Would you kill one man to save a billion others?
Gavrilo K believes he did, but for the murder of his country’s President he will now be tried and punished. The State’s chief psychiatrist must determine his sanity, but what she discovers makes her question her own.
Kevin Rodgers’ opera The Murderous Delusions of Gavrilo K, first premiered in 2025, explores violence and sanity in a two-act electroacoustic “neo-verismo” chamber work for four singers.
It is coupled with Arnold Schoenberg’s psychologically intense Erwartung from 1909 – one of “the great monuments of modernism” – performed in semi-staged format, featuring Rodgers’ brand-new electronic re-orchestration of this rarely seen work.
Featuring visuals from some of Britain’s most exciting young video artists, Erwartung / The Murderous Delusions of Gavrilo K brings two powerful works together in a stirring double bill.
Review by Stephen Gilchrist
Grimeborn is an annual musical theatre and opera festival held at Arcola Theatre in Dalston, East London. and tends to showcase new and experimental work. In this double bill, Schoenberg’s Erwatung is not new but in its day was certainly experimental. It was well matched to Kevin Rodger’s 2025 musical drama.
First to Erwatung. I won’t lie; this was a difficult listen. It is a half hour piece for a single female voice (‘Die Frau’), in this production (by Valeria Perboni) it is enhanced by performance art in four actors choreographically enacting the themes in the work. It is obtuse, somewhat abstract in its libretto by Marie Pappenheim and concerns a woman searching for her lover in a forest. It is an expressionist and free atonal monodrama and stands as a cornerstone of musical modernism. In the conventional opera house, it calls for a large orchestra. Grimeborn has reorchestrated the score for a recorded soundtrack.
The singer-soprano Anna Marmion– stands before a music stand on the side of the stage, singing, apparently, from the score, distant from the visual performance. Three female actors entangle, and disengage with a faceless lover, demonstrating aspects of the protagonist’ character, first a Mother Nature figure, from whom the man takes and takes, until she’s left bare and empty, the bride, the archetypal operatic madwoman, and the third the modern woman, sensual, and self-possessed. Towards the end of the piece, the singer enters the acting arena, not a commentator, but a participant, angry frustrated and tearing up her score. In finality she embraces her personalities. The lover is nowhere to be seen.
Anna Marmion provides a competent, if not thrilling, reading of the score in German which is accompanied by English surtitles. This is a difficult and challenging piece which is ‘worthy’ and interesting rather than entirely successful.
After the interval, we were treated to Kevin Rodgers’ substantial one act drama. The named protagonist, Gavrilo K, is a take on both the assassin Gavrilo Princip, the Bosnian Serb student who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and precipitated World War, and ‘Joseph K’, in Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ arrested on his morning birthday for an unknown crime and forced to navigate a labyrinthine legal process where charges are never revealed. and likewise, ‘K’ in the same author’s The Castle who arrives at a snowy village and battles endlessly to contact the unseen, unresponsive authorities ruling from a distant castle.
Talmudic writings assert “Whoever destroys a single soul, destroys an entire world; whoever saves a single soul, saves an entire world.” Here both Gavrilo and his accusers in an authoritarian state face existential question. For Gavrillo, it is the argument that a murder may save billions of lives in an avoidable war,
A war is coming:
I have foreseen it
In fiery visions
Of pain and suffering
For the State, it is whether to execute the prisoner or show mercy by a state psychiatrist finding that he is insane. Which way will it go? Is he faking? And whose self-interests are served by the court’s judgement? Ultimately the prisoner mysteriously disappears from his cell. How is this possible? As the psychiatrist sings
The world is full of mystery.
We’ll never know for certain.
We never can be sure.
This is a most interesting piece of work. This is not a traditional, romantic classical opera but rather a modern, dark electronic-acoustic piece. The production of the recorded soundtrack by Rodgers himself is absolutely first class and the singing outstanding and sometimes thrilling, especially so from Elizabeth Marshall (soprano) as the psychiatrist, Doctor Sunderland, mezzo Anna Loveday as the Prosecutor, and tenor, Quito Clothier, as Gavrilo.
Valeria Perboni’s staging is tight and focussed and much good use is made (as is so common, these days) of live videography which also includes key words in the text, visualised by Thomas Bugg and Fabia Martin. I should have liked screened titles of the entire libretto-the text of which is included in the e-programme.
This was an unusual enriching and challenging evening, musically excellent, and one both entertaining and culturally nourishing.
I look forward to seeing further work at Grimeborn.
🎭 Cast
Erwartung
- Anna Marmion – Die Frau
The Murderous Delusions of Gavrilo K
- Quito Clothier – Gavrilo K.
- Elizabeth Marshall – Dr. Sunderland
- Anna Loveday – Nurse / Mother / Vision 2 / Prosecutor
- Olekseii Zasiadko – Institute Director / Vision 1 / Judge
🎼 Creatives
- Kevin Rodgers – Composer, Librettist (Gavrilo K), Writer & Producer
- Arnold Schoenberg – Composer (Erwartung)
- Marie Pappenheim – Librettist (Erwartung)
- Valeria Perboni – Director
Link to online programme: click here