The seagull

One of the classics of Slavic theater, Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, is currently on stage at the Argentina Theater, directed by Filippo Dini. The four-act drama (in Russian: Čaika), written in 1895 was first performed at the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg the following year, but was a resounding failure. Re-staged in 1898 in a new version, it was a triumph. The Seagull remains one of the Russian playwright's best-known plays, and one of the most performed of all time.

The drama is set on the country estate of Sorin, a high-ranking official in the former government who is suffering from health problems. Among his guests are his sister Arkadina, his nephew Konstantin (Kostya), and Arkadina's new lover, Trigorin, a successful writer. Among these guests stands out Kostya, the young nephew who dreams of redemption through the art of writing, sustained by his love for Nina, a young woman who aspires to become an actress. Kostya presents his first text, performed by his beloved, but the performance abruptly ends, and with it the illusion of a dream fades. From that moment, everything begins to fall apart: desires, ambitions, and loves collide with reality, transforming hopes into disillusionment as the various characters try to escape the grayness of their fate.

Two years later, Chekhov shows us the characters now prisoners of their regrets: dreams shattered, desires extinguished, and life seems like a failure. In this context, Kostya chooses death, which represents the final act of a downward spiral, but at the same time frees himself from the burden of an existence that has become unbearable for him.

Art, however, is at the centre of all the passions, hopes, and conflicts among the various characters, especially among the artists Trigorin and Arkadina, who remain tied to classical theater in contrast to the young Kostya's proposal for a new, decadent theater. Nina asserts her desire to be an actress, experiencing a profound conflict between her attraction to the new languages ​​proposed by Konstantin and the comedies of Trigorin, with whom she falls in love. In this context, the seagull appears as an allegorical figure of the artist's freedom, torn between what he wants to represent and what must be represented.

The contemporary costumes and the claustrophobic set design, which encloses the characters like a cage, prisoners of their own destiny and trapped in a web of unrequited love and dreams that can never come true, contribute to making the opera more relevant than ever. With Giuliana De Sio and Filippo Dini.

Photo credits: Serena Pea