Shostakovich’s unfinished opera The gamblers: an artist’s unfinished concept and approaches to the reconstruction of the whole

The article deals with the issue of reconstructing Shostakovich’s unfinished opera The Gamblers. An increasing number of recent productions of The Gamblers shows not only the interest for this masterpiece but also the vast artistic potential inherent to the very fact that the opera is incomplete, which itself opens a range of possibilities to complete it. Three types of the reconstruction of The Gamblers are considered: 1) the completion of Act One by the conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky; 2) the complete reconstruction of an entire opera (Acts Two and Three) by Krzysztof Meyer; 3) the staged version of the opera by Yuri Aleksandrov (director) and Yuri Dimitrin (scriptwriter).