Now in its 50th season, Chicago Opera Theater presents the local premiere of the 22-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich’s 95-year-old farce The Nose, after Nikolai Gogol’s surreal short story. Two to focus on in the cast of 82 characters are the baritone Aleksey Bodganov as the minor official Kovalyov and the tenor Curtis Bannister as Kovalyov’s eponymous Nose, which has detached itself and is gallivanting around St. Petersburg in the guise of a highly placed dignitary. Shostakovich’s seriously wild and crazy score is sure to make your head spin. In her last hurrah as Chicago Opera Theater’s music director, the talented St. Petersburg native Lidia Yankovskaya conducts. Francesca Zambello, whose stock took off with Prokofiev’s equally complex (and much, much longer) War and Peace, makes her company debut as director. —Matthew Gurewitsch