Shaporin, Yuri Aleksandrovich (1887–1966)

Russian composer. He wrote incidental music for many plays and also opera, and co-founded the Great Dramatic Theatre in St Petersburg.

Shaporin was educated at St Petersburg, where he graduated in law at the university. In 1913 he entered the Conservatory there, studying under Sokolov, Steinberg, and Nikolai Tcherepnin. On leaving he became interested in stage music and founded the Great Dramatic Theatre with Gorky and Blok. In 1937 he moved to Moscow.

Works the opera The Decembrists (libretto by A N Tolstoy, 1953); incidental music for Shakespeare's King Lear and Comedy of Errors, Schiller's Robbers, Molière's Tartuffe, Pushkin's Boris Godunov, Beaumarchais' Marriage of Figaro, Turgenev's The Nest of Gentlefolk (Liza), Labiche's The Playian Straw Hat; film music including General Suvarov; symphonic cantata On the Kulikov Field (1939); symphony in E minor, suite The Flea for orchestra, two suites for piano; song cycles to words by Pushkin and Tiutchev, and other songs.