Oh To Believe in Another World

In Oh To Believe in Another World, Dmitri Shostakovich's 10th Symphony is performed alongside a stop-motion film by the 2025 Festival’s artist-in-residence, William Kentridge.

The film serves as a visual counterpoint to the monumental symphony and sheds light on the composer’s complex relationship with the Soviet regime. Inside a seemingly abandoned Soviet museum, crafted from cardboard in Kentridge's studio, we encounter Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin; Shostakovich and his student Elmira Nazirova; and Mayakovsky and his lover Lilya Brik. The characters in the film are puppets, all within Kentridge's unmistakable visual style.

Written the summer following Stalin's death, the symphony has been described as an optimistic tragedy, and is performed by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Christian Blex.

‘The task of the project is to try to show within the visual film some of the ambiguities Shostakovich had to navigate, not just in this symphony but in all the work that he made,’ writes William Kentridge in his introduction to the work.

The South African artist has been internationally recognized for his drawings, films, installations, and theatre and opera productions for several decades. At the 2025 Bergen International Festival, he is also presenting the opening performance The Great Yes, the Great No.

Produced by
Numa Bischof Ullmann project initiator
THE OFFICE performing arts + film executive producer
Toured in partnership with international theatrical representative QUATERNAIRE

Oh To Believe in Another World has been commissioned by the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester.