Word: operettas
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Composer Shostakovich has long been urging a more imaginative fusion of light and serious music by Soviet composers. The libretto of this new operetta (TIME, Aug. 25) has to do with three couples trying to find apartments in Moscow's Cheryomushki district, where huge apartment buildings are being erected to relieve the housing shortage. Included in the cast are a construction worker, a museum guide, an old man who stubbornly refuses to leave his apartment in "Warm Alley" for the new development, and a married couple named Sasha and Masha, who are forced to kiss goodnight each evening...
...this featherweight libretto, Composer Shostakovich set a blandly melodic score. The operetta's high points were provided by the choreography: a dream ballet in which a defeated schemer cavorts near one of the coveted apartments, a wild Lindy hop by two of the triumphant apartment hunters. Tame by Broadway standards, the dances proved to be crowd rousers on opening night. Otherwise, Composer Shostakovich's first excursion into musical comedy got only tepid applause. The Moscow cognoscenti diagnosed Cheryomushki as an unequal contest between composer and librettists, with Shostakovich's music clearly coming out the loser...
...also turned out dozens of show albums for the major record companies. In addition, he has built a fine reputation as an interpreter of baroque music, which he claims to understand intuitively because of his experience in "living theater." Currently, he is planning an operetta based on Chekhov's The Boor, recording albums of Broadway overtures (for Columbia), Broadway ballets (for RCA Victor), writing an autobiographical survey of the U.S. musical scene. His breathless commuting between composing and conducting, Broadway and highbrow, has earned him, in some quarters, the affectionate handle of "the Poor Man's Lenny Bernstein...
...musical numbers. Shostakovich has already composed 15. The rest will be ready when the cast comes back from vacation for mid-September rehearsals. This is the first time Shosty has done an operetta, but he has turned out plenty of light music for films, and apparently he is again leaning heavily on safely popular folk motifs. The choreography is careful too; jittery western fox trots have been displaced by waltzes and polkas...
...Hammerstein may worry about their forthcoming Flower Drum Song. But there is one show in the works that simply cannot miss. Title: Moscow-Cheryomushki. Composer: Dmitry Shostakovich. Book: by Vladimir Mass and Mikhail Chervinsky, two reliable party-line pros. Opening is scheduled for December at Moscow's Operetta Theater, but insiders last week got a preview of the vehicle that is to brighten Russia's winter season...