The Great Friendship
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The Great Friendship (Russian: Великая дружба, romanized: Velikaya druzhba; also called The Extraordinary Commissar) is a 1947 opera by Vano Muradeli, to a libretto by Georgi Mdivani. It was premiered in Donetsk (then known as Stalino) on 28 September 1947 and given its Moscow premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre, on 7 November 1947. Joseph Stalin attended a performance at the Bolshoi on 5 January 1948, and strongly disapproved of the opera. This led to a significant purge, often referred to as the Zhdanovshchina, of the musical life of the Soviet Union.