About the work
Opera in two acts by Alfred Schnittke to a libretto by Viktor Yerofeyev, adapted from his own 1980 story. Mstislav Rostropovich conducted the premiere on 13 April 1992 at the Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam, staged by Boris Pokrovsky with designs by Ilya Kabakov.
Plot
The narrator "I" is ordered by his superior to take the intellectually disabled Vova into his home; Vova can only utter the syllable "ekh" and systematically wrecks the flat. He falls in love with the narrator's wife and eventually murders her, and "I" ends up committed to a psychiatric asylum.
Cultural significance
The grotesque title character was quickly read as a caricature of Lenin, and the opera is seen as a scathing reckoning with everyday Soviet life. It was composed under dramatic circumstances, as Schnittke had to interrupt work after a stroke in 1991 and finish it under severe time pressure.