On Ukraine’s musical frontline: how pop and classical stars have taken up arms
Men arrive on crutches, two in wheelchairs, through a wintry dusk at the monumental neo-Renaissance opera house in Lviv, western Ukraine. Some 100 seats tonight have been reserved for serving soldiers, who enter the lobby – a fin-de-siècle wonder – in military fatigues. They hand these in, so that the coat check looks like a barracks locker room. A contingent of 40 cadets from the city’s emergency firefighting department duly arrives, disarmingly young. For most, it’s a first night at the opera.
The occasion marks the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a concert dedicated to the troops who have fallen during this first, monstrous year of war, and the innocent civilian lives lost. But also to “The Invincible”: a homage in music to Ukraine’s noble cause and just war. The programme is Bucha. Lacrimosa by Victoria Polevá, composed in commemoration of the victims of atrocities in that town during the early weeks of the war, followed by Giuseppe Verdi’s epic Messa da Requiem. The stage is blackened, and on each flank red roses are arranged so that petals fall towards the ground.
Before the curtain, an announcement: “In the event of an air raid or siren, we ask you to adjourn to the shelter. If the air raid warning lasts less than an hour, the performance will resume.” Orchestra and choir take their places, followed by Canadian-Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, creator of the international Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra.
Bucha. Lacrimosa opens with hushed percussion, joined by solo violin – desolate and sparse throughout. Verdi’s Requiem is shattering for the usual reasons, but focused by uncanny understatement entirely appropriate for this occasion.
The young fighters and firefighters are enthralled. During the day, through the doors of the nearby former Jesuit – now Greco-Catholic – church wherein military funerals are held, coffins were carried in by their comrades, for benediction, then back down the steps, accompanied by a dirge from a military band and followed by young widows and scores of other mourners in tears. The same had happened the day before, and would happen the day after. Now, Verdi’s unforgiving Dies Irae erupts, a swirl of acceleration and deceleration; mezzo-soprano Anastasiia Polishchuk’s delivery pierces the air, and with it her audience’s collective heart.
At the end, bouquets of roses presented to the female soloists and conductor are peace-white rather than blood-red, and Wilson picks hers apart, stem by stem, throwing each flower to the military sitting in rows A to F. There are photos of soldiers and firefighters on the foyer steps in front of a portrait of Solomiia Krushelnytska, the great Ukrainian soprano. Then out into the
