The Big Lightning

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]