The premiere of Odesa-born 45-year-old composer Oleksandr Rodin was just two weeks ago – after two years of rehearsals it was originally due on march 6th!! But because of the war, it was canceled. And now they started to perform again – this was only the third performance at all!! I had the very great chance to be in the audience to see this performance. The tragic Opera „Kateryna“ is a Ukrainian masterpiece by all artistic means. Composition, instrumentation, execution of the music, brilliant soloists, actors, choir, ballet dancers, staging, scenery, special effects – I would take many pages to write how excited I was to have had the chance to see, hear and live this incredible performance.
The libretto refers to a ballad by the Ukrainian national poet, artist, and liberty hero Taras Shevchenko – who was living in the time of Beethoven and Goethe.
The story of the opera: Ukrainian young lady Kateryna falls in love with a russian soldier and gets pregnant. But the soldier will leave for a war somewhere else in Ukraine. Kateryna is warned not to fall in love with this soldier. Another Ukrainian man loves Kateryna very much and even wants her to marry her knowing that her baby is not from him. However, she refuses and waits for the soldier to come back. When he finally comes back, he says that he does not know her anymore. All his comrades are terribly injured from the war, are drunk, and are singing war songs. Many of them die or are even killed by their own comrades, like shooting a horse because of a broken leg. Because of the lost love, Kateryna is desperate. She leaves her baby in the forest and chooses her own death.
Right in the intermission, there was an alarm of a possible russian attack. So all the staff and audience had to go below the Opera house into the shelter. This alert lasted only for 15 minutes, so the opera could well continue until its end.
