Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House
February 21, 2018

With larger-than-life tap-dancing noses, a seething city full of colourful citizens, a slapstick, Keystone Cops police force, gymnastic vocal lines and a spiky score – not to mention a few digs at more frequently performed canon operas – Barrie Kosky’s dazzling production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s first opera may put a few noses out of joint.

One of the many, many tragedies of Soviet rule in Russia in the 20th century was the stifling of Dmitri Shostakovich’s career as an opera composer. His second opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, which premiered in 1934, triggered an avalanche of dangerous official condemnation that would shape the rest of his career as a composer – he never wrote another opera.

Martin Winkler and Sir John Tomlinson in Opera Australia’s The Nose. Photos © Prudence Upton

But before Lady Macbeth, Shostakovich wrote The Nose in 1927-28 when the 20-year-old composer was flexing his musical muscles in a period of (relative) freedom between the revolutions of 1917 and the Great Terror of the 1930s. The score is a fascinating collage of styles and influences that were filtering into Russia...