Dmitri Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
L'Opéra National de Paris, 2019
Ingo Metzmacher, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Dmitry Ulyanov, John Daszak, Aušrinė Stundytė, Pavel Černoch, Sofija Petrovic, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, Oksana Volkova, Andrei Popov, Krzysztof Baczyk, Marianne Croux, Alexander Tsymbalyuk
Paris Cinema Live - 16 April 2019
I love the way the Paris Opera site has a warning for this production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk advising that "Certain scenes may be inappropriate for the young and the easily offended". You could almost take it for granted that the conservative contingent of the audience at the Paris Opera are going to find much offensive in a Krzysztof Warlikowski production, and there is much indeed to find offense with. This time however it's not Warlikowski that brings controversy to a production but rather it's a case that this daring opera that Stalin ordered to be banned still has the potential to shock. Warlikowski merely helps realise its potential on stage for a modern audience.
Personally I think Warlikowski is less of a wild card than he typically used to be at La Monnaie in Brussels, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Berlin and the Teatro Real in Madrid where he really pushed buttons by twisting narratives - brilliantly and meaningfully - and imposing his own vision through extended scenes, movie references and even his own film inserts, throwing in glitter, dancers and all manner of bizzareness. Recently, particularly in Paris, he has actually toned down his interpretations a little, as in the recent Don Carlos and also with From The House of the Dead. With Lady Macbeth again the eccentricities are largely eliminated, the changes are still large but of minimal interference only to make the work even more powerful.
The reason for that is of course that Shostakovich's opera, banned in Russia after Stalin viewed it, is a force in itself. I don't think however that I've ever appreciated the full brilliance of the work as it's expressed here in the 2019 Paris Opera production. All the bold, daring satire of the corruption in Russian society and its treatment of women is given full vent in a rich musical arrangement that is dramatically attuned, expressive of sinister intent and murderous violence, but also warmly seductive and downright lewd. Conductor Ingo Metzmacher has a lot to do with that (and large shoes to fill when the current musical director Philippe Jordan leaves), but it's more a combination of efforts and, as it ought to be, a collaboration between composer, conductor and director. Not forgetting the performers, and we definitely won't forget the performers here.
I guess I'm not going to get tired of praising Aušrinė Stundytė for her singing and dramatic interpretations any time soon, but I might have to work on finding new adjectives if she keeps delivering at this level. This is another extraordinary performance, fearless in her complete absorption into difficult and challenging characters. Her choices to date have been good in that respect (most recently at Aix-en-Provence in Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel) and there are few female roles as superbly written from both character and singing viewpoint as Katerina Ismailova. It's a role Stundytė has impressed in before (Lyon) and she brings a great deal of thought, personality and subtle psychology to this performance, to an expression of complex human emotions pushed to extremes.
I would say that Krzysztof Warlikowski plays no small hand in directing and channeling that performance and in giving it an effective and credible context to work within. Of course, working in collaboration with his regular set and costume designer Małgorzata Szczęśniak, it's far from natural realism, but rather attuned to the undercurrents, to internal hopes and dreams, to fierce personal drive and disillusionment that comes when those ideals clash with reality, with the circumstances of life in rural Russia, with the attitudes of an oppressive patriarchal society, with institutions that are riddled with vice and corruption.
Warlikowski's interventions than are fairly expansive in assuming a very distinctive presence on the production design, but they do not interfere with where the real strengths of the work lie. Instead of a grain factory, this production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is situated in an abattoir. That might sound heavy handed, and yes, the handing of bloody sides of cattle is pretty disgusting, but it does capture something of Katerina's distaste for the world she is trapped in, as well as providing a humorous and ironic contrast between her belief that even cows have a purpose, while her life has none. The set where meat is handled also provides a chilling location for the near-rape of Aksinya. If viewers are easily offended by such scenes, they should be.
Rather than wallow in the degradation of society and how it clashes with individual liberties, Warlikowski and Szczęśniak move on and find other ways that illustrate what Shostakovich vividly depicts in his music. A large part of the drama takes place in a long trailer that represents Katerina's room, moved to a central position on the stage where it rotates and can viewed from a number of angles that permit the viewer to see the all sexual positions Katerina is able to perform with her lover Sergei, Warlikowski choreographing the sensual undercurrents and the outright raunchy actions to what is there explicitly in the music. The room later doubles as the trailer where Katarina and Sergei are held with the other prisoners in Act IV, underlining the impression that she has trapped herself.
Most brilliantly of all however is how Warlikowski depicts Katerina and Sergei's marriage as something of a blood wedding, with blood red curtains surrounding it and the bride and groom all in red. Instead of having the guests whisper rumours and asides about the bride and the mysterious disappearance of her husband, it's delivered by a stand-up comedian with a line in edgy humour, with circus acts also capturing brilliantly the absurdity and farce of the situation that is all there in Shostakovich's playful music for this scene. Similarly Shostakovich's music can't disguise the forced comedy of the police-chief and the institutional corruption of the authorities that even Stalin couldn't miss, and that blends superbly into the high farce that this Act descends into with the discovery of the body hung up with the other sides of beef.
Warlikowski also seeks to use a limited amount of projections, some of them barely noticeable as overlays of dripping blood down the red curtains, but always in an effort to get deeper into the psychology that underlies Katarina's behaviour, fears and dreams. Some 3-D computer graphics are created to capture a sense of floating and drowning underwater, and that also blends effectively into the wider considerations of the work.
I've always felt that Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is a compelling work but rarely have I felt so absorbed by its dramatic drive as I have here in its telling by the stunning collaboration of Warlikowski, Metzmacher and Stundytė. Stundytė obviously dominates with her tour-de-force singing and acting performance, but the ensemble action and singing all work together tremendously well, with strong performances also from Pavel Černoch as Sergei, an impressive working of Aksinya's role by Sofija Petrovic, with excellent work also from Dmitry Ulyanov as Boris Timofeyevich, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke as the Village drunk/comedian and Oksana Volkova as Sonyetka.
Links: L'Opéra National de Paris
Dmitri Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
Bayerische Staatsoper, 2016
Kirill Petrenko, Harry Kupfer, Anatoli Kotscherga, Sergey Skorokhodov, Anja Kampe, Misha Didyk, Heike Grötzinger, Kevin Conners, Christian Rieger, Sean Michael Plumb, Milan Siljanov, Goran Jurić, Alexander Tsymbalyuk, Kristof Klorek, Dean Power, Peter Lobert, Igor Tsarkov, Alexander Tsymbalyuk, Selene Zanetti
Staatsoper.TV - 4th December 2016
There was a time when Harry Kupfer's productions could be quite radical and not be too concerned with holding slavishly to the directions stipulated in the libretto, but while he is still capable of some striking stage pieces, there's more of a 'classical' look and feel to his productions now. That at least was the case with his elegant but unexceptional Der Rosenkavalier for Salzburg in 2014, and there's a similar aesthetic applied to this production of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. The bigger surprise however is that this is a very 'straight' production for the Bavarian State Opera, a house that in the recent past has been inclined towards rather more challenging interpretations.
Kupfer's production however doesn't stick entirely to the book. Rather than being set in the middle of the 19th century of the time of it was written by Nikolai Leskov, the Munich production is set at the beginning of the 20th century, closer to the time of Shostakovich's composition in 1934. Perhaps more significantly this setting is just before the time of the Russian Revolution, highlighting perhaps distasteful aspects of Russian society in a way that Shostakovich might not have been able to do so openly in the Soviet Union. On the other hand, it's not as if Shostakovich was anything less than scathing about the social order and the behaviour of the authorities, the merchant class and working class - the work meeting with Stalin's disapproval and eventually being banned - so it's not clear that there is anything gained from this updating.
If it's set in the 20th century, it's perhaps just to make the work feel a little more contemporary and less about any specific political regime. Kupfer's production doesn't particularly dwell on the political or social aspects of the work, or even its essential Russian character. If there is any aspect of the work that is given more emphasis, it's perhaps the more universal treatment of the relationships between men and women. On this front, Shostakovich's musical treatment of the story was and still is a fearsome piece of work; a no-nonsense and quite daring depiction of the most base impulses that drive women and men, and what happens when they meet in two particularly driven people.
It's Kirill Petrenko's musical direction from the pit that makes the strongest case for the murderous havoc that this encounter generates, so if Kupfer's stage direction doesn't particularly inspire, the production as a whole at least pulls no dramatic punches. Musically, I don't think I've ever heard this work sound so vibrant and punchy, the unbridled musical underscoring matching every excess of the unbridled passions described in the drama; rape, adultery, murder, drunkenness, beatings, police corruption and brutality are all vividly described. Sensitivity, tenderness, love, some kind of sympathy for the position of Katarina Ismailov, the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk? Not so much.
...or at least not in this production anyway. Despite the bombastic approach of Shostakovich to undesirable human behaviours and actions, there is room for nuance and sensitivity, but there's little of it in evidence here. It's interesting to contrast the musical treatment here with Petrenko's direction of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in October. The conductor and orchestra unquestionably bring out all the dramatic qualities of the music and the passions expressed, but there's less light and shade to work with in Shostakovich's score. Nonetheless, there is an ebb and flow to the rhythm of the dramatic action, and when you follow that the impact is explosive. You certainly get a sense of that here.
If there is room to work with the balance and weight of a more sensitive reading, it's perhaps in the hands of the singers, but the approach here tends to match the same explosive delivery of the score. On that level alone, the performances are impressive. Anja Kampe is on wonderful form here and it's thrilling to behold. Her Katarina is very much a woman driven by huge passions that aren't satisfied being the wife of the inadequate son of a wealthy grain merchant, and she's prepared to go to whatever lengths necessary to resist her fate, even if that is far beyond what a woman in her position can expect to be permitted. It's unfortunate that it's only through someone as self-serving as Sergey that she is able to find a way out.
Misha Didyk, from my experience, tends to border on hysterical in his delivery, but with the strong direction of someone like Stefan Herheim (in the recent DNO Queen of Spades), his anguished tone can be put to good use. Here, as Sergey he leans towards the shrill and histrionic, but there is at least a good place for it in Sergey's arrogant, wheedling, self-serving character, and it adds an edge to that unquestionably passionate relationship that develops between Sergey and Katarina. Anatoli Kotscherga sings a powerful Boris and successfully avoids letting the character slip into caricature. There are no weak points in any of the other roles, with Sergey Skorokhodov's Zinovy, Goran Jurić's chief of police and whoever plays the Shabby Drunk all in particular standing out.
Unfortunately, the rather indifferent production design and direction doesn't give the work the boost or the necessary edge it might have had. All the locations are rather sanitised and prettified, with Kupfer using again similar dramatic black-and-white cloud and landscape projections to those in his production of Der Rosenkavalier. If there is a trend towards a softening of the wilder Regie excesses on the part of Kupfer and the Bayerische Staatsoper that feels less adventurous, on the musical front at least the Munich house are going from strength to strength under their new music director Kirill Petrenko, and I'll happily settle for that.
The Bayerische Staatsoper's line-up for the rest of the live broadcast season next year is staggeringly good. On 26 Feb it's Rossini's SEMIRAMIDE, conducted by Michele Mariotti and directed by David Alden with an impressive cast that includes Joyce DiDonato, Alex Esposito, Daniela Barcellona and Lawrence Brownlee. We then have to wait until 1 July for Franz Schreker's DIE GEZNEICHNETEN, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher and directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski. Kirill Petrenko returns to conduct Wagner's TANNHÄUSER on 9th July in a new production directed by Romeo Castellucci.
Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper.TV
Dmitri Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Opéra de Lyon, 2016
Kazushi Ono, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Ausrine Stundyte, Vladimir Ognovenko, Peter Hoare, John Daszak, Gennady Bezzubenkov, Almas Svilpa, Jeff Martin, Michaela Selinger, Clare Presland, Jeff Martin, Kwang Soun Kim
Culturebox - 4 February 2016
He remains a controversial and divisive figure in the opera world, but Dmitri Tcherniakov is nonetheless always an interesting director. In particular his work is often inspired when he is working in the Russian repertoire; opening up a whole new way of looking on works that are rarely performed and insufficiently explored. His production of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, recently seen at the English National Opera but now transferred to Lyon and sung in its native language with Russian leads, is a typically strong reading of the work that has many of the director's familiar techniques. In fact, it would at first appear that there's not much the director has to offer a work that is surrounded in enough controversy of its own. The touches Tcherniakov introduces here however are subtle and achieve maximum impact.
For a while at least, it seems like business as usual. There are no unexpected twists that subvert the material, nothing too challenging or unexpected. It's updated evidently, but not in an extravagant way to make any obvious contemporary reference. Instead of being a wealthy flour merchant, Boris Timofeyevich Izmailov here runs a more modern warehouse, with workers in hi-vis jackets operating forklift trucks, with a row of secretaries in the office and employees all wearing security passes around their necks. Even from the point of view of merely indicating the banality of business interests and the uniformity of the modern workplace, and in how it pertains to the relative positions of men and women within it, Tcherniakov has it down to a tee.
The background setting is an important matter in the opera, but still, it's not anything that you wouldn't see in any other Tcherniakov production. This one doesn't look that much different from his productions of The Tsar's Bride or Verdi's Macbeth, and if that means that it's not quite as radical as the updating of those works were, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk already has all the sex and violence it needs. What becomes apparent then is not that Tcherniakov's approach is in any way 'tamer' here, or that he has run out of original ideas, as much as Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk may be the definitive Tcherniakov opera. It's as if the director has taken all the boldness, the shock and the impact of this opera and used it as a model that all other operas ought to aspire to match. Tcherniakov seems to want to bring the inner Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk out of every opera he works on.
In as far as dealing with the subjects that Shostakovich depicted in his version of Nikolai Leskov's work, there are certainly other levels that could be emphasised in the opera - and it seems amazing that the composer himself seemed to be unaware of how that might would play out to the Soviet censor - but Tcherniakov is not particularly concerned with those. The wider view of the Russian character, the implications of corruption within the system and the impact that has on a woman living within a male-dominated society are all still there as part of the wider canvas that Shostakovich paints so vividly in his score, but Tcherniakov recognises that there is also an attention in the music to the individual, and in this case that's evidently the 'Lady Macbeth' of the work, Katerina Lvovna Izmailova.
Having established the context only as far as it necessary, without any unnecessary emphasis or distortion, Tcherniakov's focus is almost wholly on Katia. The director often reduces the scene down to the small room where the wife of the boss's son is mostly confined. It's a warmly-lit room decorated with rugs covering the walls, Katia moreover dressed in a more 'traditional' way that emphasises the extent to which she is cut off and set apart from the rest of the world. She daren't venture too far out of that room, and when she does - in the only way that would be possible for a woman in her position - she's soon put back in her place. Her form of liberty eventually leads Katerina and her lover Sergei being arrested and sent to Siberia. As this just closes down her world further, Tcherniakov chooses to depict all the horror that follows within the confines of a small cell rather than on a forced march in the open outdoors.
Closing down the stage in this way, reducing it to a small block, allows Tcherniakov to work in closer detail, more like a film director than a stage director. There is even a fixed camera placed high within Katia's bedroom for the sake of the video recording of the performance in Lyon that allows the level of detail, nuance and intimacy created to be seen, but clearly the impact is felt even at the back of the theatre. Tcherniakov knows he doesn't have to make grand gestures because they are already there in the music and in the subject, and he focuses instead on the performers, on what their characters feel and endure. Even on that level, there's a huge range to cover in the vivid personalities of Katia, Boris, Sergei and Zynovny, to say nothing of the colourful secondary characters. Tcherniakov's direction of the performers is superb, making them and their actions feel utterly real, and it makes all the difference in this work.
The simmering passions and explosions of violence and aggressive sexual behaviour are all fully scored by Shostakovich and brought out in all their wonderful, lurid glory by Kazushi Ono and the orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon. It really is a wonderful account that makes no attempt to play down those verismo characteristics that are what gives the work such an impact. A few of the English cast remain here - John Daszak and Peter Hoare superbly reprising the roles of Sergei and Zynovny - but the Russian production of the opera undoubtedly benefits from having singers like Ausrine Stundyte and Vladimir Ognovenko play Katarina and Boris. Stundyte is exceptionally good in an understated but compelling performance that simmers with the underlying strength of Katia's passions and her capacity to love as violently as she kills.
Links: Culturebox, Opéra de Lyon
Dmitri Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, 2002
Alexander
Anissimov, Stein Winge, Nadine Secunde, Christopher Ventris, Francisco
Vas, Anatoli Kotcherga, Graham Clark, Juha Kotilainen, Yevgeny
Nesterenko
EMI Classics
Written in 1934 and being
subject to intense criticism after meeting with Stalin’s disfavour due
to its perceived lack of moral character, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
is however one of those operas that is groundbreaking as much for its
content and means of musical expression as for its historical
importance. Musically, it’s an incredibly rich opera that doesn’t hold
to any distinct style or school of music, but mixes and matches styles
to suit the content. What is even more remarkable is that it finds such a
variety of tone and mood – from comic to tragic – within the narrow
range of its subject, which indeed, as Stalin feared, doesn’t exactly
show the best side of human nature or the Russian temperament.
So even when it deals with the
boredom of Katerina Lvovna’s life, married to the rich merchant Ismailov
who is unable to give her a child, and subjected to the unwanted
advances of her father-in-law who is quite willing to do what it takes
to have an heir, Shostakovich finds expression in the music for the
nature of her personal situation and, through the raucous activities and
interaction with the workers, the entrapment of her social position.
The score goes on to cover the range of emotions and the journey she is
about to undertake takes when she starts to flirt with Sergey, a
handsome, womanising new worker who has just been hired. Much trouble
can come out of boredom and it also nurtures a prurient interest in the
activities of the Ismailov household that leads the police force in Act 3
to investigate the subsequent activities that arise around the deaths
of Katya’s husband and father-in-law.
The production, designed by
Stein Winge, plays up these elements well, capturing the harshness of
the setting in the dark and sparse sets, working with the music as well
as the libretto. Beds feature prominently in this particular production
of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, recorded in 2002 at the Gran Teatre
del Liceu in Barcelona, even in scenes where they would not be expected
to appear. Apart from the necessary fluidity that it allows in the
sparse staging, there’s a continuity in Katya’s omnipresent bed in the
first two acts, followed by the beds of the police barracks and the camp
beds of the forced prison march on the steppes in Act 4, that suggests
not only the sense of lassitude that exists, but also that bedroom
activities are never far from the minds of the protagonists in an opera
where sex and lust features prominently.
With all its passion, jealousy and murder, Carmen frequently comes to mind when following Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,
but Shostakovich uses a greater variety of influences and references,
including huge rousing Verdi-like choruses for the sense of wild
abandon, drunkenness and licentiousness that is aroused in the general
population, but also achingly intimate arrangements and musical
interludes to touch on other aspects of the intensely fatalistic Russian
character of the piece, without ever making use of traditional folk
melodies or music of a conventional Russian nature. Along with a
terrific performance from the orchestra of the Liceu, the singing and
dramatic presentation, with a few personal quirks and touches, are all
superb, in particular Nadine Secunde as Katerina and Anatoli Kotcherga
as the father-in-law.
I don’t think there’s any beauty in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,
at least not in the traditional sense of the word, but there is a
brilliance and a sort of terrible beauty in the way that Shostakovich
finds expression for the darker side of human nature and the “huge black
waves” that the Russian nature is prone to on a personal as well as a
national level. As such this production allows the opera to work on a
wider level than just being tied to a historical regime and period.
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
is released on DVD by EMI Classics a two-disc set. The video, although
widescreen enhanced at 16:9, is slightly lacking, partly due to the
darkness of the stage, but also due to an inability of some of the
camera operators to be able to focus their cameras. It’s reasonably well
filmed however, getting the impact of the stage setting across well and
covering the actions of the performers. There are three audio mixes,
LPCM stereo, DTS 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1. All are excellent, with good
dynamic range and clarity. The surround mixes in particular are strong,
although the DD 5.1 is a little on the harsh side. There are no extra
features on the set other than a showreel of other EMI titles, but the
DVD insert contains details of the cast and production team and a PDF
file on the disc has a short essay on the opera.
