Translated from the Russian by Dorothea Trottenberg.

An unprecedented snowfall has fallen on the European continent. Masses of snow surround the homes and turn them into prisons against will. Jacques, Jan, Natasha, Peter and Silvia, well-off Europeans, are stuck in a villa in the mountains. Cut off from the environment and their fellow men, they try to make themselves heard. In vain, there is no rescue in sight. Their relationships with each other become fragile and the rituals they practice to survive increasingly threatening.

The snowfall over Europe is like the porridge in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale The Sweet Porridge. The pot boils and boils and never stops. And the porridge rises higher and higher. Supplies are running low and senses are dull. As in a cold war, the mutual threat of annihilation of the other seems to the snowed-in a survival strategy that promises success. "Right on!", the mysterious mantra of Alex, Natasha's late husband, becomes a dark foreboding that all this is no accident.

Miracles do happen, at least in the purple snow. The potty stops boiling, and the walls of snow begin to fall. Jan, Jacques, Natasha, Peter and Silvia see the moon, the sky, the stars again after a long isolation. And then, unexpectedly and suddenly, a never perceived sound resounds from the future that makes them realize....

With the premiere of Violet Snow, Roberto Ciulli stages for the first time a theatrical text by the renowned contemporary author Vladimir Sorokin, who has come under fierce attack in Russia. From the play, written for opera, he creates a metaphor about the state and future of Europe, about a disintegrating society between life and death. read less