In the fledgeling USSR, cinema became a truly popular art form, partly as a means of propaganda, often using edifying episodes from Russian history. For Khachaturian, both stage and screen were powerful obsessions. He wrote the music for 17 films and 19 plays as well as major ballet scores. Yet he never completed the opera, based on Brecht, that he had begun in the 1950s. Donald Macleod introduces music for the films Pepo (1934), The Battle of Stalingrad (1950), Admiral Ushakov (1953), Othello (1955) and Undying Flame (1956); music for the plays The Widow of Valencia (1940), Masquerade (1941) and Lermontov (1954); and music for the ballet Spartacus (1954).