About the work
Dmitri Shostakovich's first opera, „The Nose", was composed in 1927-28 after Nikolai Gogol's grotesque short story of the same name (1836). The 1930 Leningrad premiere caused a scandal as protest against its avant-garde idiom; the 22-year-old prodigy combined atonality, Dada and musical slapstick into one of the most radical operas of the early Soviet period.
Plot
The Petersburg collegiate assessor Kovalyov wakes one morning to find — in his mirror — that his nose is gone. It has earlier been served to the barber Ivan Yakovlevich inside a bread roll, who in panic dumps it into the Neva. The nose now leads its own life, walks around Petersburg disguised as a state councillor, and prays in the Kazan Cathedral. Kovalyov tries to place a missing notice in the newspaper but the editor refuses. Police catch the nose, an officer returns it in a wrapper, but it will not stick to his face. After many vain attempts Kovalyov finally wakes one morning to find the nose back in place — and struts smugly out into the city.
Cultural significance
The Nose is one of the most avant-garde operas ever written and Shostakovich's most explicit tribute to the Russian grotesque tradition from Gogol to Kharms. The percussion-only interlude and the surreal police-chase scene are famous. William Kentridge's 2010 Metropolitan Opera production brought the work back to international attention. It stands as a key work between revolutionary avant-garde and Shostakovich's later persecution under Stalin.