The Big Lightning (also sometimes The Great Lightning, Russian: Большая молния, Bolshaya molniya) is an unfinished opera sketched in 1932 by Dmitri Shostakovich. The manuscript was found by Olga Digonskaya. [1] Some of the musical material was borrowed from the earlier composition, Hypothetically Murdered, Op. 31. The music for the Big Lightning was eventually scrapped and reworked into Orango, [2] because of his lack of confidence in the libretto. [3] Shostakovich only managed to write the overture and eight following pieces, [1] which lasts about 17 minutes. The original title may have been Nail in the Powder. The opera contains parodies of Glière's The Red Poppy, and Beethoven's Rage Over a Lost Penny. [1]
The work was commissioned by the Maly Theatre, [3] and the libretto was written Nikolai Aseev, and was about a team of Soviet specialists on a visit to America. [4] It premiered 11 February 1981, Leningrad, Large Philharmonic Hall, conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky, who also made the premiere recording. [1]
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