From 21 to 24 September 2025, for the first time on the stage of the New Opera, Teodor Currentzis, soloists and artists of the musicAeterna Orchestra and Choir, as well as the musicAeterna Dance troupe, present the Diaghilev Festival production of Pascal Dusapin's opera Passion, directed by Anna Guseva. The Russian premiere of the opera took place in Perm in 2024.
Pascal Dusapin is one of France's leading contemporary composers, a student of avant-garde artists Olivier Messiaen and Iannis Xenakis. He started with experimental, complex music, but gradually softened his style. Passion is Dusapin's seventh opera, commissioned by the Aix-en-Provence Festival and first staged there in 2009. The Guardian's music critics have included Passion in the top 20 most important compositions of the 21st century.
Dusapin's work is a kind of commentary on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, as well as the opera Orpheus by Monteverdi. The nameless hero and heroine engage in a dialogue on the border of life and death: the entire hour–and-a-half opera is a time-stretched moment of parting, a stopped moment. In the score, Dusapin's signature style is set off by soft references to the Italian and French Baroque. The music, which the composer himself describes as an 'emotional journey,' fluidly follows the characters' feelings: joy, fear, desire, pain, ecstasy, sadness, anger, and love subtly alternate within it. Bodily plastics become an integral part of Passion's production – as in early Baroque operas, dance interacts closely with singing.

From 21 to 24 September 2025, for the first time on the stage of the New Opera, Teodor Currentzis, soloists and artists of the musicAeterna Orchestra and Choir, as well as the musicAeterna Dance troupe, present the Diaghilev Festival production of Pascal Dusapin's opera Passion, directed by Anna Guseva. The Russian premiere of the opera took place in Perm in 2024.
Pascal Dusapin is one of France's leading contemporary composers, a student of avant-garde artists Olivier Messiaen and Iannis Xenakis. He started with experimental, complex music, but gradually softened his style. Passion is Dusapin's seventh opera, commissioned by the Aix-en-Provence Festival and first staged there in 2009. The Guardian's music critics have included Passion in the top 20 most important compositions of the 21st century.
Dusapin's work is a kind of commentary on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, as well as the opera Orpheus by Monteverdi. The nameless hero and heroine engage in a dialogue on the border of life and death: the entire hour–and-a-half opera is a time-stretched moment of parting, a stopped moment. In the score, Dusapin's signature style is set off by soft references to the Italian and French Baroque. The music, which the composer himself describes as an 'emotional journey,' fluidly follows the characters' feelings: joy, fear, desire, pain, ecstasy, sadness, anger, and love subtly alternate within it. Bodily plastics become an integral part of Passion's production – as in early Baroque operas, dance interacts closely with singing.