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The creators of​ Octavia. Trepanation and​ Pinocchio won several awards at the Golden Mask award ceremony, which​ took place on​ April​ 22. Congratulations!

If you have not yet seen Boris Yukhananov and Dmitri Kourliandski's opera Octavia. Trepanation, you will have that opportunity on November 28. Staged in 2017, and having toured various countries, it will be shown at the Interferences International Festival.

No sooner did we hear the news about the nominations for the Golden Mask, than we learned that Boris Yukhananov has been awarded the Grand Prix of the Moscow Art Prize.

Pinocchio. Theatre, Octavia. Trepanation and Book of Seraphim.

This year’s festival features 25 productions from leading international companies including Reckless Sleepers, TR Warszawa, Stanislavsky Electrotheatre and the Schaubühne.

Octavia. Trepanation has been written up in numerous features, reviews, interviews, &c, and recently a talk about this opera was delivered at the International Co-production conference. The organizers were the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre and the Territory International Festival of Contemporary Art with the participation of the Aksyonov Family Foundation, with the support of the Goethe Institute, and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Moscow. Theatre critic Olga Fedyanina moderated the talks and papers that were delivered, and the entire event was coordinated by Irina Tokareva.

Dmitri Kourliandski's opera Octavia. Trepanation, staged by Boris Yukhananov, premiered in 2017 in Amsterdam at the Holland Festival. The libretto is based on Lev Trotsky's essay about Vladimir Lenin (1924), and on fragments of a play attributed to Seneca about the Roman emperor Nero. The stage is dominated by an enormous head of Lenin, and centaur skeletons. It is a complex, multivalent work, in which the theme of tyranny is projected onto the contemporary world. The Russian premiere, for which the Electrotheatre has announced an audition for volunteers to participate as soldiers in a Terracotta army, will take place on the stage of the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre on October 17 to 19 as part of the Territory festival. Dmitri Kourliandski speaks about his dissection of the revolutionary song “Varshavyanka,” and about the trepanation of tyranny.

Materials published by the Conversazioni 2017 festival in the Italian city of Vicenza, where Octavia. Trepanation was performed in early October on the stage of the legendary Olimpico theatre.

Performances of an opera by Boris Yukhananov and Dmitri Kourliandski in Italy

An English-language website devoted to the opera Octavia. Trepanation. Information about the project, the creative team, press reports and much more.