Grange Park Opera, West Horsley Place, Surrey, has announced the world première of Anthony Bolton opera Litvinenko for the 15 July 2021. The libretto is by Kit Hesketh-Harvey.
Exiled and living in London, former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko becomes Putin’s most ebullient and needling critic. He learns that his former colleagues are using his face for target practice; a law is passed that allows Russian traitors to be killed anywhere in the world.
Just a few months later – in November 2006 – Litvinenko is poisoned with radioactive Polonium-210.
Alexander Litvinenko was a man who solved his own murder. As he lay dying, he worked with Scotland Yard detectives, and tracked the lethal dose to his former colleague – and football fan – Andrei Lugovoy.
This real-life story is told through a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards covering events in Russia that lead Litvinenko to seek exile and his family’s life in Muswell Hill. Extensive use is made of historic film footage.
