Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District

Like a Russian Madame Bovary, Katerina is profoundly bored in the company of her husband. The arrival of a new employee, Sergei, leads her into adultery and then crime, making her more akin to Lady Macbeth. But unlike Shakespeare’s character, Katerina acts not out of a thirst for power but to satisfy urges stifled by a sordid environment. Premiered in 1934 in Leningrad when Dmitri Shostakovich was only 28 years old, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was a triumph that nevertheless sealed the composer’s fate. Stalin deemed the opera scandalous and incompatible with “socialist realism”. The composer was threatened with deportation and the work banned for more than 25 years before resurfacing in a diluted version. Performed in its original version, Shostakovich’s powerful and tense score is reinforced by Krzysztof Warlikowski’s staging. By placing the characters in a slaughterhouse, he restores this 20th century masterpiece’s unflinching brutality.

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