The alternative of “opera&cinema” in Soviet culture of the 1930s–1950s and Shostakovich’s creative strategies

Marina G. Raku

Abstract


The creative biography of Dmitri Shostakovich from the 1920s to the 1950s provides a clear illustration of how the canon of film music developed in Soviet art and its relationship to other musical genres. Two aesthetic poles—opera and popular song—defined the boundaries of the genre choices facing the emerging art of sound film scoring in the USSR. Fascinated by the idea of “film opera” but forced by social demands to capitulate to “song films,” Shostakovich spent two decades repeatedly moved from the “song films” to “song operas,” never quite completing these attempts. The opera project Stalingrad, analyzed in detail for the first time in this article, provides a revealing example of how the very idea of such a genre metamorphosis degenerated by the postwar period.

Keywords: Soviet film music, “song opera,” “song film,” “film opera,” operatic ideas of Dmitri Shostakovich, project of the opera Stalingrad by Dmitri Shostakovich to the libretto of Mikheil E. Chiaureli and Alexander A. Filimonov

For citation: Raku, M. G. (2026). The alternative of “opera&cinema” in Soviet culture of the 1930s–1950s and Shostakovich’s creative strategies. Contemporary Musicology, 10(3), 44–71. https://doi.org/10.56620/2587-9731-2026-4-044-071

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.56620/2587-9731-2026-3-044-071

Copyright (c) 2026 Marina G. Raku

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