The Bolshoi Theatre commissioned the opera in 1932 intending it as a celebration of the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution . Alexei Tolstoy and Alexander Starchakov were engaged as librettists to work with Shostakovich and given the broad theme " ' human growth during revolution and socialist construction . ' Ultimately , the collaborators conceived their opera as ' a political lampoon against the bourgeois press , ' adapting the plot from one of Starchakov 's stories concerning a human-ape hybrid conceived in a medical experiment . " When the librettists failed to deliver on schedule , Shostakovich , who was busy in the midst of composing Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District , deferred then abandoned the project , discarding his draft . Starchakov was arrested in 1936 and shot in 1937
arrested in 1936 and shot in 1937
Great Purge
Orango (Shostakovich)