At the Teatro Real, Shostakovich’s “The Nose” provokes both irritation and excitement.

It is not that there was a rout on the lines of the Real, but the cases of escape piled up. Perhaps because the premiere of Nose He did not contemplate the logistical solution that allows him to flee at halftime. or maybe because Shostakovich’s corrosive opera irritates in 2021 the same as in 1928.

The course of a century is interesting because it demonstrates the avant-garde projection of the Russian composer. And because his sarcastic and delirious cabaret still disturbs the conservative spectators of the premieres.

They didn’t even enjoy the music at the premiere this Monday nor did they have a chance to strut their stuff in the (absent) intermissions. Therefore, some left the room with incorrigible manners. And others did it as an uncomfortable drip. Especially in the postinera towns.

Shostakovich punished them from the insolence and arrogance of the 23 years. He had just fulfilled them when the opera premiered in St. Petersburg and when the prodigy still retained the ingenuity and courage of transgressive insubordination. Stalinism would take care of castrating him. And spoil the future of Noseto the point that Soviet censorship outlawed it for almost half a century of opprobrium.

The tear of the score is as eloquent as the irreverence and iconoclasm. Or as the sarcastic description of a society that caricatures itself in bureaucracythe army and hypocrisy.

Shostakovich did nothing other than adapt Gogol’s tale of the same name, but the unmistakable feature of all totalitarianisms consists in the profound and complex lack of sense of humor. That is why the story of a high-ranking soldier who loses his nose and who chases it in the transfer of a grotesque plot was not funny a century ago. So grotesque that the fugitive nose becomes Secretary of State and even tries to escape the country with fraudulent documentation.

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It makes sense to remember Alban Berg’s Wozzeck—and the musical interludes—as it does to recognize Shostakovich’s ingenuity in the “debauchery” of a murky puppet musical language which alludes to the misguided avant-garde between the wars, which draws on stylized folklorism and which is perceived in 2023 with astonishing vitality.

It is the reason why it has so much merit Mark Wigglesworth’s musical reading in the Theater Royal pit. And the discipline with which the teachers of the Madrid orchestra react to the rhythmic virtuosity, the extravagant coloring of the score and the contortion of the roller coaster.

Taking it on stage requires a huge cast and dramatic talents that emphasize Barry Kosky’s wit. His is the responsibility of having transferred the spirit of the score to the Real. As if it were a perfect extrapolation of the music. And as if the acidity and eroticism of the long-nosed farce could only be told from the perspective of a great 1920s cabaret. Bearded dancers and drunken soldiers, art comedians and sad clowns parade on stage, although the center of gravity of the kaleidoscope concerns to the overwhelming interpretation of Martin Winkler. Not because of the vocal exhaustion of a versatile character who remains on stage for the two hours of the performance, but because the man without a nose engenders an identifiable theatrical energy in all moods: from sarcasm to pain, from laughter to horror and grotesque.

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There are no limits between the singer or the actor, a clown forlorn whose journey through the opera shimmers in an exercise in extreme dedication and brutal charisma. Even when he babbles and burps into the mouth of the stage.

Shostakovich continues to scandalize a century later. He is perceived as a transgressor. And like a whip of prudish societies that knew how to reactivate the surreal and disconcerting carousel of Barry Kosky. Not only when Anne Igartiburu made her TV presenter cameo — “Hello, long-nosed…” — but when Martin Winkler walked across the stage from end to end with a flashy dangling penis instead of a nose.

It was not a gratuitous provocation, but the visual metaphor that alluded to the sexual meaning of the nose, as a virile protrusion and analogous equivalence of virility. Nose is said Hoc (nos) in Russian, although it is more interesting to read it backwards. Because Coh (son) means ‘dream’. And because the silence of reason predisposed the passion with which the vast majority of the Real public appreciated Shostakovich’s great sneeze.

It is not that there was a rout on the lines of the Real, but the cases of escape piled up. Perhaps because the premiere of Nose He did not contemplate the logistical solution that allows him to flee at halftime. or maybe because Shostakovich’s corrosive opera irritates in 2021 the same as in 1928.