"everything is good that / has a good beginning / and doesn't have an end / the world will die but for us there is no / end!" Thus ends
Victory over the Sun (
part 1,
part 2), the "first Futurist opera".
The opera, with a libretto written by
Aleksei Kruchenykh and the prologue by
Velimir Khlebnikov, was first staged in Saint Petersburg in 1913. The
costumes and set were designed by Kazimir
Malevich (
previously), who later declared that his
backdrop for the second act, fifth scene of the opera was the first public display of
Suprematism. In 1920,
El Lissitzky produced a
series of drawings for a new production of the opera as an electromechanical spectacle, but this idea was never materialized. It was not
staged again until more than half a century later (video of the reconstruction, with commentary by the production crew:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6). The libretto (
English,
Russian) of the opera has been preserved; of the original score, however, only fragments survive.
Bonus:
Malevich's paintings (site is in Russian, but you can just click on links)
Winter, a sound poem by Aleksei Kruchenykh
(Early 20th century Russian drama
previously on Metafilter)
posted by Zagabog at 6:17 PM on December 21, 2011