A new production at the Russian Bolshoi Theatre is igniting controversy in certain circles. It's an opera called "Rosenthal's Children" (with libretto by postmodernist writer Vladimir Sorokin), and it's about a scientist who clones five classical composers—Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Mussorgsky, and Wagner. When the scientist dies, the musicians end up on the street. Mozart ends up falling love with a prostitute, and the other geniuses turn to alcohol to cope with their new life, for which they are woefully unprepared. Some members of the Russian Parliament have deemed the work pornographic, mostly because of the street language and the depiction of revered composers as drunks and junkies. (After seeing the film Amadeus, this behavior doesn't seem like much of a stretch, at least for Mozart.)

Needless to say, I wish I'd written the thing.

In describing the production, critics have also used the word "vulgar," which is amusing to me because it literally means "of the people," as in the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible writen by St. Jerome. Shakespeare, too, was considered "vulgar" in his time. Sure, he made plenty of lofty ontological observations, but he also included a healthy serving of bawdy dialogue in order to keep the commoners entertained long enough to hear and process those observations. Of course, the Russian Parliament members may not have used the word "vulgar" at all. Translations are only approximations, really, so maybe what they actually said in Russian made more sense. It's also possible that the production isn't any good, that it's one of those mediocre works that occasionally soars into success on the wings of scandal. Still, it sounds good, doesn't it? I like the idea of depicting these beloved geniuses as human beings with flaws and problems, even if the larger statement being made is about cloning. How does a person come to terms with being a genius, let alone the clone of a genius? That's got to rate some serious therapy.

And then there's the issue of cloning. Like everything, this premise reminds me of Blade Runner and the question of consciousness. What does it mean to have a soul? Think of Roy Batty's quoting of William Blake: "Fiery the angels fell. Deep thunder rode around their shores...burning with the fires of Orc." Think of the speech he makes to Deckard before dying: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain." At the end of his life, this replicant—this manufactured person—becomes a poet. For those clones who started off as poets, like Mozart & Company, would they be able to express their genius in a satisfying way? Would they feel forever eclipsed by the legacy of their earlier incarnations? A person's character is shaped by the genes we were born with, but it's also shaped by opportunity and experience, both of which would be dramatically different in the case of a clone. How could we be sure they would be composers at all? Maybe Tchaikovsky II would be a factory worker. Wagner II might end up in an institution, incapacitated by his talent and the impossibility of using it, while Verdi II slugged out his days at the corn dog kiosk in the mall. Who's to say?

At any rate, I love it that art is dealing with messy issues like this and doing so in a playful way (although some will always choose to view this playfulness as blasphemy, like when the audience walked out on Stravinsky's first performance of "The Rite of Spring"). And I hope that this Sorokin dude keeps cranking out relevant, provocative work. (I'd like to see an opera based on the life of Hunter S. Thompson—hint, hint.)

Tags: music