Lady Macbeth Sees The World
Shostakovich's operatic genius is once again seeing the light of day in opera houses around the world.

Collected Press Clippings Sept 2001

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This is where the conductor Valery Gergiev is entirely in his element. He stirred up the Vienna Philharmonic in Salzburg's Great Festival Hall to the point of sonic orgasms that swept the audience unwittingly along with them; the conductor was the most celebrated hero of the evening.

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Katerina in South America
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2 August 2001

The Argentine press outdid itself in praising the production of the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Dmitri Shostakovich, presented at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Mstislav Rostropovich was the conductor and Sergio Renán was responsible for the staging. Con Svetlana Dobronravova could be heard in the role of Katerina.

The daily newspaper "La Nacion" entitled its enthusiastic critique of the performance with the words "Lady Macbeth de Mtsensk, brillante." The author of the article went on to speak of a masterwork by Shostakovich that belongs to the most important works of this genre in the 20th century. The performance in Buenos Aires has had something of a signal effect in the South American opera world. Further performances are to follow in Rio de Janeiro and in Santiago de Chile.

Shostakovich's grandiose opera was also premiered in Salzburg during the course of this year's Salzburg Festival on 31 July 2001. Reinhard J. Brembeck wrote the following about it in the Süddeutsche Zeitung:

"The great pianist Arthur Rubinstein, when referring to Dmitri Shostakovich's opera 'Lady Macbeth from Mtsensk,' premiered in 1932, quite simply called it a 'brutal drama'. Stalin was furious and the notorious Pravda article of January 1936, denouncing Shostakovich according to all the rules of Fascism, stated in no uncertain terms: 'This is a chaos of the left rather than a genuine, human music.' How right they all are, but how far behind the radicalism of this grandiose, singular masterpiece they all nevertheless remain.

When Shostakovich, in 1930, hit upon the idea of making an opera out of Nikolai Leskov's novella of the same name, a radical version of 'Madame Bovary' in its abysmal profundity, it was an angrily sarcastic challenge to the present day and especially to totalitarian socialism as represented by Stalin. Just as Leskov could not see any advancement in the development of humanity in the Russian emancipation of the serfs in 1861, Shostakovich was unable to see any improvement in the human condition caused by the attainments of the glorious Soviet revolution. Otherwise he would never have set this nihilistic outcry of a woman to music, this outcry of an individual against spiritless, brutal hollowness.

First of all, this is the drama of a childless woman, very similar to Federico García Lorca's 'Yerma' written at the same time. In both cases childlessness is the code word for the worst form of societal isolation. Still, Shostakovich's piece has a harder, more medieval and alien effect. A mercilessly hard masterful men's society leads a lawlessly brutal regime: farmers and servants are, according to the whims of their masters, tortured, killed, insulted and beaten. Only he who can function has the right to live a little longer, although still despised and spat upon. From this analysis of society, which Shostakovich regards as valid for all times, it is but a small step to the Gulag and the concentration camps. But late capitalism's modern mechanisms of repression are specifically included here as well. "The woman, too, has her own rigidly determined role to play in this joyless male-dominated society entirely dedicated to violence. Katerina Ismailova does not conceive a child, thus failing in her sole assigned task. Thus she is cut up and mocked, then lapses into the worst, most hellish punishment on earth: ennui, Baudelaire-like boredom. Rash actions ensue, including murder and violent sexual indulgence. 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk' is an orgy of rape and manslaughter before the background of a hopelessly oppressive desperation.

Shostakovich's outstanding coup with this opera is his shockingly realistic music, which translates the drama on the stage into obscene sound images of the most garish concreteness. Here, music is superior to the cinema. Thus the rape music in the opera is coarser than the images in the scandal film 'Baise moi;' it is cheap and gross pornography. The music quite openly surrenders to lustful voyeurism of other people's suffering during the murder and torture scenes.

This is where the conductor Valery Gergiev, Music Director of St. Petersburg's Kirov Opera, is entirely in his element. He stirred up the Vienna Philharmonic in Salzburg's Great Festival Hall to the point of sonic orgasms that swept the audience unwittingly along with them; the conductor was the most celebrated hero of the evening.

Producer Peter Mussbach, on the other hand, foundered in every sense. There are various reasons for this. The main problem with 'Lady Macbeth' is that the music works with immediately insightful, always extreme images. If a producer wished to bring this piece off realistically, there would have to be constant sex, rape, torture and desecration on the stage. Calixto Bieito, who recently showed Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in Salzburg in this way, would have been the right man for this job. But this kind of approach to sex and crime is still unthinkable with opera singers, apart from the fact that this doubling of the music would not be all that exciting. So another alternative had to be found.

Mussbach decided upon a reduced, turned-back realism, at least at certain moments. He remained behind the music's emotional potential, sketching reminiscences of what the orchestra was allowed to play opulently and wildly play. This reduction, that (unfortunately) never rose to the detached composure of a Bob Wilson, was presented before a voluminously repellent barn facade. But here an obviously insurmountable cultural difference played a major role. The production, which will soon be taken to St. Petersburg, consists primarily of Russian singers. They are obviously not accustomed to the Central European style of theatrical production. So most of them do what they are otherwise used to doing: they move uninhibitedly, completely following their own interpretations of their roles, and they do this a trifle too pathetically, too exaggeratedly. Only Larissa Shevchenko as Katerina followed Mussbach in the direction of motionlessness and denied herself all passion, although she represents more the resolute farmer's wife type, from the physical point of view, than the blasé upper-class lady. But Mussbach hardly takes notice of this. The result is that her spiritual suffering is hardly understandable, especially since she doesn't seem to feel particularly ill at ease during the agony of the opera's opening; her rebellion against the men's regime seems all too mild. Such a lady doesn't commit murder.

The men have it easier. Vladimir Vaneev as a somewhat weak father and Leonid Zachozhaev as Katerina's husband are as humanitarian as Mongolian chiefs. Victor Lutsiuk as Katerina's lover is, on the other hand, just another man - dare-devil, desecrater, superficial - but all within bounds. Andrea Schmidt-Futterer's thoroughly grey, artisan-like costumes also contribute to this effect; these cannot even begin to lend the final apocalyptically desolate prisoner's scene anything of the music's hopelessness. The scene thus remains far behind Shostakovich and works towards an aesthetic through the conductor. Any trace of caustic political theatre or sarcastic societal analysis that Shostakovich composed is lost. A declaration of bankruptcy."

Salzburg Reviews
On 31 July 2001 Shostakovich's grandiose opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" was premiered in Salzburg during the course of this year's Salzburg Festival. The opera has also met with an enthusiastic reception in South America this year.

When One Globalises

Franz Endler in KURIER, 2 August 2001

...Dmitri Shostakovich's opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk", acknowledged at its premiere as a grandiose work, first brought its composer world-wide recognition and then the reputation of a public enemy in his own country... The fact that Salzburg has put this opera on its programme, thus allowing for not only edification but also shock, is emphatically worthy of praise. ... For reasons of globalisation, the opera was cast and produced with the financial help of the Croesus Alberto Vilar so that it could subsequently be taken to the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, a theatre which also belongs to Vilar's sphere of influence.

Of the Inflation of the Violent

Peter Cossé in DER STANDARD, 2 August 2001

It is thanks to Mstislav Rostropovich, if the music-historical tradition is to be believed, that the original edition of this provincial farce - with Shakespeare viciously ogling, sinfully macabre and, for the conditions of the 1930s, downright suicidal in terms of its societal critique - could be brought back to the operatic programme. ... The vicissitudes of private adversities and individual illusion of fulfilment in the act of physical usurpation with the corresponding provisional final solution of inter-familial execution must have virtually put the composer under the influence of creative drugs. ... Mussbach attempts to explain the origin of evil as coming from boredom (as well as, indeed, the dialectic of power and impotence). He describes this in flat images obeying the cliché of the Russian epic; their development is, however, repeatedly undermined by preposterous and misleading details. ... The jubilation at the end was ignited by Valery Gergiev's fire, by the Philharmonic's "actionism," with divided emphasis, however, on Mussbach's solutions.

The sonic finesses and subtleties were prepared with enormous gusto, but the sarcasms and dissonances almost just as clearly, as well as the whipped quick-march trivialities, the strident and downright obscene devil's grimaces, these constricting obsessions of a sensibility affected by the most vile and perverse of elements. Thus the musical side of the performance became a memorable occasion and Gergiev, the audience's favourite, was vehemently praised.

...Shostakovich wrote a score during his mid-twenties that combines a genially carefree quality with revolutionary élan and a whole palette of agitated emotions, a wild collage of grotesque parodies, sarcastic insertions and satirical dances. In was in the best of hands with Valery Gergiev, the director of the Maryinsky Theatre which served as co-producer. He drove the Vienna Philharmonic to ecstatic outbursts, played out the expressionistic excesses with uncompromising sharpness and let the wild dissonances almost noisily collapse upon the listeners. He tickled the dialectical sarcasm out of the notes, providing most of the lyrical episodes with ironic colouring. Gergiev also delivered a structurally clear course of events, lovingly dedicating himself to the polytonal instrumental subtleties of the score. In executing these the luxurious orchestra's superior sense of sound blossomed, deservedly attracting the lion's share of the jubilation in the Great Festival Hall.

Too sordid for Stalin, a triumph for the ENO
Matthew Rye reviews Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, performed by the ENO, at the Coliseum, and Gillian Keith at Wigmore Hall
22 June, Telegraph

IT took more than 50 years for Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk to reach the British stage for the first time. Its infamous history - it was banished from the Soviet stage after Stalin (it is presumed) penned a coruscating editorial about it in Pravda in 1936 - made it required viewing when David Pountney staged it for the ENO in 1987.

On the basis that anything banned by Stalin as too sordid and musically neurotic must be worth seeing, it proved an instant success and, five years later, came top of an audience poll for the most wished-for revival. Shostakovich's tamer rewrite, Katerina Ismailova, now sits on the sidelines and his uncompromising original, with its extremes of satire, violence, passion and degradation, is finally recognised as one of the great operas of the 20th century.

It has taken a further decade for it to appear at the Coliseum again. Revived by Pountney himself, with his assistant Lynn Binstock, it re-emerges in as gripping a form as ever. Maybe conductor Mark Wigglesworth doesn't let rip at the overblown orchestral writing with quite the same zest as Mark Elder in the past, but the score makes a huge impact none the less .

The cast is new to the production, but is a strong one and, with a formidable performance from the ENO chorus, makes for a truly company achievement. Robert Brubaker's Sergei is bracing, as athletic vocally as he is physically, leaping around Stefanos Lazaridis's looming gantry of a set like an animal on heat. Pavlo Hunka makes an impressive ENO debut as the brutal father-in-law Boris and there were memorable cameos from Graeme Danby (priest) and John Graham-Hall (shabby peasant) among others.

But it is the singer of Katerina who makes the performance and, while it is difficult to erase memories of Josephine Barstow 14 years ago, Vivian Tierney brings her own considerable skills as a singer and actor to the role, together with exemplary diction.

Here we can follow every psychological tug and turn of a woman who turns from bored, frustrated merchant's wife, by way of accomplished murderess, to degraded prison-camp inmate - a woman for whom, thanks also to Shostakovich's poignant music, particularly in the chilling final scene, we are compelled to feel sympathy.

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