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RUSSIA - It's a story of violence, orgies, murder and death, vacillating and manipulated royals, and the collapse of an empire.
The life of Grigori Rasputin has all the ingredients of a classic opera and now, for the first time, Russians have the chance to see the tale of the bushy-bearded, wild-eyed monk played out on the operatic stage.
This year saw the 90th anniversary of the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family by Bolshevik soldiers in 1918.
And this week, Russians had the chance to revisit the story of the family's most infamous hanger-on, when Rasputin opened at Moscow's Helikon Opera.
Some are also suggesting that Rasputin's story has more parallels in modern-day Russia than simply the last two syllables of the monk's name.
Many analysts have criticised the regime of former president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as relying on shadowy advisers in the Kremlin.
Dmitry Bertman, director of the Helikon Opera, says the events surrounding Rasputin and the fall of tsarism were full of lessons for today's Russia.
"You don't need to change all the costumes and make everyone look like modern Russian MPs to see the relevance of the events - it's all there on the stage already," Bertman says.
Rasputin was a Siberian holy man who travelled to St Petersburg in the early 1900s and gained fame and notoriety for his supposed healing powers and sexual exploits. Soon he gained the trust of Alexandra, the wife of Nicholas II, due to his ability to lessen the suffering of their child Alexei, who suffered from haemophilia. After Russia entered the World War I, discontent grew, and the threat of revolution increased.
A group of disgruntled nobles, led by Felix Yusupov, conspired to murder Rasputin in late 1916. Allegedly Rasputin was fed enough poison for five men, and shot in the back, yet still survived, only dying when he was finally thrown into the icy Neva river.
The opera, by the American composer Jay Reise, was first performed at New York City Opera in 1988, as the Soviet Union was nearing its end, and has been translated into Russian for its Moscow premiere.
The curtain opens on Rasputin presiding over an orgy, preaching that salvation is achieved only through pain and mortal sin, and charts a course up to his death. The stage during the court scenes is filled with replicas of Faberge eggs. In the final scene one of these eggs hatches Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik leader who came to power in 1917.
Although many Russians will be instinctively critical of an opera about Rasputin written by a foreigner, Bertman says Russians did not have proper access to all the documents from the tsarist times.
"A lot of things that are published in the West are simply unpublished here."
- INDEPENDENT
