Premiere of "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" at the Bolshoi

Sergey Khodnev says

“Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District” by Dmitry Shostakovich is one of the items on the sad list of victims of Stalinist totalitarianism and its cultural policies. On January 28, 1936, the Pravda newspaper broke out with the famous article (anonymous, as often happened) “Confusion instead of music,” which condemned the composer’s daring departure from the norms of socialist realism. And at the same time, communist morality. In fact, the opera was accused of seemingly mutually exclusive atrocities. On the one hand, there is excessive refinement, supposedly only suitable to please the unhealthy tastes of a narrow circle of “petty-bourgeois” aesthetes. On the other hand, it’s quite the opposite: vulgarity and an obscene, naturalistic attitude towards sexual love. Why exactly the Agitprop of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks delayed with its review until “Lady Macbeth” became famous not only in the USSR, but also in Europe and America, is not entirely clear to this day (it is believed that everything happened because that in January 1936 Comrade Stalin saw the production of the opera and was very dissatisfied). But one way or another, Shostakovich’s opera did not completely disappear from the repertoire: the composer was forced to “take into account the criticism”, after the war he created a castrated version of the opera entitled “Katerina Izmailova” for use in Soviet theaters. From then until very recently, the first edition of the opera was not performed or staged in Russia.

It must be said that then, in 1938, Shostakovich was severely reprimanded in a similar manner for the ballet “Bright Stream,” which the Bolshoi Theater recently restored with great success. To do justice to Lady Macbeth was thus a symmetrical gesture that literally asked for itself. In general, the Bolshoi Theater cannot help but be caught in its love for a certain symmetry: last season opened with Verdi’s Macbeth, the current one with Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; then the production was carried out by Eimuntas Nyakrosius, now again by a prominent dramatic director, Temur Chkheidze. True, Mr. Chkheidze, unlike his famous Lithuanian colleague, is not a debutant in opera, but has not made his mark on Moscow opera stages: his previous operatic works were mostly associated with the Mariinsky Theater.

There is no doubt that the opera, the plot of which is a gloomy story told by Leskov about an immoral merchant’s wife who, for the sake of her lover, decided to kill her father-in-law, husband and young nephew, is exactly what suits the assembled production team perfectly. Temur Chkheidze is a prudent director with great restraint; the psychological intensity of the action is much more interesting to him than the superficial side of Katerina Izmailova’s sexual life, so there is no need to be afraid of cheaply provocative shocking. Frank naturalism, apparently, will be clearly translated only by music - the famous opera conductor Zoltan Peszko, a Hungarian who at various times led prominent opera houses in Italy (Teatro Communale in Bologna, La Fenice in Venice) and Germany (Deutsche Oper am) will be responsible for this Rein), and now the artistic director of the Lisbon San Carlo Theater. 70 years after the premiere of Shostakovich's "satirical tragedy" - perhaps the best Russian opera of the twentieth century - the Bolshoi Theater is trying to provide it with an impressive, but not scandalous, and respectable reception.

Bolshoi Theater, November 19, 21, 23 (19.00). Phone number for ordering tickets: 229 7412

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