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        • Dmitri Shostakovich

        • Moscow, Cheryomushki (Chamber Orchestra version) (1959)

        • G Schirmer Inc (USA, Canada and Mexico only)
          Le Chant Du Monde (France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Andorra, French speaking African countries)

        G Schirmer is the publisher of the work in the USA, Canada and Mexico only. Le Chant du Monde is the publisher of the work in France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Andorra, French speaking African countries.
        Gerard McBurney

        • 1(pic).0.1(Ebcl).asx(ssx)+tsx(barsx)/0.2.1.0/perc/gtr(uke,bjo).pf/str(1.1.0.1.1)
        • chorus
        • 2 Sopranos, Mezzo Soprano, Tenor, 3 Baritones, Bass, singing actress, singing actor, 4 Sopranos, 3 Mezzo Sopranos, 2 Tenors, 2 Basses
        • 2 hr 40 min
        • Libretto by V. Massa and M. Chervinsky, English version by David Pountney
        • English

        Programme Note

        All his life Shostakovich had a fondness for light-music, operetta and musicals. In the late 1950s a friend became conductor at the Moscow Operetta Theatre and this gave the composer a chance to try out the genre for himself, working with two leading popular writers of the day.

        The result was a highly entertaining satirical romp, mocking the corruption and idealism of the USSR in the post-Stalin era and poking particular fun at Khrushchev’s notoriously overambitious plan to rehouse almost the entire population in hastily built and splendidly up-to-date apartment blocks, complete with fridges, lifts and all mod cons. The plot concerns a group of happy and enthusiastic young Muscovites who look forward to being rehoused in the smart new high-rise estate of Cheryomushki but find that practicalities are a more complicated than they first imagined. Local officials have their own dastardly plans for what they want to do with these new flats and are greedily trying to take bribes or keep the apartments for themselves. Naturally, after some ups and downs, good wins out.

        The score bursts with energy and catchy tunes, not to mention some wonderful parodies of perennial favourites like Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ and Lehar’s ‘The Merry Widow’. In its original it is scored for a large orchestra, handled with tremendous verve and colour. More recently, in modern cut-down versions for chamber ensembles, it has found a new life as a delightful addition to the repertoire for smaller-scale opera companies. In 1962, with some changes to the music and a simplified title, ‘Cheryomushki’, this operetta was turned into an ebulliantly vulgar film, which will appeal to anyone with a taste for mid-20th-century kitsch.

        Note by Gerard McBurney

        Synopsis:

        In late 1950s Moscow, a smart new block of apartments has been built and everyone is desperate to live there. Newly-weds Sasha and Masha, Lidochka Baburov with her friend Boris, an explosives expert and chauffeur Sergei and his crane-driving girlfriend Lyusya all dream of having a place of their own. While keys are withheld from their rightful owners, Lyusya lifts Boris and Lidochka up to their new home in her crane. And as Sasha and Masha host a house-warming party, government official Drebednyov, who illegally plans to knock two apartments into one for his ambitious new wife, comes bursting through the neighbouring wall. But the residents find away of exposing all the corruption and the wrong-doers are defeated, leaving everyone else to live happily ever after.