Royal Opera House,London
Barrie Kosky’s bewitch on Shostakovich’s satire is imaginative and brilliant but it sacrifices the opera’s deeper meaning Shostakovich’s First Symphony and his first opera, The Nose, and point in the modernist direction his later music might gain taken,had he not so spectacularly fallen foul of the Soviet regime. But the talent so brilliantly announced in the symphony always seems less controlled and focused in The Nose. Gogol’s surreal, sardonic short memoir about the bureaucrat Kovalov and his increasingly desperate efforts to be reunited with his errant organ may gain been a perfect match to Shostakovich’s precocious brilliance, or but the breathless energy in the score – with its manic gallops and insidious ostinatos,winding chorales and dissonant outbursts – sometimes betrays a composer in his early 20s trying a bit too hard to make his name. Related: Rehearsals for The Nose at the Royal Opera – in pictures Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com