Shostakovich — The Nose & The Gamblers (Rozhdestvensky), Melodiya (2 CD)

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Product Details:

• Product Type: Audio CD (2-disc set)
• Brand / Label: Melodiya
• Composer: Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975)
• Works: The Nose, Op. 15; The Gamblers, Op. 63
• Conductor / Editor: Gennady Rozhdestvensky
• Catalogue No.: MEL CD 10 01192
• Release Year: 2011
• UPC: 4600317111923
• Genre: Classical / Opera (20th century)

Product Features

• Format: 2 × CD (ADD)
• Total time: CD1 72:59 / CD2 76:56
• Made in Russia
• Condition: Brand new, factory sealed

Overview

This Melodiya set pairs two of Shostakovich's Gogol operas under Gennady Rozhdestvensky, the conductor most associated with championing the composer's stage works. The Nose, Op. 15, is the wild, satirical early masterpiece — a civil servant's nose detaches and takes on a life of its own — written when Shostakovich was barely into his twenties and bursting with modernist invention.

Alongside it comes The Gamblers, Op. 63, the unfinished opera Shostakovich set word-for-word from Gogol's play before abandoning it, here in Rozhdestvensky's edition. Both are sharp, theatrical, and unmistakably Russian, performed by Soviet-era forces who knew this idiom from the inside.

For lovers of 20th-century opera and Shostakovich's lesser-heard stage music, it's an authoritative and historically important pairing.

Interesting Facts

• The Nose (Op. 15), based on Gogol's absurdist story, was composed when Shostakovich was around 22.
• The Gamblers (Op. 63) was left unfinished; Shostakovich set Gogol's play directly as a libretto before stopping.
• Both works are presented in editions/performances associated with conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky.
• Melodiya is the historic Russian/Soviet state label, the original source for many landmark Shostakovich recordings.
• The two operas together total around two and a half hours across two discs.

Track Listing

CD 1: The Gamblers, Op. 63 (opera after Gogol, edited by G. Rozhdestvensky); The Nose, Op. 15 — Act 1.

CD 2: The Nose (continued) — Act 2, Act 3, Epilogue.

(Libretto of The Nose by Ye. Zamyatin, G. Ionin, A. Preiss and D. Shostakovich, after Gogol.)

Publishers

Released by Melodiya in 2011 (catalogue MEL CD 10 01192). Made in Russia.

Into Gogol set to music? A note helps other opera lovers.