Creonte, a recently rediscovered opera by Dmytro Bortniansky, is now available on streaming services. It features a historically informed approach and was produced by Open Opera Ukraine, together with the Liatoshynskyi Capella: Choir & Orchestra of the National House of Music, soloists Denys Sahirov (Creonte), Solomiia Pavlenko (Antigone), Olena Pinkovska (Haemon), Kateryna Levytska (Adrastus), Daria Novitska (Ismene), and Austrian conductor Jörg Zwicker.
A concert performance of Creonte took place on 9 August 2026 at the National Philharmonic of Ukraine. An edition of the score, with a scholarly reconstruction, by Andrii Koliada is in preparation.
Jörg Zwicker, and Nataliia Khmilevska, the artistic director of Open Opera Ukraine and music director of the Liatoshynskyi Capella, talked between rehearsals and recording sessions about their work on Bortniansky’s opera, the lofty and the mundane, the inspired and the practical, and their expectations versus reality. The Claquers’ own Oleksandr Ostrovskyi was present as well, recording and asking follow-up questions.
The opera’s style and libretto
Nataliia: Dear Jörg, what was your overall impression of Bortniansky’s opera Creonte? Did you make any special discoveries in this musical text?
Jörg: I was very surprised by Bortniansky’s Creonte. When I first read this music, I could not identify its style. As I worked on it, I realized it wasn’t written in a single style but rather in a mixture of different styles, which I found interesting.
The 1770s and 1780s in European music history marked a move from the Baroque to the Classical Period, so it was typical for that time. However, Bortniansky wrote some parts in Galluppi’s manner and then, on the next page, he composed music similar to a Romantic string quartet.
Some bars sounded like Zoltan Almashi’s Maria City. I also found parts written in a style like the Classical period symphony. One aria in Creonte sounded like a Mozart opera. Also, the composer wrote the recitatives in a Baroque style, while he composed the arias in a later style. I am curious whether Bortniansky was searching for his own style in that period, or whether it was simply his way of showing what he had learned and could bring into this opera.
So, Creonte is a picture of a period of thirty or forty years in music history, and that was the most interesting thing to discover in Bortniansky’s opera. It is possible that the composer was young; it was his first opera, and he was looking for his own ways of expression. I am not familiar with his later operas, so it would be interesting to compare Creonte to Bortniansky’s later operas.
Oleksandr: I have a question about Creonte’s plot. When I listened to the concert version of the opera, the story seemed short, being approximately a ten-minute drama where someone has killed someone, and the rest of it was passing judgment on someone else. How come Creonte lasts so long, for two and a half hours?
Nataliia: The tempo was slow (laughing).
Jörg: I was disappointed that the big development and the most dramatic situation of the whole story, when Antigone was saved and became queen and Creonte fell, happened very quickly, in a single short recitative. The opera would no longer be called Creonte if a third act would’ve been built out of it; it would’ve been Antigone. In the Baroque period, you had five-hour operas where you forgot who was with whom and who was against whom, with a lot of love arias and fight arias. The actual story developed in short recitatives in Baroque operas, just as it does in Bortniansky’s Creonte.
Oleksandr: I was sighing during the performance, because the first half hour of Creonte consisted of recitatives without arias, namely recitative, chorus, recitative, and chorus. Surely, the recitatives moved the plot forward, but this development went on so long in Bortninsky’s opera. Then we stopped to listen to different arias that changed nothing in the plot but were hard to sing. The listeners simply followed a kind of competition between the singers.
Jörg: I found it interesting that the composer used mostly recitative accompagnato in his score. There are more recitative accompagnato than secco in the first part of Creonte. A typical Baroque opera lasts five hours, four of which consist of recitative secco. Bortniansky wrote a mixture: secco, accompagnato, and an aria. It was quite interesting, and not boring.
Read also: Conductor and Cellist Jörg Zwicker: On Early Music, Mental Coaching, and Supporting Ukraine
How to listen to the opera, and what the opera means
Oleksandr: What do you think about this opera not as a conductor but as a listener? How would you recommend listening to this music? Does it require focused listening, or could it just be in the background?
Jörg: It depends. Some listeners switch on the radio somewhere in the room, cook and eat, and it is nice music for them. If you want to get special things out of it, I don’t think you always have to follow the libretto.
However, there is a contradiction between the quality of the libretto and the beautiful music, between the terrible lyrics and the lovely sound in the opera. The same contrary effect is in Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater.
That was one of the main questions the musicians in the orchestra had, as they were worried about why the music was so happy at inappropriate moments. I am wondering whether it was simply the style of the time, like Pergolesi, or whether Bortniansky deliberately wrote such nice arias to make the events in the opera look even worse.
You also see this in some movies, for example, when you hear “What a Wonderful World” and see the Vietnam War in Good Morning, Vietnam. It is the same effect, and it makes the story even more dramatic. At first, you think, “Oh, what nice music”. If you do not read the lyrics and don’t understand Italian, you might think it must be a love aria. However, it is not. If you do understand Italian, and if you are a listener who wants to feel this tension, then you must listen to it differently. That could be one explanation.
Another explanation is, for example, Antigone’s character. Yes, she is going to die, but it was her own decision, and she is at peace with it. So, the reason may lie not in the words she sings, but in what she feels about her decision. That is very interesting to analyze.
Oleksandr: What does Creonte mean to both of you personally, not just the plot as a narrative, but something inner that you would want to keep from it? We know Sophocles’ story of Antigone, but there might be something in this story that caught your interest, perhaps something that differs from Sophocles’sinterpretation?
Jörg: It was not completely clear why Creonte is the main character of Bortniansky’s opera and not Antigone. Even in the composition, it is more Antigone’s opera, since Creonte has a total of two arias and Antigone has six or seven.
The second point, which I have already mentioned, is that the main dramatic event happens only at the end, in a very short recitative. Longing for death as a solution is quite a heavy topic. However, to gain freedom, it is the best solution and creates a bridge to the current situation in Ukraine. Hence, it was quite interesting for me to work with this opera, here and now.
Nataliia: This whole project was about Bortniansky. I valued my experiences of how we prepared this production, grew over time, and brought this music back to Ukraine. The most important thing is the people we united working on this opera, and that the Ukrainian public and musicians can discover Bortniansky’s music.
I did not think about what was going on in the plot. I focused on details, collaborating with you, Jörg, as an expert on this style, how the Ukrainian singers took on this material, and how it came together.
Jörg: Such a huge project always has different points of view, and I understand that there must be an organization behind it. My responsibility was the music, namely unveiling the music for the musicians, based on the lyrics, of course.
Also, there was a component of performing music by a Ukrainian composer in these times. This was the meta story about it. It was my ninth visit to Ukraine, and I was convinced this project had to be done with musicians who were staying in Ukraine. Even if there might’ve been another violinist or singer who would be better, that wasn’t the idea behind this project.
Preparation: score, schedule and performance practice
Nataliia: I am interested in how you prepared for performing and recording Bortniansky’s Creonte. Was the opera difficult to study? Did you find any guides for performing the special appoggiaturas? Please give us details about this specific work.
Jörg: If you remember, I first asked you for a libretto of Creonte. I already had the music but needed a libretto to understand what was going on there. That is always the first step.
Nataliia: Did you translate it yourself?
Jörg: Yes, I did and made notes. I wrote the whole libretto in my own language into the score and underscored some key words — that is my working method. For example, I have one headline about what is going on in aria No. 7, so that I am immediately in it. The first step is to combine the lyrics with the music.
Then I looked at those different styles, read recitatives (always very difficult for the singers), and the soli for basso continuo. I knew that we have Nataliia Fomenko, who is great on the harpsichord. We discussed whether we could do those soli with the cello, which would require a lot of experience. As for the recitatives, I hoped but wasn’t sure, that the singers would be well prepared, which they were. Practicing the recitatives went much faster than I had expected, and much faster than the arias.
Frankly, I was worried about practicing with the orchestra. In Europe, and in Austria, we are used to three-hour rehearsals, twice a day, with a fifteen- or twenty-minute break in between. All the work happens within these three hours, 10:00 to 13:00 and then 15:00 to 18:00, or something like that. That is what I have been used to for forty years. In Ukraine, we had thirty or forty-five-minute rehearsals, a break, and then half an hour break. How could we practice?
When I got the music, I played everything through on the harpsichord with a watch. It came out, plus or minus, to around two hours of music (the first part a little bit more, and the second a little bit less). Then we discussed rehearsal schedules (always a question of how much you fight for them). Okay, you mustaccept the circumstances as they are. I needed to find my own tempo of working, deciding which things to work on and which to let run, because of the lack of rehearsal time.
Oleksandr: That is an interesting point. I saw your preparation for the rehearsals. You came to them with your laptop and a Google spreadsheet and there was a planned, strict schedule for every rehearsal, minute by minute, for every point you wanted to work on. How can you do this? I have never seen it before.
Jörg: Yes, that is what I tried to do. I think all musicians and singers accept any rehearsal schedule if they are informed about it. When I tell them, “Look, you will be practicing at around 19:40, plus or minus”, then they know that, “Ah, there are two singers before me.” It helps singers prepare for that point, and not only for the singing: when we are recording, they know that they must be ready at that moment, with their energy, and everything else.
That is why I try to make quite concrete plans. Also, when I made the list and the schedule, I wrote down which instruments play in which aria. When I had finished, I said, “Oh, there is a lot for the horns, and a lot for the oboes”. So, the first question was whether we had good horn players? I knew about the oboes but didn’t know about good horn players.
Oleksandr: If you hear, during practice, that you need to spend more time on some parts, do you change your rehearsal schedule or keep to it?
Jörg: You make a corridor for your working process and within it you must be flexible. Sometimes you say, “Let us go on to the next part”, because it is important to trust the musicians. Sometimes the artists ask if they could manage themselves. I trust them; it will work. If not, you might stop at the first two arias and then find that you have no time for the others. I think that is a quality of my work: I always have an overview of where to make compromises, what to achieve now and what to achieve the next time. I like to develop orchestras and let them grow in their way of playing.
To be honest, I was very late preparing the music because of anunexpected need to search for mistakes, translate the lyrics, and make the schedule with the timings. I was also very busy at the university. Luckily, I have a great quality that I can feel the music immediately, even if I have not prepared it, and I am always open to letting it grow. There was nothing written in my score, except the lyrics, at the beginning of the first rehearsal. That is often the case, and sometimes it stays like that. Sometimes, I might need to fix some things for a recordingthough I also like spontaneity.
For spontaneity, you need contact with the orchestra. We have been working together for two weeks and yesterday, for example, I gave an upbeat a little bit differently, and theorchestra played differently. Two weeks ago, that would not have worked. You can only develop this if you know your score well. Of course, where there is a big accent or a big breath, you must fix it. Before concerts, I always tell musicians to look at me; maybe I will get crazy during the concert and do something surprising. At the same time, this gives responsibility to the orchestra as well: “all of us, including the singers, are responsible”.
I conducted quite a lot in this project because theyare not used to me. Normally, I sometimes stop conducting during a concert, so musicians open their minds, hear what others are doing, or simply enjoy it. I don’t want to disturb the musicians, and I don’t have a conductor’s ego. I am a part of the orchestra in that way.
Working with the orchestra and the choir
Nataliia: Did you enjoy working with the LiatoshynskyiCapella, or was it difficult?
Jörg: It was much easier than I had expected. I think we made a good choice in all the orchestra positions. It was fantastic that I didn’t need time spent on rehearsing with the wind section only; we were playing Classical Period music, and they had to be in tune, together, with one sound. That was very helpful that the wind section provided a sound base for the orchestra, so that the strings could also work together much more easily. If you have five different musical ideas in the wind section, strings are left without orientation; but here the winds were one sound, and it was great to have a foundation.
Oleksandr: Nataliia, tell us how you prepared the orchestra and the choir before Jörg arrived in Ukraine.
Nataliia: Kostiantyn Lenchyk prepared the choir for the Creonteproject. At the beginning of rehearsals, Kostia found many mistakes in the choir parts. We corrected them together. Kostia and I then discussed the text and how to put words under the choral parts. Also, Kostia worked on the text with Andrii Koliada.
In addition, Kostia discussed the whole story of Creonte with the choir, so that the singers would know what they were singing about in every single word. Furthermore, Kostia had just returned from his masterclasses in France, and was masterclass-inspired — when you come back from a masterclass, you always have a special mood. Kostia said that he would change everything regarding his work with the choir, and that this choir would be golden.
Per our discussion with Jörg, we also met with the orchestra. Jörg thought that we only needed one read-through rehearsal, just to look at the musical text. Jörg determined the bowings for the orchestra, and we marked them on the parts. The musicians had group rehearsals to get familiar with the bowings, and we met as the whole group afterwards. I also discussed the plot of the opera with the musicians, so that they knew what happened in every part of the opera. That preparation was very important.
Frankly, the first practice with the orchestra was terrible — nothing sounded good, and the musicians asked how to play the appoggiaturas in every single bar. I told them that Jörg would come and tell them how to play them. Playing appoggiaturas can be difficult, and the musicians were confused. The orchestra needed to know, for example, whether it was a sixteenth or an eighth note in appoggiaturas, since they were used to playing them precisely. However, sometimes the appoggiaturas aren’t played in the meter but freely.
Jörg: The singers asked the same questions, and I made a score in which I notated where the appoggiaturas were short (they were mainly short) and where they were long. I designed a colorcode, which I also sent to the orchestra, so they had at least an idea about it.
Nataliia: The musicians also wrote down the tempos that you suggested.
Jörg: Of course, tempos changed later in the rehearsals, and I would never do it this way again! I wanted to give the musicians an idea about tempos. However, I wasn’t completely prepared with the music when we started and just gave them an approximate idea about tempos. Later I came to Kyiv and the musicians told me, “No, you said tempo 110!” My reaction was, “I do not know what 110 is. It should be 112!”
Nataliia: We did warn the musicians that it was only an idea.
Jörg: Still, it’s about a way of thinking. It is important to understand that this music is much freer than we imagine. You can only start conducting when you hear what musicians deliver to you. The tempo could be different every time and depend on so many factors, for example on the preceding aria or recitative. If a singer makes a dramatic cadence at that moment, you give a different upbeat to the next aria, even if the tempo says 110. We should always have this flexibility. I asked the orchestra to remember that, which they did.
Oleksandr: While listening to Creonte, it became clear that Bortniansky loved choir and the choral parts very much. There is a lot of creativity in them. For example, you, as a conductor, made the choir in the grotto scene great, where the choir and orchestra sounded somewhat mysterious. What do you think of Bortniansky as a choir composer and the choir in this opera?
Jörg: First, there are quite a lot of choruses in Bortniansky’sCreonte, which is typical of his style. There is the first block where every second number is a chorus. So, at the beginning, the drama isn’t presented by the soloists but by the choir. There is astrong and effective battle between the two fighters, and therefore it was good to have this choir with powerful voices. Then, at the beginning of the second act, you have darkness and softness, and the choir also performed that very well.
I was happy with the choir. They were brilliantly on time. It can be that the orchestra is a little bit faster than the voices, but we never had such a synchronization problem with the LiatoshynkyiCapella. The choruses in Bortniansky’s opera are not so difficult, but, in any case, singers must sing exactly on the beat, which they did.
Working under war and stress
Nataliia: Did you get an impression that the musicians were tired or under stress? How did you deal with it if you noticed it?
Jörg: I didn’t feel it during the rehearsals, but I did when I met them outside. The first week of our rehearsals, the temperature was 38 degrees outside. I was exhausted by that, and so was everyone else. There were two or three nights with alarms, and everyone was also affected by that. However, during the rehearsals, the musicians and I were together, in music.
Nataliia: How was that possible? Was it your energy or the energy of the music that helped musicians?
Jörg: I do not know. I am the same way during work; I am one hundred per cent there, whatever happened the night before. I might fall afterwards, but during rehearsals I am focused, making the music.
Nataliia: Maybe you influenced the musicians that way?
Jörg: I was there with my presence and energy. Even if we had a hard night, we needed to work. If musicians are tired and their focus is gone, you take a break. It might be a strange comparison, but when children see a snake or a spider, how do a mother or a father react? If you calmly say, “Oh, it is a spider”, then the children say: “Okay, it is a spider”. If you panic, they also panic.
All are exhausted; nobody can imagine what is happening in Ukraine all the time. I am so grateful to have been here for so long this time — it is my ninth visit — and I know how it feels to be in Kyiv.
I try not to live as a tourist but as a Ukrainian while in Ukraine, to get a little bit of what you have to live with. I try to give you my energy during the time we are together.
Nataliia: I always have a question, whether we should discuss what happened in our lives before rehearsals or go directly into the work? Living during the war, you need to talk about what happened during the night, because people die, or their houses get destroyed, including some in our orchestra, and then go to work. Do you have to separate life and work, or not?
Jörg: It is part of the process. We cannot avoid it. We must look at it as a reality.
I remember that Anna (Anna Hadetska, Programme Director of Open Opera Ukraine. — Ed.) asked me last year, or maybe it was you, whether I could give a lecture about mental strength. I said yes at first, and then, while preparing it, I thought, “Hey, come on, who is stronger than Ukrainians?” Perhaps you remember that we learned some techniques for mental strength together. However, I mainly tried to make you aware of the strengths you already have. Not once did anyone mourn or lament the situation during any of my visits. It was always, “Well, what could we do? We must go on”. I learned so much from you. Okay, what can we do? Make music.
Nataliia: Do you think it is a specifically Ukrainian attitude, or could it be the same everywhere in these circumstances?
Jörg: No, Europe would not be so strong. We are happy that we have had seventy years of peace, but everyone has become relaxed and weak. If you have one bad night’s sleep, you are already exhausted. Also, some Europeans say they are tired of this war. That is a crazy thought for me. When I heard it, I thought, “Come on, you have no right to be tired, because I know the situation in Ukraine”.
The concert, the recording and lessons for the future
Nataliia: Did you manage to convey what you intended during the concert performance of Creonte at the National Philharmonic of Ukraine? What were your impressions?
Jörg: I thought we had a very good performance. I liked the whole atmosphere in that moment. I already shared with you that I hoped there wouldn’t be any air-raid alarms in every new aria. That hope was for the sake of the musicians and the work you had done up to the moment of the concert.
On my way to the National Philharmonic, I made a video for my family, talking about my hope for no air-ride alarms. I wasn’t just going to an average opera or concert; we did this as a whole team and were getting our result that evening. I was so happy when we finished the first act, thinking, “Okay, even if something happens now, we have done a big part of it, and the audience has heard it”.
Oleksandr: Why did you decide to give the live performance first and only then make the recording? Usually, it is the other way round.
Jörg: Based on my experience, when I have a choice, I like it this way. It was one of the first things I communicated to the team, that it would be great to have a live concert and then the recording. An even better decision would be to record the concert and, later, make another recording of the music in the same hall. You have an atmosphere during the concert that you might never get when you are making cuts here and there in the recording. I’ve changed from studio productions to making live CDs with my own orchestra, where you have a dress rehearsal, a concert, and then an additional correction session. I thought it helped the recording of Creonte that everyone knew how it went during the concert.
Oleksandr: What changes did you make after the live performance of Bortniansky’s opera?
Jörg: The recitatives. When the soloists sang the recitatives during the live performance, I was not conducting them, because I hate it when a conductor makes a mix-up there. I listened and read, and thought that it sounded very interesting. I made a mental note to look at the recitatives again before the recording. At the same time, the recitatives were in harmony. It was a very creative interpretation during the live concert.
Afterwards, I asked the musicians to read the recitatives again so that they would be sung for the recording as they were written. I always choose the musical way when I have a choice between musical freedom, tension, and an interesting idea on one hand and the correct version on the other, but maybe sometimes you can have both. Denys Sahivor (Creonte) asked me during the first recitative recording, “Should I sing it like this?” My reply was, “No, I just ask you to read it once again, and then we will do it. I trust that you will do it perfectly”. Music interpretation is a lot about trust and making music is trusting your musicians.
Nataliia: This was the first time that Open Opera has recorded an entire opera with you and the entire team. It is a difficult and complex process, as you mentioned earlier in our conversation. Can you give the team some general advice on what we can improve or change for future projects?
Jörg: Take more time for preparation. Normally, you cannot do it in half a year, as we did it this time.
Nataliia: What is the normal time for such work?
Jörg: It depends on whether you have the parts and the score ready, and on whether there is an edition ready to use. We were searching for mistakes in Creonte until yesterday. It would have saved a lot of energy if it had been done before the project started, if you had, let’s say, one year of preparation to make all the corrections beforehand. Also, I was busy at the university, preparing other concerts, and waiting for the edited version of the score from you. That was a little bit stressful.
We all did our best, but if we could change something for the future, it would be to have a longer preparation phase for the project.
Nataliia: Finally, do you think anyone abroad would be interested in listening to a Bortniansky opera performed by Ukrainian musicians?
Jörg: Sure, I think so. I was surprised that when I told some people in Austria that I was going to do an opera by a Ukrainian composer. They asked : “Who?” “Bortniansky”. “Oh, Bortniansky!” The name is already known there. To be honest, I was astonished because I had heard the name only once before, but I was not really aware of what music was waiting for me.
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