Desmond O’Neill
Dublin, Ireland

One of the fascinations of medical humanities is the two-way traffic between artists and scientists with cutting-edge aspects of science, technology, and medicine. A signal example is the heady ferment of scientific experimentation in the Soviet Union. One of the more exotic experiments was the effort by Professor Ilya Ivanov to hybridize apes with humans.¹ The writer and physician Mikhail Bulgakov picked up the theme in his picaresque and darkly humorous novel The Heart of Dog, in which a human heart is transplanted into a dog with bizarre consequences.

A more direct treatment was the projected opera Orango by Dmitri Shostakovich, the fiftieth anniversary of whose death in 2025 has been widely honored around the world with performances of his extensive and varied output. His fifteen symphonies have the unique distinction of not only working as absolute music in their own right, but also track the troubled progress of life in the Stalinist Soviet Union. These range from the fifth symphony—a Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism (from Stalin)—through the epic seventh (Leningrad) symphony that reflected the cruel wartime siege, to the fifteenth symphony, which the composer likened to the great philosophical problems of human existence. His last work, a sonata for viola, has been seen as an exquisite exemplar of the possibilities of life course review in later life.²

Never one to shy away from the real world, his scores included a ballet based on football, The Golden Age, reflecting his deep attachment to the Leningrad football team, Zenit.³ He had also visited the laboratory of Professor Ivanov in 1929 and was fascinated by what he observed. Ivanov had been a pioneer of artificial insemination in horses, the other contender for the acronym AI. While Ivanov had harbored the idea of using the technique for hybridization between humans and apes since 1910, it was only with the erosion of norms in the Soviet era that he was able to proceed with insemination of female apes using human sperm. A planned reverse of the process, using ape sperm and human females, was canceled due to the death of his remaining orangutan.

Shostakovich was inspired to start the opera Orango in 1932 from the many ethical, philosophical, and political themes arising from the project. While the project was eventually shelved, both the extant libretto and the sketches discovered in 2004 and orchestrated by Gerard McBurney provide riveting entertainment as well as a reflection on scientific hubris and the dangers of unfettered ethical laissez-faire.⁴ In the original scenario, Orango, the issue of a French biologist and a female ape, becomes a First World War hero and journalist. In an Icarus-like satirical turn for Soviet society, he becomes a rabid anti-communist, and, after a series of misadventures, ends up in a cage in a Moscow circus.

The recreated prologue moves along with brio, scored for a large orchestra and a range of soloists, and also contains elements of other works by Shostakovich. In an era when the boundaries of experimentation on the intrinsic biology of our species are ever increasingly being infringed, a profound artistic experience, even if fragmentary, provides a potent appeal for due caution.

References

1. Launer J. Monkey business. Postgraduate Medical Journal 2015;91(1072):117-8.
2. O’Neill D. Shostakovich’s sonata for viola and piano. BMJ 2012;345:e5860.
3. Braginsky D. Shostakovich and Football: Escape to Freedom. DSCH Publishers, Moscow, 2018.
4. Shostakovich D. Orango. Los Angeles Philharmonic and soloists, Esa Pekka Salonen (conductor). Deutsche Grammophon, 2012.