Springtime for Putin: Grange Park’s The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko reviewed

Alexander Litvinenko lies in a London hospital, dying of polonium poisoning. That photograph from 2006 haunts the memory: the medical robe, the electronic monitors, Litvinenko’s accusing gaze and bald, ravaged head. But in case we needed reminding, Grange Park Opera handed out copies of Death of a Dissident, the account of the crime by Litvinenko’s widow Marina, and the principal source for Anthony Bolton and Kit Hesketh-Harvey’s new opera The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko. Minutes later, a hospital bed rolled on stage replicating that exact image. And then Litvinenko — the tenor Adrian Dwyer — opened his mouth and started to sing.

Opera plays a high-stakes game with dramatic realism at the best of times, but this was startlingly upfront. One gasp of distaste — one incredulous snigger — and the whole thing could have collapsed into Springtime for Putin. Ten minutes in, as balaclava-clad, gun-toting extras stormed the auditorium in a recreation of the 2002 Moscow theatre siege, Bolton and his director Stephen Medcalf doubled down.