FULL THE NOSE Brussels 2023 Scott Hendricks, Anton Rositskiy, Nicky Spence, Alexander Roslavets

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: The Nose aka Nos   
• Composer: Shostokovich Dmitri  
• Libretto: Dmitri Shostakovich, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Alexander Preys    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, Bruxelles, Belgium  
• Recorded: June 29, 2023
• Type: Staged Opera Live
• Singers: Scott Hendricks, Anton Rositskiy, Nicky Spence, Alexander Roslavets, Kris Belligh, Natascha Petrinsky , Eir Inderhaug, Yves Saelens, Nikita Ivasechko, Alexander Kravets, Giselle Allen
• Conductor: Gergely Madaras  
• Orchestra: Orchestre symphonique de la Monnaie  
• Chorus: Chœurs de la Monnaie, Académie des chœurs de la Monnaie  
• Chorus Master: JORI KLOMP  
• Stage Director: Alex Ollé (La Fura dels Baus)  
• Stage Designer: ALFONS FLORES  
• Costume Designer: LLUC CASTELLS  
• Lighting Designer: URS SCHÖNEBAUM  

Information about the Recording

• Published by: mezzo  
• Date Published: 2023  
• Format: Broadcast
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: yessubs, frsubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  The Nose, Op. 15, (Russian: Нос, romanized: Nos), 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.

  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!

  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.”
  Quoted from Wikipedia

   

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