression the audience will have of Silvia's work, which is also mine in a small way, but I might dare say there was one invention in the libretto I liked: the final dialogue between Anna and Lidija. I have copied it below:

ANNA: Do you know what Mandelstam's wife, Nadja, once said? "Here," she said, "here, we die for poetry." Confirming the exceptional regard reserved for poetry.

LIDIJA: And are we supposed to be happy about this?

ANNA: Happy. Who knows? We must remember everything clearly: The red wall, the 17 months, the hours spent standing in line with those women and mothers outside the prison in the cold. There were no men. It was a women's ordeal. In Russia, as you know, you take away the women, and you have nothing left. 

LIDIJA: It must have been horrible.

ANNA: No, it wasn't horrible. We were alive.

And I – everyone clung to something – and I, do you know what I clung to? Do you know what I found there? Words. Poetry. In a country where people are killed for poetry, where men and women could disappear from one day to the next, I found poetry. You know, the person I spent all that time waiting in line to see, my son, he won't come see me.

LIDIJA: Perhaps he will come, who knows?

ANNA: No, he won't come, I know it, but I'm glad I spent all that time there. He once said to me: "Mother, it would be better for you if I died. It would be hard for you, and you would write another beautiful poem that would make you even more famous." He was wrong. I didn't need his death. That wall was enough for me to write beautiful poems. Lidija Korneevna, I ask you one last thing.

LIDIJA: Tell me, Anna Andreevna.

ANNA: Can we be on first-name terms from now on?

LIDIJA: What a wonderful gift.

ANNA. Please.

LIDIJA: Too kind.

ANNA: Dear Lidija, during these years, I don't know what I would have done without you. You are very dear to me.

 

5. Learning

So.

No, I haven't learned how to write opera librettos, and I don't think anyone would be crazy enough to ask me to write another one, but I have to say, in the end, Silvia Colasanti gave me a wonderful gift with that phone call in February 2022.

Take care.

Bologna, 13 July 2025

Paolo Nori