''Orango'' is an unfinished satirical

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...

sketched in 1932 by

Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throug ...

. 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 A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ...

was written by

Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (russian: link= no, Алексей Николаевич Толстой; – 23 February 1945) was a Russian writer who wrote in many genres but specialized in science fiction and historical novels. Despite having ...

and Alexander Osipovich Starchakov. 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 Gerard McBurney (born 20 June 1954) is a British composer, arranger, broadcaster, teacher and writer. Life Born in Cambridge, England, he is the son of Charles McBurney, an American archaeologist, and Anne Francis Edmondstone (née Charles), ...

, the word suggests ''

orangutan Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genus ...

''. Shostakovich had visited Ivanov's primate research station in

Sukhumi Sukhumi (russian: Суху́м(и), ) or Sokhumi ( ka, სოხუმი, ), also known by its Abkhaz name Aqwa ( ab, Аҟәа, ''Aqwa''), is a city in a wide bay on the Black Sea's eastern coast. It is both the capital and largest city of ...

and "recommended it as a sight worth seeing." The Prologue was first performed in an orchestration by

on 2 December 2011 in Los Angeles by the

Los Angeles Philharmonic The Los Angeles Philharmonic, commonly referred to as the LA Phil, is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at th ...

conducted by

Esa-Pekka Salonen Esa-Pekka Salonen (; born 30 June 1958) is a Finnish orchestral conductor and composer. He is principal conductor and artistic advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and music di ...

and staged by

Peter Sellars Peter Sellars (born September 27, 1957) is an American theatre director, noted for his unique contemporary stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays. Sellars is professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where ...

. The piece was also performed by the

Philharmonia Orchestra The Philharmonia Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It was founded in 1945 by Walter Legge, a classical music record producer for EMI. Among the conductors who worked with the orchestra in its early years were Richard Strauss, W ...

on 24 August 2015 at the

Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no govern ...

as part of the 2015

BBC Proms The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...

, again conducted by Salonen. Irina Brown was stage director.

1932 commission

The

Bolshoi Theatre The Bolshoi Theatre ( rus, Большо́й теа́тр, r=Bol'shoy teatr, literally "Big Theater", p=bɐlʲˈʂoj tʲɪˈatər) is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, originally designed by architect Joseph Bové, which holds ballet and ope ...

commissioned the opera in 1932 intending it as a celebration of the 15th anniversary of the

October Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...

. 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." 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. Starchakov was arrested in 1936 and shot in 1937.

2004 discovery

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." 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. The piano score was published in Moscow in 2010 with a scholarly introduction by Digonskaya.

McBurney orchestration

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

1932 commission

2004 discovery

McBurney orchestration

References

Further reading