The Nose, Op. 15, () is Dmitri Shostakovich's first opera, a satirical work completed in 1928 based on Nikolai Gogol's 1836 story of the same name.

Style and structure

The opera was written between 1927 and 1928. The libretto is by Shostakovich, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Georgy Ionin, and Alexander Preis. Shostakovich stated it was a satire on the times of Alexander I. The plot concerns a Saint Petersburg official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own.

Gogol's original work was expanded by borrowing from some of his other works, including "The Overcoat", Marriage, "Diary of a Madman", and Dead Souls as well as The Brothers Karamazov (1881) by Dostoyevsky. The latter occurs in act 2, scene 6, where Kovalyov returns home to find Ivan singing. The song is Shostakovich's setting of the words of part 2, book 5, chapter 2 of Karamazov, where the lackey, Smerdiakov, sings to his neighbour Mariia Kondratevna.

<blockquote>An invisible force ties to my beloved. Bless us, O Lord, her and me! Her and me! I'll give up a king's crown, if my beloved is happy. Bless us, O Lord, her and me! Her and me!</blockquote>

Shostakovich uses a montage of different styles, including folk music, popular song, and atonality. The apparent chaos is given structure by formal musical devices such as canons and quartets, a device taken from Alban Berg's Wozzeck.

According to the British composer Gerard McBurney writing for Boosey & Hawkes, "The Nose is one of the young Shostakovich’s greatest masterpieces, an electrifying tour de force of vocal acrobatics, wild instrumental colours and theatrical absurdity, all shot through with a blistering mixture of laughter and rage... The result, in Shostakovich's ruthlessly irreverent hands, is like an operatic version of Charlie Chaplin or Monty Python... despite its magnificently absurd subject and virtuosic music, The Nose is a perfectly practical work and provides a hugely entertaining evening in the theatre."

Performance history

In June 1929, The Nose was given a concert performance, against Shostakovich's own wishes: "The Nose loses all meaning if it is seen just as a musical composition. For the music springs only from the action...It is clear to me that a concert performance of The Nose will destroy it." The concert performance caused bewilderment and was attacked by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM). It opened to generally poor reviews and widespread incomprehension among musicians. Even so, the conductor Nikolai Malko, who had taught Shostakovich at the Leningrad Conservatory and conducted the premiere of his pupil's First Symphony, regarded the opera as a "tremendous success"; it was given sixteen performances with two alternating casts over six months.

The Nose was given its Italian premiere on 23 May 1964 by the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence. The cast included Renato Capecchi as Platon Kuzmich Kovalyov, Italo Tajo as Ivan Yakovlevich, Antonio Pirino as the Nose, Cesy Broggini as Pelageya Grigoryevna Podtochina and Jolanda Meneguzzer as Podtochina's daughter. It was conducted by Bruno Bartoletti and directed by Eduardo De Filippo, with set designs by Mino Maccari. It was the first performance in Europe since the 1930 stage premiere in Leningrad.

The opera received its United States professional premiere at the Santa Fe Opera in 1965, conducted by Erich Kunzel, and was performed again by the Santa Fe company in 1987, conducted by Edo de Waart. It was performed in July 2004 at Bard College's SummerScape in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, directed by Francesca Zambello and performed by the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein.

A new Russian production was mounted at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg in 2004, with Valery Gergiev as musical director and Yuri Alexandrov as stage director; the Mariinsky described it as the theatre's premiere of the work and the premiere of that production. The Mariinsky also notes that, before Alexandrov's production, the opera had been staged in Russia only at the Leningrad Maly Operny Theatre in 1930 and at Pokrovsky's Moscow Chamber Musical Theatre in 1974. The same Mariinsky production was later presented at the Opéra Bastille in Paris in 2005.

The opera was staged at Opera Boston in early 2009, and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in March 2010 in a production by the South African artist and director William Kentridge, conducted by Valery Gergiev and Pavel Smelkov. This production was revived in 2013 and was beamed to cinemas around the world as part of the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD programme on 26 October.

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Kentridge's staging was also given in France: it appeared at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in July 2011, conducted by Kazushi Ono, and later that year at the Opéra de Lyon. In Bulgaria, the work was presented for the first time in March 2012 by the Ruse State Opera at the March Music Days festival. The production was staged by Adelaide Yakimova-Furnadzhieva and conducted by Nayden Todorov.

Barrie Kosky's production of a new English-language version by David Pountney for The Royal Opera, Opera Australia and the Komische Oper Berlin premiered in 2016 at the Royal Opera House in London, with Ingo Metzmacher conducting; it was Kosky's debut at that house. The same production was presented by Opera Australia at the Sydney Opera House in 2018, and entered the repertory of the Komische Oper Berlin. Other 21st-century productions have included a 2021 staging at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, directed by Kirill Serebrennikov and conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, and a 2023 production at the Teatro Real in Madrid, directed by Kosky and conducted by Mark Wigglesworth.

Instrumentation

Shostakovich's score is written for the following:

:Woodwinds: flute (doubling piccolo, alto flute), oboe (doubling cor anglais), B-flat clarinet (doubling piccolo clarinet, A clarinet, bass clarinet), bassoon (doubling contrabassoon)

:Brass: horn, trumpet (doubling cornet), trombone

:Percussion: triangle, tambourine, castanets, tom-tom, ratchet, suspended cymbal, clash cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, tam-tam, glockenspiel, tubular bells, xylophone, flexatone (musical saw)

:Sound Effects: police whistle, gunshot, whacks (удары)

:Keyboards: piano

:Strings: violins I and II, violas, cellos, double basses, two harps, small domras, alto domras, two balalaikas

Roles

The cast requires 82 singing/speaking parts, usually sung by about 14 performers.

  • 2016, video-stream of Royal Opera House production by Barrie Kosky; Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, tenor (Ivan, Kovalyov's servant); (baritone, Kovalyov), John Tomlinson (bass, Yakovlevich); supporting roles: Rosie Aldridge (Praskovya), Alexander Kravets (Policeman), Alexander Lewis (Angry Man in the Cathedral); Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Ingo Metzmacher conducting

Notes and references

Notes

References

Sources

  • Hulme, Derek C., Dimitri Shostakovich, Scarecrow Press 2002
  • Wilson, Elizabeth, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. London: Faber, 2006

Further reading

  • Fay, Laurel E. (ed.),Shostakovich and His World (Bard Music Festival series) Princeton University Press, 2004.
  • Бретаницкая, Алла Леонидовна: «Нос» Д. Д. Шостаковича. Путеводитель. (The "Nose" by D. D. Shostakovich. A guidebook.) Москва, 1983. «Музыка»
  • Noted from Mariinsky, including bilingual synopsis and libretto
  • English libretto
  • Metropolitan Opera performance review by Elizabeth Barnette, 28 September 2013, classicalsource.com
  • Metropolitan Opera 2013: The Nose