THREE SISTERS • SALZBURG FESTSPIELE 2025

★★★★★☆

REVIEW THREE SISTERS: DESPERATE MODERNIST CHAOS OPERA HIGHLIGHT IN SALZBURG

Three Sisters is a play by Chekhov, which Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös has adapted into a modernist chaos opera. In a completely ravaged set design accompanied by desperate, deconstructed music, the characters’ desperate psychology and failed destinies are portrayed. The performance was one of the highlights of this year’s Salzburg Festival in director Evgeny Titov’s relentless interpretation.

The story is about three sisters who, after a happy childhood in Moscow, have moved to the countryside with their father, who runs a remote military base. On the surface, it’s about… not much. The base is to be closed down, the regiment is leaving, budding love withers, the doctor drinks, marriage is rejected, fire rages, the brother drinks, hope is dashed. As always with Chekhov, the real action takes place in the inner lives of the characters, which are masterfully exposed in Eötvös’ composition.

The opera has broken with the linear plot of the original story, which is instead staged in three sequences, where fragments of the same events are seen from three different perspectives. This can be quite challenging if you are unfamiliar with the original story.

One of the creative touches in the work is that the three sisters are sung by countertenors, ostensibly to remove the feminine connotation from their sad fates and the paralysis that hangs over the whole story.

The idea is that the countertenors’ undefined gender increases the audience’s ability to identify with the characters. I would venture to say that the opposite is achieved. Or should Madame Butterfly also be sung by a countertenor in future, so that men can better identify with her tragedy?

The sisters are portrayed with restrained feminine bitterness, expressive suffering or completely devoid of passion. The men in the performance are generally drunk, violent, unreliable or otherwise inadequate.

The approach is the composer’s own from 1998, and fits like a glove with the current gender politics agenda. I have no doubt that this has helped to elevate the performance to the heights of international acclaim.

It is said that Eötvös makes the unspoken audible with his unconventional score. The orchestra consists of 16 musicians in the orchestra pit plus another 50 (fifty) behind the stage, who deliver a cacophony of sound effects that contribute to the characterisation of the characters and the actions that unfold on stage.

An original acoustic trick that contributes to Three Sisters’ status at the top of contemporary opera.

A shattered railway bridge spanning the entire width of the Felsenreitschule theatre, almost 100 metres, dominates the set design, which catches fire on several occasions. The road “home” to the good times in Moscow is established from the outset as pure utopia.

All that remains are the suppressed passions, the unconscious desires, and the quiet despair that has imprisoned the sisters in a hopeless provincial backwater with no prospects for the future.

The point is to paint a picture of the society and mindset in which many people live today. Trumpism and right-wing radicalism as the way out of it all haunt the background.

Musically, Three Sisters is quite a challenge. As modern stage drama, the performance is a powerful experience, a sharp innovative production, executed at the highest artistic level.

It must necessarily be five stars from GOT TO SEE THIS.