Opera Dmitry Shostakovich "GAMBLERS 1942", THE ANTIFORMALIST RAYOK" St. Petersburg Chamber Opera
Schedule for Dmitry Shostakovich "GAMBLERS 1942", THE ANTIFORMALIST RAYOK" 2022
Composer: Dmitry Shostakovich Stage Director: Yuri Alexandrov Orchestra: Symphony Orchestra of the 'St. Petersburg Opera' theatre
Dmitry Shostakovich "GAMBLERS 1942"
Documentary opera in one act about Dmitry Shostakovich
after his opera The Gamblers, various letters
and other documents from his life and work
Scenario by Yuri Dimitrin
(8 characters & 38 musicians)
Stage version & production by Yuri Alexandrov
Premiere: 10 October 1996
The production is based on an unfinished opera (based on the play of the same name by Nikolai Gogol) that the composer was working on in 1942 after his evacuation. Gogol’s characters are redefined by the director. In this production they exist both as fruits of the composer’s imagination and as characters from political life of the 1930s who figured prominently in the life and work of the composer. Gamblers 1942 is our view of Shostakovich’s music, and a review of the thoughts and feelings of the composer while he was writing the opera. This is a work about Shostakovich himself, where as the action unfolds we hear the voice of the composer, his music and letters to loved ones from the besieged city. The two dramatic lines of the work, naturally interwoven, amaze by the way the boundary between the tragic and the comic is blurred and indistinct.
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Dmitry Shostakovich "THE ANTIFORMALIST RAYOK"
Anti-musical caricature in one act
Libretto by Dmitry Shostakovich
(4 characters, 33 musicians & 6 chorus singers)
Stage version & staging by Yuri Alexandrov
Premiere: 8 December 2000
This work for four bass singers and chorus, written between 1948 and 1960, is a ferocious parody on the countless pogrom meetings that exposed and passed judgement on cultural and scientific geniuses of the Soviet Union. The characters in the work, an anti-musical caricature, are "figures from the world of music" - people who took part in the meeting to discuss "the battle of realism against formalism in music".
Schedule for Dmitry Shostakovich "GAMBLERS 1942", THE ANTIFORMALIST RAYOK" 2022
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