Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (opera)
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Op. 29 (Russian: Леди Макбет Мценского уезда, romanized: Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda, lit. 'Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District') is an opera in four acts and nine scenes by Dmitri Shostakovich. The libretto, jointly written by Alexander Preys and the composer, is based on the novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov.
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
- Alexander Preys
- Dmitri Shostakovich
Russian
Dedicated by Shostakovich to his first wife, physicist Nina Varzar, the roughly 160-minute opera was first performed on 22 January 1934 at the Leningrad Maly Operny, and two days later in Moscow. It incorporates elements of expressionism and verismo, telling the story of a lonely woman in 19th-century Russia who falls in love with one of her husband's workers and is driven to murder.
Performance history[edit]
Despite early success on popular and official levels, Lady Macbeth became the vehicle for a general denunciation of Shostakovich's music by the CPSU in early 1936: after being condemned in an anonymous article (sometimes attributed to Joseph Stalin but actually authored by David Zaslavsky[1]) in Pravda, titled "Muddle Instead of Music", it was banned in the Soviet Union for almost thirty years, until 1961.[2]
The composer in 1962 revised Lady Macbeth, renaming it Katerina Izmailova (Russian: Катерина Измайлова) and assigning his Opus 114. He replaced two of its intermezzos, adjusted act 1, scene 3, and made smaller changes elsewhere. Katerina Izmailova was first performed on 26 December 1962 in Moscow at the Stanislavski-Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre, and first given a studio recording in 1964. But since Shostakovich's death the original version has been more often performed. The original uncensored version was not performed again in Russia until 2000.[3]
Critical reactions[edit]
One criticism of the work focused on its sexual content, particularly the way in which the action is depicted in the music. A 1935 review in the New York Sun called it "pornophony", referring to the lurid descriptive music in the sex scenes. Stravinsky described the opera as "lamentably provincial", considering the musical portrayal primitively realistic.[4]
The thrust of the Pravda criticism was in terms of morality; it condemned the opera's sympathetic portrayal of the eponymous character, an adulteress and murderess. At the time, the composer justified the sympathetic portrayal of Katerina in Soviet terms, saying she was a victim of the circumstances of oppressive, pre-revolutionary Russia.[4]
This criticism was revived in a different way by Richard Taruskin in a 1989 article, where he interprets the work in the context of Stalin's campaign against the kulaks in 1930, considering its portrayal of the killings of Katerina's kulak in-laws as "a justification of genocide". Daniel Zhitomirsky accused the work of "primitive satire" in its treatment of the priest and police, but acknowledges the "incredible force" of the last scene.[4]
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