About the work
Der Idiot (The Idiot) is Mieczysław Weinberg's last opera, composed in 1986/87 to a libretto by Alexander Medvedev after Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel of the same name. Weinberg dedicated the four-act work to the memory of his friend Dmitri Shostakovich. A shortened version premiered on 19 December 1991 at the Moscow Chamber Opera, staged by Boris Pokrovsky.
Plot
Prince Myshkin returns from a Swiss sanatorium to St Petersburg and becomes entangled in a society consumed by envy and greed. He loves both Nastasya Filippovna, the mistress of his acquaintance Rogozhin, and Aglaya Yepanchina; when the jealous Rogozhin kills Nastasya, Myshkin loses his mind.
Cultural significance
The complete version was not staged until 2013, more than 25 years after it was written, at the Nationaltheater Mannheim under Thomas Sanderling, and was named "world premiere of the year" by the magazine Opernwelt, an honour it shared with George Benjamin's Written on Skin. The opera has since been staged at the Mariinsky Theatre, the Bolshoi Theatre and the Salzburg Festival, among others.