 
Three Hungarians
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Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
The Indecency Of Seeking Personal Happiness
Shakespeare gave the world Lady Macbeth, Verdi adapted her for the opera,
now she has become a synonym for the cold-blooded, modern woman. But the
murders she commits are not due to witches' prophecies or strange voices
but to the boredom and unfulfilled sexual desires of a merchant's wife.
Modern power struggles, eroticism and violence. Peter Mussbach's mise-en-scene
is novel. The conductor is Valery Gergiev. Robert Maschka looks at the
history of the work:
"Much has still to be written before today's youth understands the
past ... and at the same time develops an abhorrence thereof." When
Maxim Gorki made this observation in 1930 he was indicating that the only
possibility at all of making tsarist Russia a theme under the Stalinist
dictatorship was by presenting it in a deliberately denigrating manner.
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
In the same year Dmitry Shostakovich took as the source of his opera a short story called Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, written in 1864 by Nikolai Leskov, which in turn was based on a capital offence that had actually been committed. Making use of the artistic liberty described by Gorki, Shostakovich presented the merchant's wife, Katerina Ismailova, on the operatic stage as "a talented, clever and extraordinary woman who came to grief on the nightmare situation that prevailed in pre-Revolution Russia". Out of love for the foreman Sergei she poisons her father-in-law Boris and, helped by her lover, murders her husband Sinovi.
The opera was first performed in Leningrad in December, 1934, and was a huge success. The dramatic idea behind Shostakovich's work seemed - at least initially - to have been accepted, one reason being that major changes had been made in the short story on which it was based. In order to exonerate Katerina, the grizzly details which form the culmination point of the narrative and which describe the murder out of pure greed of Katerina's under-age joint heirs, are omitted, while greater emphasis is laid on the suffering and burdens Katerina has to endure.
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| Photo: Gerard Uféras, Opéra National de Paris, Bastille, 1993 |
It is the opera that introduces the idea of her being subjected to the sexual harassments of her despotic father-in-law, a fact that makes the neglect of her impotent husband Sinovi all the more gross and blatant. This in turn explains why she is susceptible to the shabby advances of the handsome Sergei, who plays a prominent part in the serial rape of the cook Aksinia perpetrated by the workers in the house of Ismailov.
A decadent society
As it is, Katharina is exposed to the perversity not only of individual
characters but also of a society that is decadent through and through.
Shostakovich goes far beyond Leskov's text and invents
a slimy informer and a no less boozy cleric, as well as a vulgar wedding
party and a corrupt police squadron which does the dirty work in a little
tinpot state that constitutes a public danger. Unlike Leskov, Shostakovich
focusses attention on the moral decadence of Katerina's social surroundings,
describing it by means of the grotesque.
On the other hand, the music commiserates with the fate of the prisoners
banished to Siberia whom Sergei and Katerina must accompany in order to
atone for their crimes. But even among these outcasts Katerina experiences
further humiliation: Sergei, looking on her as the cause of his misfortune,
now bestows his attentions on Sonietka, a woman condemned to hard labour.
Katerina takes her own life, dragging her rival with her into the Volga.
In the end, Shostakovich only succeeds in characterising the eponymous
heroine "as a positive person who deserves the sympathy of the audience"
by finding justification for her striving after personal happiness.
see:
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District:
Thriller and Psychodrama
Lady Macbeth of Mzensk
Tickets for the premiere on 31st July are still available at 3,600 ATS, for the performances on 4th, 22nd, 25th and 30th August at 2,800 and 3,600 ATS, and additionally on 4th, 22nd and 30th August at 4,600 ATS.
Ticket Office of the Salzburg Festival
Tel: 0662/8045-579
Fax: 0662/8045-760
E-mail: info@salzburgfestival.at
Dmitry Shostakovich
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
Original 1932 version in Russian with German and English surtitles
Musical director ........... Valery Gergiev
Production ........... Peter Mussbach
Stage design ........... Klaus Kretschmer
Video installations ........... BARCO
Costumes ........... Andrea Schmitt-Futterer
Lighting ........... Konrad Lindenberg
Chorus ........... Andrei Petrenko
With Larissa Shevchenko, Vladimir Vaneev, Leonid Liubavin, Viktor Lutsiuk, Gennady Bezzubenkov and Soloists of the Mariinski Theater, St. Petersburg
The Vienna Philharmonic
Chorus of the Mariinski Theater, St. Petersburg
Large Festival House
New production: 31st July, 2001
4th, 22nd, 25th and 30th August, 2001
Starting at 6.30 p.m.