The Moscow Theater Helikon-Opera opened June one of the five promised prime season 2016/2017 - the production of the "Chaad" by the contemporary composer Alexander Manotskov under the direction of Kirill Serebrennikov. The author of the project was the well-known producer Pavel Kaplevich, the production designer Alexei Tregubov, the director Denis Azarov, the light designer Oscars Paulins, the plastic director Evgeny Kulagin, and the conductor-director Felix Korobov.

Opera was invented as a modern paraphrase and a semantic quintessence of Griboedov's "Woe from Wit" with fragments of "Philosophical Letters" and "Apology of the Madman" Chaadaev, correspondence of Benkendorf with Nicholas I, "Death of Wazir Mukhtar" by Yuri Tynyanov, "Notes of the Madman" Nikolai Gogol and even "Military Engineering". In the production not only meanings are intertwined, but also known quotations from works. "And who are the judges?" "Where is better? Where are we not!" Exclaim the actors. It is significant that the name of the protagonist, in whose honor the performance is named, is also a hybrid of the invented Chatsky and the real Chaadayev.

Photo: Facebook The production begins with a stretch-out dressing room, cellophane packages from Pyaterochka on hooks and 40 inflated guys, quickly taking off their clean clothes and pulling dirty robes, rubber boots. "Atlanta" - silent actors for a second, do not descend from the stage, play the role of ordinary people. The people, due to which all the others live, the people who are at the very beginning of the food chain.

Photo: Facebook They throughout the play drag the characters on several wooden plates, moving either on black coal, or viscous earth. They dare not even look up at the singers. "White people" at the same time go in office suits, go in for sports on simulators, arrange balls, live as they can and want. They dissolve gossip, cackle before the authorities, seduce, betray.

Photo: Facebook According to Serebrennikov, this is a visual reminder of the structure of life. There are always "two worlds: a world of successful, rich people living in good homes, in excellent conditions, engaged in their spa procedures, sweet love intrigues, dressed in the latest fashion. And there is another world - people living in dirty earth. They, like the Atlanteans, keep a surface on which in white chic costumes happy and successful ".

Photo: Facebook Chaad - a hero with a character, ideas and ideals. His reaction to hypocrisy, flattery, rudeness, intimacy, lasciviousness of heroes - monologues addressed to the audience. He does not get involved in a dirty game, he fights for his right to be himself. However, he loses the commonness, vulgarity and dullness. He is declared insane not only because he is not pleased, but also because "there is nothing to be put out". In the finals, he finds himself in the basement, in the mud, at the very bottom. Grotesque, is emphasized by the vibrations of two Griboedov waltzes, sometimes passing into flashy and jerky flashes of music.

"It seems to me that this is a very important human and civil statement about what is happening in Russia, in Moscow, what happens to a person with certain views, a certain direction of thought, consciousness," said Serebrennikov. "This is a mold of our current moods, feelings, doubts".