The former Russian security agent died in 2006 after drinking tea laced with the radioactive isotope Polonium-210 at a London hotel. As he lay dying in hospital, he pointed the finger at Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Delayed for a year by virus restrictions, British composer Anthony Bolton’s opera “The Life & Death of Alexander Litvinenko” is being staged at Grange Park Opera in Surrey, southwest of London.
Tickets have sold out for the opening night, the company’s website said.
The 71-year-old composer has said he was inspired by a biography of Litvinenko written by the former FSB office’s widow Marina and friend Alex Goldfarb.
At a dress rehearsal, Bolton said he was shocked by the details of Litvinenko’s suffering. “He lived 25 days or so, deteriorating with his body being eaten from the inside out. So I was very moved by that,” he said.
“It was then this inspiration came, that it had the ingredients for an opera.”
In the play, Litvinenko is seen lying in a hospital bed with his hair having fallen out because of radiation poisoning.
Marina Litvinenko, 59, said the opera was “fully based” on the biography she co-wrote. “It’s very emotional because I see not only my story, I can listen to music. And this altogether makes a very strong feeling,” she said.
“It looks like justice for me,” she added, since the opera names “the people who committed this crime, who killed my husband. These people are killers”.
The opera includes a character representing Putin, although he is named only as “the head of the KGB”. A British public inquiry in 2016 concluded that Putin had “probably approved” Litvinenko’s killing and it was likely FSB-directed.
Litvinenko’s story has already inspired a play, “A Very Expensive Poison” by Lucy Prebble, based on a book by The Guardian’s former Moscow correspondent Luke Harding.
Bolton said he hoped that with his opera, “I’ve given some longevity to the story of his life”.
He included Russian musical references – Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky, as well as a Red Army marching song, the Chechen anthem and a Moscow football chant.
The staging at the 700-seater opera house includes a scene where gun-wielding Chechen rebels walk through the audience, recreating the 2002 siege of Moscow’s Dubrovka theatre.
The libretto was written by Kit Hesketh-Harvey, who has adapted classic operas such as “La Traviata” as well as working on a popular BBC sitcom, “The Vicar of Dibley”.