There’s something disconcerting about watching Shostakovich’s operetta from the post-Stalin 1950s in the present context of Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. With its title adapted from Cheryomushki, meaning Cherry Trees, named after one of Nikita Khrushchev’s housing projects for reconstructing Moscow, there are elements of subversive satire and irony as frustrated residents are pitted against the corrupt bosses in charge, but it’s generally lightweight and anodyne.
There’s certainly none of the pungency or drama of Shostakovich’s two real operas, The Nose and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District. Despite the neat paradox of demolition man Boris (Dafydd Allen) who blows up the old properties to make way for the new, and Lidochka (Rusnė Tušlaitė) with her shades of nihilism, too many characters are unprepossessing – even in David Pountney’s racy translation, dialogue is stilted with minimal plot – and, at an hour and 50 minutes with no interval, it feels doubly long-drawn-out. Not obvious repertoire then for the youngsters of the Welsh National Youth Opera.
