The Nose, op. 15 by Shostakovich, Alates (2022/2022), Juhatatud Alex Ollé, Dirigent Hossein Pishkar, Operaen (Copenhagen Opera House), Copenhagen, Denmark

Dmitry Shostakovich's opera The Nose is from 1928, and the landmark musical drama can now be experienced in a visually spectacular staging by an artistic team affiliated with the Spanish theater group La Fura del Baus. The only 22-year-old composer himself wrote the libretto based on Nikolaj Gogol's short story of the same title. The nose is insane and full of crazy whims. The owner of the nose discovers in disbelief that his nose is gone as he wants to check for a pimple he found on the night before. He is entangled in a fight against the nose and a government bureaucracy that collapses in the face of the grotesque issue. Shostakovich rejects all common rules in his work, in which he breaks all hitherto known, classical frameworks for the opera genre. Even when the composer uses well-known musical forms, he completely turns them upside down: For the Nose , for example, he writes a canon for eight double basses and an interlude for 10 untuned percussion instruments. The opera was composed in the heyday of silent film in the spirit of Charlie Chaplin by a young man who was to develop into one of the greatest symphonists of our time with his 15 symphonies - but who was also to prove to be a great film music composer.