The plot concerns a group of protagonists who want to destroy reason, by disposing of time and capturing the sun.[1]
The opera was intended to underline parallels between literary text, musical score, and the art of painting, and featured a cast of such extravagant characters as Nero and Caligula in the Same Person, Traveller through All the Ages, Telephone Talker, The New Ones, etc.
The audience reacted negatively and even violently to the performance, as have some subsequent critics and historians.[2]
A documentary film about the opera was made in 1980.[3]
Translation
Victory Over the Sun, ed. Patricia Railing, trans. Evgeny Steiner (London: Artists.Bookworks, 2009), 2 vols.
ISBN978-0-946311-19-4
Further reading
Victory Over the Sun: The World's First Futurist Opera (original Russian libretto, musical score, translation, critical and historical essays), eds. Rosamund Bartlett and Sarah Dadswell (University of Exeter Press, 2012). ISBN978-0-85989-839-3
Anfang Gut, Alles Gut - Actualizations of the Futurist Opera Victory Over the Sun 1913, eds. Eva Birkenstock, Kerstin Stakemier, Nina Köller. Contributors: Roger Behrens, Devin Fore, Anke Hennig, Oliver Jelinski, Christiane Ketteler, Avigail Moss, Nikolai Punin, Marina Vishmidt. Kunsthaus Bregenz; Bilingual edition (31 March 2013). ISBN978-3863351441
In 2015, during the Art Basel fair, the Swiss Fondation Bayaler presented a production of the opera that was shown in the Theater Basel on 17 June 2015.[7][8] It was a kind of preview to the In Search of 0,10 – The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting[9] exhibition that ran from 4 October 2015 to 10 January 2016 at the Fondation Bayaler.