Friday, May 15, 2020

Tap Dancing Noses



Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his first opera in 1927-28. It was called The Nose, based on an 1836 story by Nikolai Gogol. 
Shostakovich was only 20 when he began writing The Nose, his operatic debut. He turned to a tiny short story by Gogol: an absurdist satire, where a civil servant’s errant nose launches its owner on a ludicrous battle against both nose and the authorities, as bureaucratic processes break down in the face of so unusual a problem. Gogol’s surrealist fable fired Shostakovich’s imagination, and he responded with a work of exuberant energy, full of musical jokes and grotesque parody…
You can read the story at Wikipedia. This performance is from the  Royal Opera House's 2016 performance of The Nose. (via The Kid Should See This)

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