XV Moscow, Russia 2010

Where once was the most ungodly prison of NKVD and which was used mostly for torturing its own management, is nowadays a monastery. It lays at the end of metro line and a couple of stops with trolleybuses.

Monastery is dim, from the walls drop big plots of painting. Right outside the gates shops, tramways, people on their journeys, with bags and without, kissing couples, teetering grandmothers, who climb with their bundles over the piles of pipes.

The history is invisible. A singing of monks, under the frescoes, all with motionless faces, in a golden glow, the scent of mirth. The chant circles around g sharp, then someone takes a bell and rings it five times – and proclaims: “The truth is come”.

Later, in the opera, both G sharp and A flat play a significant role, especially when there’s presence of the invisible, both in love, and in the relation of government to the people. And what comes for Aliide, bells ring her five times five times.