Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich didn’t notice when Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin left the concert hall. For the music was still far from over. The opera he walked out on was Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and the next day the Official Communist newspaper brutally trashed what would be Shostakovich’s first and only opera.
By 1934 friends and collaborators of Shostakovich had already been sent to prison or worse for much less than the writing of a satirical opera. Shostakovich is shook and to regain the governments approval he publicly admits the opera is severely flawed, and never writes another one.
What might have Stalin disapproved? Let’s begin with the sex. Mtsensk doesn’t have the subtle wink and nod of Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier or the sultry innuendo of Carmen, in Mtsensk it is unmistakable. The trumpets are all lips and the trombones hips. I found it difficult not laugh out loud at the bombastic thrusts of the characters on stage. Even the conductor’s advice to the orchestra was to“ just really go for it. It can’t be raw enough or crude enough” he said, “We can’t have any inhibitions when interpreting this music.”
Musically the opera is a dizzying pastiche of older styles used in ways to reinforce the stereotypes and satirization of the Russian characters. The thrilling changes jerk my ear all over with textures very wood and brass centric. It is a carnival of sounds but just before I can pin down Shostakovich as just a dirty schoolboy prankster, he brings in the harps and violins and it plunges deep into the very souls of the character’s humanity.
The two arias given to Svetlana Sozdateleva and the wisdom of the prison guard anchor this satire to the pillars of what it feels like to be human in a world where you are at the whims and wills of the more powerful. Breathtaking.
Like the music the staging is a post-modern pastiche of complimentary and contradictory elements. For example a mid-century television, an automobile and a religious icon all share a space that is both inside a room and outside in the clouds. It asks the audience to reconcile these incompatible elements representing the internal struggles within the characters thus within ourselves.
We may like to laud the men and women who live and die by their convictions, but I don’t think it’s fair to find fault in Shostakovich for surviving. He survives Stalin’s “Great Terror” to raise a family and continue to write music, incredible music.
His very next musical composition is arguably his most moving work and if not pro-Stalin then certainly pro-Russian. There is an educational documentary and performance not to be missed below:
History can feel like a barnacle on the present and it has now been 10 months since Vladimir Putin invaded the Ukraine. The expression goes that if power corrupts than absolute power corrupts absolutely and I think a part of the equation should also include time in power.
Russia is in the air of American days as our book club is reading “A Gentleman in Moscow,” and while on the Subway to “Fall for Dance,” I see the advertisement for Stalin era movie posters. If only life was like fiction, and what is done can be undone as in the “Master and Margarita.”
So What is Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk all about? Svetlana is a bored housewife surrounded by terrible men. Shostakovich made her a sympathetic character wherein the original story she is a blood thirsty monster. Things go awry when she cheats on her husband while he is away and then one thing leads to another to another.
Notes on the Production:
Composer………………………….. Dmitri Shostakovich
Daterina Lvovna Ismailova……….. Svetlana Sozdateleva
Sergei……………………………….. Brandon Jovanovich
Boris Timofeyevich Ismaiov……… John Relyea
Zinovy Borisovich Ismailov…….… Nikolai Schukoff
Priest……………………………….. Goran Juric
Old Convict………………………… Alexander Tsymbalyuk
Shabby Peasant…………………… Rodell Rosel
Conductor………………………….. Keri-Lynn Wilson
Met Opera
10/2/22