Orango blooms for the first time in winter

Half-man, half-ape - better known as Orango. The opening of an unfinished grotesque opera by one of the towering composers of the 20th Century, Dmitry Shostakovich, “Orango” is to take place in Lost Angeles.

With hints to Mikhail Bulgakov’s famous “Heart of a Dog”, Orango revolves around a foreign journalist who, as a result of a biological experiment, plus a couple of human and political errors, assumes a new face and figure.

Shostakovich author of another mocking opera, The Nose was commissioned to write “Orango” by the Bolshoi Theater to mark the 15th anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution.
The trailblazing young Russian composer, beaming with kinetic energy, started working on it in 1932, however it was never finished, some say, because the mastermind composer never had enough time; others believe it was due to the Soviet authorities being against the satirical plot of the composition.

According to the LA Times, the surviving prologue of “Orango” will have its world premiere in December 2011, in a semi-staged production at Walt Disney Concert Hall, “capping a multi-year process of musical sleuthing and unlikely discoveries that's nearly as eye-opening as the work's bizarre subject matter.”