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Party animals

Source: guardian.co.uk: The Guardian newspaper: Comment & debate

Mar 29, 2009

Summary

In 1819 an orang-utan would have had no problem becoming an MP. How would it fare today?

A previously unknown opera by Shostakovich has been discovered in archives in Moscow, according to a BBC news report at the weekend. The plot concerns a creature, half-man and half-monkey, which rises to be secretary general of the Communist party, despite its habit of interrupting its speeches to utter primal screams. The libretto was devised by two Russian journalists, one of whom, Alexei Tolstoy, became an enthusiastic Stalinist, while the other, Alexander Starchakov, was executed in 1938. Their aim seems to have been to mock a prominent genetic biologist who had foreseen the appearance of such a biomorph; but the political dangers in the enterprise were potent enough to dissuade Shostakovich from mentioning the failed project thereafter.

I do hope this story is true, because the more Shostakovich we have, the better, but also because operas featuring this kind of creature are at present thin on the ground. The notion, however, is not quite as original as some might supp

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