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Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, opera, Op. 29

Леди Макбет Мценского уезда (Катерина Измайлова)

Синопсис (mymb-ru)

Синопсис (ru)

Libretto (en)

About (en,wiki)

О произведении (ru,wiki)

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Ambrosian Opera Chorus

Запись: Апрель 1978, London

Борис Тимофеевич Измайлов - Dimiter Petkov

Зиновий Борисович Измайлов - Werner Krenn

Катерина Львовна Измайлова - Галина Вишневская

Сергей, работник - Николай Гедда

Задрипанный мужичонка - Robert Tear

Аксинья - Taru Valjakka

Приказчик - Steven Emmerson

1-й работник - Colin Appleton

2-й работник - Alan Byers

3-й работник - James Lewington

Кучер - Colin Appleton

Дворник - Leslie Fyson

Учитель - Martyn Hill

Часовой - David Beavan

Священник - Leonard Mroz

Городовой - Oliver Broome

Пьяный гость - Edgar Fleet

Унтер - Leslie Fyson

Сонетка, каторжница - Birgit Finnila

Старый каторжник - Alexander Malta

Каторжница - Lynda Richardson

Работники, работницы Измайловых, гости на свадьбе, городовые в участке, каторжники, каторжницы.

Место действия: российский уездный город.

Время: середина XIX века

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Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, opera, Op. 29

Shostakovich loved the title character of Nikolai Leskov's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District perhaps not wisely but too well. In writing the libretto based on Leskov's naturalistic short story with Leningrad playwright Alexander Preis, Shostakovich loved the character of Katerina Izmaylova so deeply that he could not bear to see her as Lady Macbeth, that is, as a wanton murderer who kills her father-in-law, her husband, and her husband's nephew out of boredom and lust. Instead, Shostakovich changed her from a sex-crazed fury into a heroic victim of her time and place.

Shostakovich did everything he could in fashioning Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District to make Katerina sympathetic. He not only gave her ravishingly gorgeous arias, he gave all the other characters stilted and silly arias, transforming them from characters to caricatures. He changed the plot of the story to make her more sympathetic: among other things, he eliminated the death of the child and made Katerina's lover Sergei much more of an instigator of the crimes than he was in Leskov's story. He even gave Katerina two deeply moving arias in the fourth and final act in which she sings of her love, her guilt, and her remorse. In sum, Shostakovich deliberately and purposefully altered the story to fit with his conception of love.

Yes, love. Although the subsequent history of Lady Macbeth - its tremendous popular success (it was playing in both Leningrad and Moscow simultaneously), its terrible denouncement on the front page of Pravda as "Muddle instead of Music," its withdrawal from the stage until the early 1960s - can and must be seen in political and ideological terms, Shostakovich himself seems to have imagined the opera as a work about love. While Shostakovich was composing Lady Macbeth from May 1930 through December 1932, he was deeply in love with Nina Vazar, whom he married in May 1932. As he wrote years later, "I dedicated Lady Macbeth to my bride, my future wife, so naturally the opera is about love, too, but not only love. It's also about how love could have been if the world weren't full of vile things."

There are vile things throughout the score: the awful Offenbach-style galops, the lurid music for the bestial father-in-law, the weak music for the husband, the satiric music for the police and the priests, the grinding organ interlude, the garish orchestral colors, the merciless rhythms. the hideous harmonies. But it is also filled with Shostakovich's compassionate love for Katerina in her achingly beautiful music. If Shostakovich's love for Katerina prevented him from creating an opera which was a faithful adaptation of Leskov's story or from creating an opera which would be acceptable to the cruel society in which he lived, it did enable him to create a work which can move an audience to tears.

-James Leonard (All Music Guide)