Music: Lenin's Rockers

Moscow sings "Hallelujah "

The roar throbbing through the rafters of Moscow's Lenin Komsomol Theater was loud enough to rouse the Soviet Union's founding father in his Kremlin mausoleum. After two decades of sparring with the Soviet authorities, hard rock had triumphantly taken the Lenin stage. The occasion was the premiere of the country's first rock opera, Juno and Avos, by Alexei Rybnikov, a popular composer of movie scores. In addition to guitars, violins, cellos, drum and a chorus of 16, Rybnikov called for electronic instruments—including a Multimoog synthesizer and a Roland paraphonic—rarely...

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