Napisala i przyslala Basia Jaworski

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk illustration by B.M. Kustodiyev

It was supposed to be a four-part opera, an operatic tetralogy dedicated to the position of women in Russia in different eras.

A Soviet Russian Ring des Nibelungen, of which part one, `Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk’ would be a kind of Rheingold. But alas, it was not to be. Though initially no one could have suspected any impending doom.

Premiere poster 1934 QED Art and press from the USSR and Central Europe

The premiere on 22 January 1934 at the Maly Theatre in Leningrad was a tremendous success, and for two years the opera was performed several times a week both in Leningrad and Moscow. The opera was also very succesful abroad: after Cleveland the New York City Opera followed , and then Stockholm, Prague and Zurich.

Until Stalin attended a performance in January 1936 and left early. The next day, an article appeared in Pravda under the headline ‘Chaos instead of music’.

It was signed by a certain Zaslavsky, but according to Shostakovich, it was written by Stalin himself. The opera was immediately dropped from the programmes and the composer was labelled an ‘enemy of the people’.

After Stalin’s death, Shostakovich revised his opera, and under a new title, Katerina Ismailova, it was first performed in Moscow in 1963. Prague and Zurich.

Shostakovich loved his heroine. To Solomon Volkov, he confessed: “Although Yekaterina Lvovna is a murderess, she is not yet lost as a human being. Her conscience torments her, she keeps thinking about the people she killed. I have sympathy for her. […] I wanted to show a woman who morally stands much higher than all the people around her. Because around Yekaterina there are only villains. She lives like in a prison and this is how she has been suffering for five years.”

“Her life is sad and uninteresting. But then comes love, a great passion. And it turns out that this passion is worth a crime to her. After all, it doesn’t matter, since otherwise life makes has no meaning to her.” (From Testimony. Memoirs of Dimitri Shostakovich.)

The opera, about the tragic fate of Katerina, who after marrying a rich merchant ends up in a kind of prison, from which she believes she can escape through her passionate love for Sergei and then ends her life in an icy river in Siberia, is a mix of tragedy and satire, seriousness and humour, lyrical melodies and – yes, indeed – chaos.

With a dizzying pace, the atmosphere changes from touching melancholy (Katja’s lament ‘Zherebyonok k kob’lke toropotsa’) to sexually charged (seduction scene), to end in actually pornographic sounds – Shostakovich has succeeded in describing ‘the deed’ through music in detail.

The premiere on 22 January 1934 at the Maly Theatre in Leningrad was a tremendous success, and for two years the opera was performed several times a week both in Leningrad and Moscow. The opera was also very succesful abroad: after Cleveland the New York City Opera followed , and then Stockholm, Prague and Zurich.

Until Stalin attended a performance in January 1936 and left early. The next day, an article appeared in Pravda under the headline ‘Chaos instead of music’.

It was signed by a certain Zaslavsky, but according to Shostakovich, it was written by Stalin himself. The opera was immediately dropped from the programmes and the composer was labelled an ‘enemy of the people’.
After Stalin’s death, Shostakovich revised his opera, and under a new title, Katerina Ismailova, it was first performed in Moscow in 1963. Prague and Zurich.

Shostakovich loved his heroine. To Solomon Volkov, he confessed: “Although Yekaterina Lvovna is a murderess, she is not yet lost as a human being. Her conscience torments her, she keeps thinking about the people she killed. I have sympathy for her. […] I wanted to show a woman who morally stands much higher than all the people around her. Because around Yekaterina there are only villains. She lives like in a prison and this is how she has been suffering for five years.”

“Her life is sad and uninteresting. But then comes love, a great passion. And it turns out that this passion is worth a crime to her. After all, it doesn’t matter, since otherwise life makes has no meaning to her.” (From Testimony. Memoirs of Dimitri Shostakovich.)

The opera, about the tragic fate of Katerina, who after marrying a rich merchant ends up in a kind of prison, from which she believes she can escape through her passionate love for Sergei and then ends her life in an icy river in Siberia, is a mix of tragedy and satire, seriousness and humour, lyrical melodies and – yes, indeed – chaos.

With a dizzying pace, the atmosphere changes from touching melancholy (Katja’s lament ‘Zherebyonok k kob’lke toropotsa’) to sexually charged (seduction scene), to end in actually pornographic sounds – Shostakovich has succeeded in describing ‘the deed’ through music in detail.

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