Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) left us two operas, The Nose, and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, plus the operetta Moscow Cheryemusski – or so we thought. After his death several other operatic projects surfaced – some merely sketches, a few numbers from a projected work, and some that exist only in his letters as ideas. As recently as 2009 the torso of a science fiction opera Orango – dating from 1932 was unearthed. Without doubt the most substantial of these tantalisingly incomplete works is The Gamblers, after the comedy by Gogol.