Óra Lady Macbeth de Mtsensk
Albert Hall presents this month at BBC Proms a staging of the controversial 1934 opera, Lady Macbeth from Dmitri Shostakovich’s MTSENSK District, which Stalin hated and banned.
Based on the soap opera Nikolai leskov From 1865, the opera tells the story of the lonely Katerina Izmailova, who falls in love with one of her husband’s employees, Sergei, and is led to commit a murder.
In its opera adaptation, Chostakovitch inserted two shocking scenes: the first, an attack on the housekeeper Aksinya; The second, a violent sex scene between Katerina and Sergei.
Debuting in Leningrad and Moscow in 1934, Lady Macbeth was a success among the Soviet audience, and Stalin himself watched a representation in 1936.
Deeply disinterested in the modern style of music, he came out in the middle of the representation, allegedly saying: “This is a confusion, not music” – A phrase repeated in the headline of a fierce editorial in the Pravda newspaper two days later.
All subsequent presentations were canceled And the play was never heard in Russia during the life of Chostakovitch. The fact that he was heard again today would have made Shostakovich surprised.
After the death of Stalin in 1953, Shostakovich broke the score and reviewed it, changing the name to Katerina Izmailova. Most revisions were small except one: removed the sex scene completely that involved Katerina.
The updated version was well received in the Soviet Union – but when Katerina Izmailova did a tour of Europe in the 1960s, the criticism was warm. At the height of the Cold War, there was little desire to acclaim Chostakovitch as a genius.
Lady Macbeth relaunched
But in 1979, the exiled Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich located an original Lady MacBeth score in Europe and recorded it for EMI. Opera houses quickly expressed the desire to stage her, ignoring the version of Katerina Izmailova.
In the same year, was published the book allegedly of the memories of Shostakovich, testimony, awakening Even more interest for the composer. However, its authenticity was immediately implemented, and subsequent research has further discredited its genuineness allegation.
But few would dispute the general message of testimony: chostakovitch hated the Soviet government and suffered a deep psychological trauma during the years of Stalin.
From there, the way people listened to Shostakovich music changed. His political discontent, some stated, was audible in his own grades.
If the critics were yawning before Katerina Izmailova, they were electrified by this new-old and sensual Lady Macbeth. With the revelations of testimony in mind, the act of staging sex in Soviet Russia of the 1930s – the decade of the Purgas of Stalin – It seemed excitingly radical.
The critics even assumed that that is why Stalin had been so offended by the opera. Consequently, the filmmakers began to stage both the scene of assault on housekeeper Aksinya and the sex scene between Katerina and Sergei as shockingly as possible.
Stage nominations for Leningrad and Moscow in 1934 showed Sergei to roll Aksinya in a barrel, but in modern productions is often violated in grouppartly naked and horribly humiliated.
Katerina – originally pursued by Leninintedrada’s stage and, at the last moment, taken behind a curtain – is now often shown to simulate violent sex with Sergei.
Although in this scene both music and libretto (voices) suggest violation, the directors usually staging sex as violent but consensual, protecting us from what the composer intended.
The original filmmakers of Leningrado and Moscow, however, perfectly understood the original concept of Shostakovich. In an initial draft (not staged), the first words Katerina sang Sergei after sex were “Don’t dare to touch me“.
We cannot avoid the conclusion that Chostakovitch originally imagined a violation that quickly led to Katerina’s worship words: “Now you are my husband.” It was immature, offensive and made no dramatic sense.
Leningrador director Nikolai Smolich did the best he could, completely cutting the problematic postcoco dialogue and hiding real sex.
The real reason for Estaline’s departure
Staging Lady Macbeth with shocking levels of sexual violence became subtly a way to confront the ban on Staline-as if the more outrage was the staging, the more anti-stalinist it became.
However, the reaction of stalin to the opera was not caused by sex. The presentation to which he watched had extra written instructions in the metals: playing with high bells and increase the very strong to four times the very strong – As high as possible physically.
There was also a music band playing on the stage, positioned even under the stalifying cabin, next to the stage. It would have completely deaf. Lady Macbeth wasn’t too sexy for Stalin – she was too noisy.
We have not become more authentic MTSENSK Lady Macbeth or more dissident by staging increasingly shadowy levels of sexual violence against women, nor does we bring it to the vision of Chostakovitch himself to opera.
The “original” version is not a perfect masterpiece: Lady Macbeth’s first directors knew it, as did the oldest Shostakovich. It is time to hear them.
