Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is a very powerful opera and while it is not one of my ultimate favourites it is one of the greats when it comes to 20th century opera. This production is incredibly effective, almost on par with the 1969 film and I think superior with Petr Weigl's version. The only let-downs for me were while it is great music the interpolation of the 6th symphony between Acts 3 and 4 I didn't feel was needed and the Shabby Peasant's staging come across as aimless. However, the decadence of the production matches the story and music perfectly, and the staging on the whole is blackly humorous and moving. The orchestral playing is evocative and powerful, the chorus sing with a splendid sound and perform with real commitment and the conducting while measured in tempo doesn't fall into the trap of plodding. The performances are great. Nadine Secunde is the embodiment of Katerina, her longing and torment are superbly conveyed, her final frozen paralysis expression is guaranteed to haunt the mind. Christopher Ventris oozes sex appeal, the character's betrayal of Katerina is mind-numbing, and he sings with a big and unstrained tone. Anatoli Kotcherga is a very resonantly sung and strongly acted Boris. In conclusion, a really excellent production. 9/10 Bethany Cox
2 Reviews
The anti-Soviet stance misses the tragic drama
Dr_Coulardeau9 February 2021
Warning: Spoilers
A very surprising and at the same time fascinating opera by a Soviet composer who appears with time to have been a lot more critical than we could think, or maybe imagine at the time. It is a drama that refers to Shakespeare despite the Lady not protesting at all, but because she kills anyone who does not fit her immediate absence of any plan. She kills her father-in-law out of a whim with rat poison. She then kills her husband when he comes upon her a little bit harshly since in the meantime his father has died, and she has obviously taken some kind of a lover since he found a male belt in her room. She strangles him with a little bit of help from her lover, she marries as fast as possible. But the dead body in the cellar is discovered by the wino of the village, rather addicted to vodka, who goes to the police to tell them. She ends up in a perambulating prison: all the prisoners are condemned to walk day after day, versts upon versts. Her lover only keeps in touch with her because he gets some money from her, from her business, but he looks for younger flesh and finds some provided he provides that younger flesh with stockings. He lures the poor "Lady Macbeth" into giving him her own woolen stockings. She finds out who it was for, suffocates the challenger, and ends up abandoned by her own prison in the cold steppe manacled to the dead body of her latest victim.
No pity, no empathy, no nothing for this woman. But that's the drama of the play. Besides, the opera is extremely funny in many ways because there are numerous absolutely ridiculous scenes. The first priest who gets the father-in-law to the other side of this life does it in his nightshirt. The ritual is absolutely hilarious. The priest is a clown. A second priest in the marriage, later on, is going to be just as phantasmagorical and drunk. And the crowds surrounding these scenes are always as crazy as a scarecrow in a blizzard. Then comes the police that is ridiculed as an assemblage of opportunistic non-entities that only want some easy-going activity with enough authority to feel superior though they are ruffians, and they do acknowledge that the comfortable side of the profession comes from the various advantages they do not get from anyone, but they take from everyone.
The father-in-law is a merchant, and he has plenty of employees seen as working-class mostly very dark blue collar. They are violent, massively undifferentiated, all reacting collectively and blindly, just gut reactions and not the most dignified gut at that. The lover is one in this scum and he is a phallocratic sexist person from the very start. He does not really fall in love with the "Lady," he just finds in her way to regularly satisfy his impulses and drives, but she falls in love with him and that is irreversible. When you reach hell, you cannot come back, and for her love is hell. Her end is drastic and yet we more or less feel that she deserves it, though she is the faithful one of the loving pair and her lover is totally uninterested in any fidelity, except if he can find some advantage in it for himself.
This particular production alludes to the Gulag heavily with the uniforms of the cops and the soldiers. That's rather easy and I must say it loosens the meaning by making it political though it probably was not, at least originally. I think in a way it is unfair to Shostakovich. But well, it is an old production. Today we might react differently, and some director or conductor might make it take place in Uighur country and become anti-Chinese. It should have remained neutral. That would have densified the drama itself which is in many ways Shakespearian, or we could think of Alban Berg, but it loses this dimension by being turned into some kind of political fiction for Parisian Boulevard theaters.
The music though is extremely creative and very powerful by the circuslike and funfair-sounding dynamism of many scenes that put on stage thirty or forty people running like scared rats in a barrel. And yet in more intimate scenes the music becomes extremely somber and even upsetting with darkness. The setting does not shine that much with a lot of light, far from it. We are in the deep cave or burrow of a school of snakes or colony of moles and badgers. Even the celebration scenes, one or two maybe, are so sloppy in the setting on the stage that we wonder if it is not a descent into the limbos just before the famous Inferno. Disoriented people who only try to get drunk, and duly succeed. That's what a celebration is in this production. After all, it might have been a good thing to rat-poison this rat of a merchant father-in-law. He did not deserve to survive.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
No pity, no empathy, no nothing for this woman. But that's the drama of the play. Besides, the opera is extremely funny in many ways because there are numerous absolutely ridiculous scenes. The first priest who gets the father-in-law to the other side of this life does it in his nightshirt. The ritual is absolutely hilarious. The priest is a clown. A second priest in the marriage, later on, is going to be just as phantasmagorical and drunk. And the crowds surrounding these scenes are always as crazy as a scarecrow in a blizzard. Then comes the police that is ridiculed as an assemblage of opportunistic non-entities that only want some easy-going activity with enough authority to feel superior though they are ruffians, and they do acknowledge that the comfortable side of the profession comes from the various advantages they do not get from anyone, but they take from everyone.
The father-in-law is a merchant, and he has plenty of employees seen as working-class mostly very dark blue collar. They are violent, massively undifferentiated, all reacting collectively and blindly, just gut reactions and not the most dignified gut at that. The lover is one in this scum and he is a phallocratic sexist person from the very start. He does not really fall in love with the "Lady," he just finds in her way to regularly satisfy his impulses and drives, but she falls in love with him and that is irreversible. When you reach hell, you cannot come back, and for her love is hell. Her end is drastic and yet we more or less feel that she deserves it, though she is the faithful one of the loving pair and her lover is totally uninterested in any fidelity, except if he can find some advantage in it for himself.
This particular production alludes to the Gulag heavily with the uniforms of the cops and the soldiers. That's rather easy and I must say it loosens the meaning by making it political though it probably was not, at least originally. I think in a way it is unfair to Shostakovich. But well, it is an old production. Today we might react differently, and some director or conductor might make it take place in Uighur country and become anti-Chinese. It should have remained neutral. That would have densified the drama itself which is in many ways Shakespearian, or we could think of Alban Berg, but it loses this dimension by being turned into some kind of political fiction for Parisian Boulevard theaters.
The music though is extremely creative and very powerful by the circuslike and funfair-sounding dynamism of many scenes that put on stage thirty or forty people running like scared rats in a barrel. And yet in more intimate scenes the music becomes extremely somber and even upsetting with darkness. The setting does not shine that much with a lot of light, far from it. We are in the deep cave or burrow of a school of snakes or colony of moles and badgers. Even the celebration scenes, one or two maybe, are so sloppy in the setting on the stage that we wonder if it is not a descent into the limbos just before the famous Inferno. Disoriented people who only try to get drunk, and duly succeed. That's what a celebration is in this production. After all, it might have been a good thing to rat-poison this rat of a merchant father-in-law. He did not deserve to survive.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
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