May 9, 2023

If you're opera-curious but opera normally isn't your bag (baby), Pgh Opera's current show, Denis & Katya, might be just the thing for you. I attended the opening night performance last Saturday, and loved it. This contemporary (2019) piece is about a standoff between Russian special forces and a couple of disaffected teens in a post-industrial backwater in 2016, an incident that was livestreamed and went viral internationally for a day or two. The opera skips rapidly, at times dizzyingly, among the accounts of several different characters, and contemporaneous social media posts and a subsequent text exchange between the opera's creators about the incident, projected on a large screen at the back of the stage, add additional layers to an already complex story. The opera's stripped down production aesthetic -- just two singers and a couple of folding chairs with a cello quartet on an empty stage -- keep our focus on the unfolding events. The combination of live music and the electronic sounds punctuating the projected posts and texts serves as an analogue for our experience of the incident, simultaneously a human tragedy and an internet phenomenon. In a similar vein, the libretto's mixing of speech and singing suggests how the incident portrayed might live for us as both a bit of mundane sensationalism and something deeper. If all this sounds interesting, I highly recommend checking Denis & Katya out. Remaining shows: May 9 (tonight), 12, 14, and 18 at Pgh Opera's headquarters in the Strip (not at the Benedum).