The Nose (opera)

The Nose (opera)

The Nose (Russian: Нос, 'Nos') is a satirical opera composed by Dmitri Shostakovich. The libretto by Shostakovich, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Georgy Ionin, and Alexander Preis is based on the story The Nose by Nikolai Gogol. The plot concerns a St. Petersburg official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own.

The opera, written between 1927 and 1928, 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."