The Big Lightning (also sometimes The Great Lightning, Russian: Большая молния, Bolshaya molniya) is an unfinished opera sketched in 1932 by Dmitri Shostakovich. The manuscript was found by Olga Digonskaya. Some of the musical material was borrowed from the earlier composition, Hypothetically Murdered, Op. 31. The music for the Big Lightning was eventually scrapped and reworked into Orango, because of his lack of confidence in the libretto. Shostakovich only managed to write the overture and 8 following pieces, which lasts about 17 minutes. The original title may have been Nail in the Powder. The opera contains parodies of Glière's Red Poppy, and Beethoven's Rage Over a Lost Penny.
| Date of composition | 1932 (Unfinished) |
| Premiered | 1980, February 11th (Large Philharmonic Hall) in Saint Petersburg, Russia |
| Type | Opera |
| Autotranslations beta |
Dmitri Chostakovitch: The Big Lightning Dmitrij Šostakovič: The Big Lightning Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch Schostakowitsch: The Big Lightning |