Sung in English
Lasts approximately 2 hours 35 minutes.

Paradise Moscow is a version of Cheryomushki, Shostakovich's forgotten ‘opera’. The production is a fast-paced, light-hearted musical that sends the audience out into the street humming a rousing chorus of ‘Cheryomushki!’

A colourful collection of Soviets are about to move into brand new apartments on the outskirts of Moscow. Is this the paradise they have been promised, or is it just an empty dream?

A surprise hit when first performed by Opera North in spring 2001, Paradise Moscow mixes realism and fantasy, romance and villainy, in a comedy satire. The music goes from wildly tuneful dance music to lyrical ballads and all points in between.

"The music has this intense Russian darkness; luscious and sweet like a heavily sugared piece of Black Forest gateau." Conductor, James Holmes

"...it's fun, funny and there's some beautiful music. ...you can get lost in it; you feel that you have travelled all the way to Moscow in one show!" 'Lidochka', Summer Strallen

Watch a sneak preview behind the scenes here.

Click here to view the eflier

Characters

Cheryomushki! Cheryomushki!
Remember your new address.
In every room, on every floor,
Municipal happiness!

A brand new high-rise housing estate is being built on the outskirts of Moscow. Everyone wants to live there. But all is not quite as it should be in this Garden of Eden.

Lusya, the heroic Soviet building worker, would be happy if she were not constantly being stood up by: Sergei, the somewhat unreliable chauffeur of: Drebyednetsov, the big party boss.

Baburov, whose roof is falling in, doesn’t believe in the new ‘ideal home’. For him, old Moscow is still the place to be.

His daughter, Lidochka, a guide at the Museum of the History and Reconstruction of Moscow, finds her life in the groves of academe a little lonely – it’s not just a roof that she needs. Needless to say she catches the eye of a most unsuitable man: Boris, a disreputable vagrant, a dissident Soviet rocker in search of his soul, and any female who might help him find it.

Lidochka’s colleague at the Museum, Sasha, and his fiancée, Masha, would be only too happy with anywhere where they could be alone for a few moments. With no room of their own, a new flat is their ‘Soviet dream’, but will it come true?

Barabashkin, right hand man to the big boss Drebyednetsov, knows that his power lasts only so long as everyone is begging for a flat in the new block: once they have their keys, who will care about him any more?

The boss of course has to make sure his girlfriend Varva has a flat big enough to accommodate her ambitions, but is she more than he can handle?

Who can make this garden of Eden grow? The cynical manipulators, Barabashkin and Drebyednetsov? Or Lusya, the idealistic singer of the Construction-workers Anthem? The bright enthusiasts for change, or the weary survivors of the years of struggle?

Come to Cheryomushki and find out!
 

"I wouldn't have missed this production for all the housing estates in Moscow. When did you last see a dancing Stalin or a fridge with legs?" Geoff Brown - The Times

"Summer Strallen Makes her Opera North debut as Lidochka, a museum guide chased by suversive rocker Boris (Eaton James). She is a visual and and performing treat, he has style and presence in abundance. Their duets are smashing" Kevin Berry - The Stage

"Paradise Moscow slips effortlessly into the cross-genre tradition of musical theatre that Opera North has long espoused. The company plays it with belief and panache – and with a degree of spectacle that is impressive by credit-crunch standards. Above all, the show highlights the cast’s versatility" Andrew Clark - Financial Times

"A joyous evening of musical theatre.The audience is dazzled by dancing kitchen appliances, bendy statues and a show-stopping dance routine featuring Stalin, Lenin, Karl Marx, a Sputnik and an astronaut" Tina Jackson - Metro