Authors

Magdalena Marija Meašić¹;  ¹ University of Rijeka, Croatia

Discussion

In the midst of war and renewed colonial ambitions, Russian music has become a contested cultural heritage in Europe as well as globally, leading concert halls and opera houses to withdraw the Russian repertoire from the stages. While the scholarly debate has already addressed the boycott of Russian repertoire, this paper turns specifically to the fate of Soviet musical heritage in post-2022 Europe. The focus is not on the question of whether such works should be performed today, but on the ways in which the critically reframed productions function as acts of protest and resistance—as vehicles for political critique, as arenas for the negotiation of cultural memory and as expressions of ontological security and postcolonial national identity. Drawing on cultural and heritage studies, the analysis focuses on opera, a genre historically tied to state authority, as a platform for political, cultural and mnemonic engagement. Using selected contemporary case studies, three strands of practice are examined: critical reinterpretations of canonical Soviet operas (War and Peace by Sergei Prokofiev, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov at the Bavarian State Opera, 2023); the reuse of Soviet musical heritage to form a politically charged operatic canon (Animal Farm by Aleksandr Raskatov, premiering at the Dutch National Opera, 2023); and the resurrection of works that were suppressed under Soviet rule (Dievo avinėlis by Lithuanian composer Feliksas Bajoras, written in 1982 and premiered in 2022). Despite their different contexts and approaches, all three examples use the Soviet music heritage as a means to critically engage with history, contemporaneity, and belonging. Rather than erasing the Soviet past, which has become a pertinent matter under the ongoing geopolitical rupture, contemporary artists and cultural institutions are reframing it, reshaping the collective understanding of Soviet culture and negotiating national, regional and European identities.