Overview

• Titov directed the final premiere of the 2025 Salzburg Festival, moving Eötvös’s opera into an apocalyptic landscape by Rufus Didwiszus that blocks the sisters’ path to Moscow with blasted railway debris
• Eötvös’s 1998 score deconstructs Chekhov’s drama into three non-linear “Sequenzen,” contrasting an onstage chamber ensemble with a larger offstage orchestra to mirror internal and external forces
• Four countertenors take the lead roles to underscore the characters’ universality and challenge traditional gender norms in contemporary opera casting
• Festival director Markus Hinterhäuser framed the work as a meditation on life itself even as Titov incorporates explicit Ukrainian war references, including bomb strikes and soldiers onstage
• Maxime Pascal conducted the front-stage Klangforum Wien ensemble alongside a fifty-musician offstage orchestra, earning enthusiastic audience acclaim at the Felsenreitschule opening