In one of the most important works of world arts, Mozart’s opera Le nozze di Figaro, there is a shot of healthy pacifism characteristic for each common man. This work becomes full of irony in relation to militaristic oriented pathos of Figaro’s aria dedicated to Cherubino leaving for his military service.

Alla gloria militar! – the aria acclaiming for reaching a military fame is brilliantly culminating with this phrase and at the same time the phrase opens a project presenting works of art being more or less connected to war. 

Alla gloria militar! This phrase heroic both in its form and content – is contextually ironic. And corresponds with the character of the War having two faces itself.  It is historically inevitable that there are two counterparts – an aggressor and the other one defending himself, the winner and the loser, the innocent and the guilty. At the same time the duality of a human nature is revealed – the highest verve of the spirit leading the person even to a self-sacrifice and on the other hand the lowest and the most obscure in a human being. Each statement on any military conflict, either bloodshed from the past or from nowadays, becomes an anti-military meaning from the point of view of this message.

 

Kolesnikov / Denisov