 1938: Shostakovich encourages his pupil Fleischmann to write an opera based on the Chekhov story  Rothschild s violin . Fleischmann is killed during the siege of Leningrad. Shostakovich completes the orchestration, but in 1948 is advised to suppress the opera, during Stalin s campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans". Jewish motifs enter Shostakovich s own work. The film includes a filmed version of the opera itself.