1938: Shostakovich encourages his pupil Fleischmann to write an opera based on the Chekhov story 'Rothschild's violin'. Fleischmann is killed during the siege of Leningrad. Shostakovich completes the orchestration, but in 1948 is advised to suppress the opera, during Stalin's campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans". Jewish motifs enter Shostakovich's own work.
as Shostakovich
as Benjamin Fleischmann
as The Minister
as Moishe Vainberg
as Aunt Nadezhda
as Mme Shostakovich
as Maxim Shostakovich
as Marfa
as Bronza
as Rothschild
as Shakhes
as Fleischmann's Daughter
