Wash’em Clean

About

A pupil of Dmitri Shostakovich, Yuri Levitin (1912–1993) began his career in 1937. He wrote several operas, oratorios, cantatas, symphonies, instrumental concertos, and film and animation music. He is well known to young audiences for the 1954 cartoon Moidodyr, the most successful animated adaptation of Korney Chukovsky’s 1923 tale. In 1963 Levitin reworked that material into a short children’s opera; a recording was released by Melodiya in 1978. The Mariinsky Theatre production was staged by Alexander Maskalin, whose chamber stagings in the Prokofiev Hall are favorites of young audiences. In his Moidodyr one hears playful quotes and allusions to other Chukovsky tales and poems, including The Fly-Tsokotukha, The Cockroach, The Wonder Tree, Barmaley, Fedorino’s Grief, and The Telephone.