Gamblers 1942

Documentary opera in one act
Music : Dmitry Shostakovich

Documentary opera in one act about Dmitry Shostakovich
after his opera The Gamblers, various letters
and other documents from his life and work
Scenario by Yuri Dimitrin
(8 characters & 38 musicians)
Stage version & production by Yuri Alexandrov
Premiere: 10 October 1996

The production is based on an unfinished opera (based on the play of the same name by Nikolai Gogol) that the composer was working on in 1942 after his evacuation. Gogol's characters are redefined by the director. In this production they exist both as fruits of the composer's imagination and as characters from political life of the 1930s who figured prominently in the life and work of the composer. Gamblers 1942 is our view of Shostakovich's music, and a review of the thoughts and feelings of the composer while he was writing the opera. This is a work about Shostakovich himself, where as the action unfolds we hear the voice of the composer, his music and letters to loved ones from the besieged city. The two dramatic lines of the work, naturally interwoven, amaze by the way the boundary between the tragic and the comic is blurred and indistinct.