Orango (Shostakovich)

Unfinished opera by Dmitri Shostakovich

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages)

This article may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Please help by editing the article to make improvements to the overall structure. (December 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

|

This article's lead section may be too long. Please read the length guidelines and help move details into the article's body. (December 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

|

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Orango" Shostakovich – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

|

(Learn how and when to remove this message)

Orango is an unfinished satirical opera sketched in 1932 by Dmitri Shostakovich. The manuscript was found by Olga Digonskaya, a Russian musicologist, in the Glinka Museum, Moscow in 2004. The plan was for a prologue and three acts but only about a quarter of the Prologue was sketched.

The libretto was written by Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Alexander Osipovich Starchakov.[1] Since Orango is the protagonist of the opera, half-ape and half-man, one of the sources of inspiration for the libretto was the work of Russian biologist, Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov who attempted hybridization of humans and other primates. According to Gerard McBurney, the word suggests orangutan.[1]: 38 Shostakovich had visited Ivanov's primate research station in Sukhumi and "recommended it as a sight worth seeing."[2]

The Prologue was first performed in an orchestration by Gerard McBurney on 2 December 2011 in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen and staged by Peter Sellars.[3]

The piece was also performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra on 24 August 2015 at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the 2015 BBC Proms, again conducted by Salonen.[4] Irina Brown was stage director.

## 1932 commission

[edit]

The Bolshoi Theatre commissioned the opera in 1932 intending it as a celebration of the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution. Alexei Tolstoy and Alexander Starchakov were engaged as librettists to work with Shostakovich and given the broad theme "'human growth during revolution and socialist construction.' Ultimately, the collaborators conceived their opera as 'a political lampoon against the bourgeois press,' adapting the plot from one of Starchakov's stories concerning a human-ape hybrid conceived in a medical experiment."[2]

When the librettists failed to deliver on schedule, Shostakovich, who was busy in the midst of composing Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, deferred and then abandoned the project, discarding his draft.[2][3] Starchakov was arrested in 1936 and shot in 1937 during the Great Purge.[2]

## 2004 discovery

[edit]

Russian musicologist Olga Digonskaya was working with Irina Shostakovich, the composer's third wife and widow, on Shostakovich's catalogue. In December 2004, at the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture, Moscow, Digonskaya discovered a cardboard file containing some "300 pages of musical sketches, pieces and scores" by the hand of Shostakovich. "A composer friend bribed Shostakovich's housemaid to regularly deliver the contents of Shostakovich's office waste bin to him, instead of taking it to the garbage. Some of those cast-offs eventually found their way into the Glinka. ... The Glinka archive 'contained a huge number of pieces and compositions which were completely unknown or could be traced quite indirectly,' Digonskaya said."[3]

Among the discoveries were seven sheets, six written on both sides, which comprise the thirteen pages of Orango to survive: the Prologue, amounting to about forty minutes of music scored for piano with the vocal parts written above.[1][3][5] The piano score was published in Moscow in 2010 with a scholarly introduction by Digonskaya.[1]

## McBurney orchestration

[edit]

Irina Shostakovich asked British composer Gerard McBurney to orchestrate a score from the piano sketches.[1][3] This work was premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic on 2 December 2011.[3][6][7]

Artist | Role |

|
|

Los Angeles Philharmonic |  |
Esa-Pekka Salonen |  | conductor
Peter Sellars |  | director
Ben Zamora |  | lighting designer
Eugene Brancoveanu | Orango | baritone
Ryan McKinny | Veselchak | bass-baritone
Jordan Bisch | Voice from the Crowd/Bass | bass
Michael Fabiano | Zoologist | tenor
Yulia Van Doren | Susanna | soprano
Timur Bekbosunov | Paul Mash | tenor
Los Angeles Master Chorale
Grant Gershon |  |
music director

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c d e McBurney, Gerard (13 October 2010). "Some frequently-asked questions about Shostakovich's Orango". Tempo. 64 (254): 38–40\. doi:10.1017/S0040298210000409. S2CID 145721684.
2. ^ a b c d "Shostakovich's "Orango"". G. Schirmer, Inc. and Associated Music Publishers, Inc. 2010. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
3. ^ a b c d e f Sergei L. Loiko; Reed Johnson (27 November 2011). "Shostakovich's Orango found, finished, set for Disney Hall". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
4. ^ "2015".
5. ^ "Shostakovich Didn't Want It, But Opera Debuts Anyway" (transcript). NPR: Weekend Edition – Saturday. National Public Radio. 3 December 2011. Retrieved 20 February 2012. "Gerard McBurney: It's 13 sides of manuscript paper with this 40 minutes' worth of music. It looks like piano music and the voices are written above it, rather like in a song."
6. ^ "Salonen conducts Shostakovich's Orango". LA Phil. Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
7. ^ Todd McCarthy (8 December 2011). "Orango: Concert Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 17 February 2012.

## Further reading

[edit]

* Digonskaya, Olga, "Interrupted Masterpiece: Shostakovich's Unfinished Opera Orango. History and Interpretation," Shostakovich Studies 2, Pauline Fairclough (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 7–33.
* Digonskaya, Olga, "D.D. Shostakovich's Unfinished Opera Orango", (introductory essay in piano score) (Moscow: DSCH Publishers, 2010), pp. 31–58 (ISMN 979-0-706364-17-9).

* v
* t
* e

Dmitri Shostakovich

List of compositions

Operas and operettas|

* The Nose
* Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District/Katerina Izmailova
* The Big Lightning (unfinished)
* Orango (unfinished)
* The Twelve Chairs (unfinished)
* Katyusha Maslova (unfinished)
* The Gamblers (unfinished)
* Moscow, Cheryomushki

Ballets|

* The Golden Age
* The Bolt
* The Limpid Stream

Symphonies|

* No. 1 in F minor
* No. 2 in B major (To October)
* No. 3 in E♭ major (The First of May)
* No. 4 in C minor
* No. 5 in D minor
* No. 6 in B minor
* No. 7 in C major (Leningrad)
* Leningrad première
* American premieres
* No. 8 in C minor
* No. 9 in E♭ major
* No. 10 in E minor
* No. 11 in G minor (The Year 1905)
* No. 12 in D minor (The Year 1917)
* No. 13 in B♭ minor (Babi Yar)
* No. 14 in G minor
* No. 15 in A major

Concertos|

| Piano|

* No. 1 in C minor
* No. 2 in F major

|

Violin|

* No. 1 in A minor
* No. 2 in C♯ minor

Cello|

* No. 1 in E♭ major
* No. 2 in G major

Orchestral works|

* Tahiti Trot
* Suite from The Golden Age
* Suite from The Bolt
* Suite from The Limpid Stream
* Five Fragments
* Scherzo (1922)
* Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 1
* Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2 (orch. McBurney)
* Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1 (arr. Atovmyan)
* Festive Overture
* Suite from Encounter at the Elbe
* Suite from The Gadfly (arr. Atovmyan)
* Novorossiisk Chimes, the Flame of Eternal Glory
* October
* "Intervision"

Concert/brass band|

* "March of the Soviet Militia"

Film music|

* The New Babylon
* Alone
* Golden Mountains
* Counterplan
* The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda
* The Youth of Maxim
* Girl Friends
* The Return of Maxim
* The Vyborg Side
* Friends
* The Great Citizen
* Zoya
* Simple People
* The Young Guard
* Pirogov
* Michurin
* Meeting on the Elbe
* The Fall of Berlin
* Belinsky
* The Unforgettable Year 1919
* The Gadfly
* Five Days, Five Nights
* Sofiya Perovskaya
* Hamlet
* King Lear
* Gogoliad (unfinished)

Vocal music|

* Suite on Finnish Themes
* "United Nations on the March"
* Song of the Forests
* The Sun Shines Over Our Motherland
* Antiformalist Rayok
* From Jewish Folk Poetry
* The Execution of Stepan Razin
* Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok
* Loyalty
* Six Poems by Marina Tsvetayeva
* Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti
* Four Verses of Captain Lebyadkin

Chamber music|

| String
quartets|

* No. 1 in C major
* No. 2 in A major
* No. 3 in F major
* No. 4 in D major
* No. 5 in B♭ major
* No. 6 in G major
* No. 7 in F♯ minor
* No. 8 in C minor
* No. 9 in E♭ major
* No. 10 in A♭ major
* No. 11 in F minor
* No. 12 in D♭ major
* No. 13 in B♭ minor
* No. 14 in F♯ major
* No. 15 in E♭ minor
* No. 16 in B major (unrealized)

|

Other|

* Cello Sonata in D minor
* Piano Quintet in G minor
* Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor
* Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor
* Quartet Movement in E♭ major (c. 1960s)
* Violin Sonata
* Viola Sonata

Piano music|

* Three Fantastic Dances
* 24 Preludes
* Piano Sonata No. 2 in B minor
* Children's Notebook
* 24 Preludes and Fugues

Family|

* Galina Shostakovich (daughter)
* Maxim Shostakovich (son)

Named for Shostakovich|

* Dmitri Shostakovich-class ferry
* Saint Petersburg Academic Philharmonia Named After D. D. Shostakovich
* 2669 Shostakovich
* International Shostakovich Chamber Music Competition
* London Shostakovich Orchestra
* Shostakovich (1969–1981)
* Shostakovich Peninsula
* Shostakovich Quartet

Related articles|

* Concerto
* Concerto DSCH
* DSCH motif
* Europe Central
* Ian MacDonald
* Muddle Instead of Music
* The Noise of Time
* Shostakovich v. Twentieth Century-Fox
* Solomon Volkov
* Testimony: book
* film
* The War Symphonies: Shostakovich Against Stalin
* Wihuri Sibelius Prize

Category

Authority control databases |

* MusicBrainz work
* BRAHMS

|

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template