Men arrive on crutches, two in wheelchairs, through a wintry dusk at the monumental neo-Renaissance opera house in Lviv, western Ukraine. Some 100 seats tonight have been reserved for serving soldiers, who enter the lobby – a fin-de-siècle wonder – in military fatigues. They hand these in, so that the coat check looks like a barracks locker room. A contingent of 40 cadets from the city’s emergency firefighting department duly arrives, disarmingly young. For most, it’s a first night at the opera.
The occasion marks the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a concert dedicated to the troops who have fallen during this first, monstrous year of war, and the innocent civilian lives lost. But also to “The Invincible”: a homage in music to Ukraine’s noble cause and just war. The programme is Bucha. Lacrimosa by Victoria Polevá, composed in commemoration of the victims of atrocities in that town during the early weeks of the war, followed by Giuseppe Verdi’s epic Messa da Requiem. The stage is blackened, and on each flank red roses are arranged so that petals fall towards the ground.
