The Great and the Terrible in Opera

;On January 31, the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre hosted another premiere performance of Dmitry Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.
;" Lady Macbeth is the most scandalous piece of the twentieth century," journalists of both past and present declare.
" Lady Macbeth is the greatest piece of the twentieth century," asserts the production's director, G;nther K;nemann.
;This work is as multi-layered as a carved Chinese ivory puzzle ball. Do you want to engage in a conversation about what matters most in eternity with Dostoevsky and Shakespeare? (I realize you are no Baron Munchausen). Shostakovich's opera offers limitless possibilities for a "dialogue on the threshold," and the German-Swiss production team has solved—like a crossword puzzle—not only the riddles of our Slavic soul, but has ventured even further into the black hole of psychoanalytic infinity.
;Why did Shostakovich, acting as his own librettist, introduce those horrifying, naturalistic scenes of the cook’s gang rape and the detailed, multi-positional rolling around of the central couple in bed? Might it have been more decent and concise without them?
Precisely: back in '36, the entire country was screaming at the composer: "Cut it! Shorten it!" The result was Katerina Izmailova, an opera about the fate of a Russian woman—an analogue to Ostrovsky's The Storm, with the sole difference being that Katerina Kabanova only killed herself, whereas Katerina Izmailova killed herself and a whole bunch of other people.
But why? In the opera Katerina Izmailova, it remains unclear; but in the opera Lady Macbeth, as staged by Mr. K;nemann, it has become crystal clear to us...
;A crowd of aroused men, a screaming woman pinned down by a broom, bound hands, Sergey the rapist groaning with total self-abandon—and the music is nothing short of a "fascist invasion"!
And then, the scene of Sergey’s punishment: a crowd of aroused men, Katerina screaming pinned down by a broom, bound hands, Sergey groaning under the lash—and the music is a "fascist invasion." The rape is perfectly symmetrical to the execution; only the details have been shuffled like a deck of cards.
Katerina is bare-headed, wearing nothing but an undergarment and red stockings, with no shoes. She screams, struggles, and fights for the broom. "She is a witch," the German director and set designer conclude. And so did the composer: when Katerina crosses herself, thunder and lightning erupt from the orchestra.
And we can see it for ourselves: a witch, through and through! Here she is, writhing on the floor, consumed by carnal desire, her legs in those red stockings magically pinning our eyes to the spot. A little later, her father-in-law, Boris Timofeyevich, whom she has poisoned, writhes dying on the floor in the exact same manner. And here is Katerina writhing on the floor in Sergey's embrace: "Come, kiss me until it bleeds!" Meanwhile, on the bed, lying right across that red-colored mattress, is the body of her lawful husband, Zinovy Borisovich, whom they have just strangled.
;"Where once a table groaned with feasts, a coffin stands." Here is a prime example of the symmetry of tables and "coffins." First, Boris Timofeyevich lies on the very table where he was just eating mushrooms; later, Zinovy Borisovich’s corpse lies in the cellar directly beneath the wedding feast table—truly a witch’s cynicism.
Murder as a form of perverted sex: that is the concept running like a red thread through this Siberian-German production. Yes, a literal red thread. A red bed, a red merchant’s dress—a white veil, a white chemise—red stockings.
Only in the final act, on the convict transfer pipeline, does she pull them off and give them away—ritually purging herself of the color red, she atones for her crime.
;The twentieth century, in all its chaotic complexity, manifests itself fully in this opera: alongside the "sexual revolution" and the echoes of the 1930s purges, a new synthesis of opera takes place here. Opera has merged in an ecstasy with the "most important of all arts" [cinema]. Its gritty authenticity, true-to-life rawness, condensed non-operatic erotics, its fascination with pathological mental states, and its investigation of harrowing psychological breakdowns—all of this has been borrowed from cinematography. And the production repays that debt in its own way: embedded within every set piece are small squares—resembling either glowing windows or film sprocket holes. Meanwhile, a white sheet of a screen—a transparent curtain—separates the audience from the grim events unfolding onstage.
;However, at the close of this century of psychoanalysis and cinema, the shortcomings of Shostakovich’s dramaturgy have also become clearly visible. While he utilizes musical "montage" brilliantly, he does not always translate these cinematic achievements into the pacing of the plot. Hence, the occasionally diluted long-windedness, explaining things that are already perfectly obvious. For instance, the wedding scene is overloaded, and the police station scene feels entirely superfluous.
It is clear that the arrest, the police, and the heavy emphasis on the convicts were the composer’s nod to the spirit of the times—a reflection of the terrifying reality of 1930s Russia rather than a compliance with what Soviet media and theatres actually promoted. However, this modulation into the social sphere did no favors to the psychoanalytic concept Shostakovich had established. Yet the directors, alas, remained faithful to Shostakovich to a fault.
;As a result, the character of Katerina received a somewhat unconvincing interpretation. Although Svetlana Savina consistently lived out Katerina’s transformation from a witch into a miserable, pity-inducing woman, a loving soul, Katerina’s final, culminating crime—the murder of her rival combined with her own suicide—does not feel logical under this interpretation.
Nevertheless, Savina was magnificent: she executed a punishingly difficult vocal part brilliantly, acting with immense courage and vividness.
Yury Komov succeeded—by using a precise vocal delivery (the half-singing, half-speaking style that became a classic through Alban Berg’s Wozzeck)—in conveying Sergey’s cheap, barber-shop slickness and utter insincerity.
;Incidentally, the lead performers work without understudies! The criminal couple's embodiment of the "heat of temptation" is worthy of a great dramatic theatre. Everything happening on that stage made one want to shout "Bravo!".
"God and the devil are fighting," Dostoevsky famously said, "and the battlefield is the human heart." Is opera capable, using such limited tools and its heavy baggage of conventions, of raising such global questions—about love, faith, death, and that "mysterious Russian soul" that believes so fervently and sins so terribly?
It turns out, yes! If you don't believe it—go see for yourself!

An Jesuit at the Opera

;Who could have known that Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth and a Jesuit monk from Ireland were two completely incompatible things!
;For the Christmas Music Festival in Novosibirsk, guest performers had descended from all over the world, bringing a mountain of premieres, staging operas and ballets. As a correspondent for the newspaper Seven Days in Novosibirsk, I received a whole stack of complimentary tickets to attend and cover it all.
;Each pass was for two people. I took all my relatives, friends, close and distant acquaintances to these cultural events in turn—everyone got their share of spectacles. There were even some left over. Unfortunately, no one could keep me company for the premiere of Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth. I terribly didn't want a scarce ticket to the highlight of the season to go to waste.
;In the morning at church, after Sunday Mass, my eyes caught the lanky, awkward figure of Father Andrew. The young Jesuit priest had just arrived from Ireland to serve in Siberia. For a month now, he had been diligently studying Russian and timidly getting to know Siberian Catholics.
;With some effort, he understood that I was inviting him to the opera. He was thrilled.
;"Opera! In Ireland, it is bery, bery expensive! I want."
;Our seats happened to be in the first row, right in the center. To our left and right, diamonds gleamed solemnly. Andrew was in absolute ecstasy.
;"I never sit in first row! In Ireland, it is bery, bery expensive!"
;And then it began!.. The poor pastor was literally slammed into his seat by a hellish gale of aggressive brass—definitely not what the gentle ears of a church minister were accustomed to... But that wasn't even the main thing. Everything turned out to be much worse. Shostakovich, it seemed, had decided to depict the brutal customs of a dark, backward Russia of the past century and its less-than-charming inhabitants without any sugarcoating. And he succeeded...
;The first act opened with a real-time scene of a gang rape of a housemaid. Both Shostakovich and the German director handled the visual and sonic elements with truly cinematic naturalism. Screams, female shieks, indecent poses, mocking faces—that was how Russia began for poor Father Andrew. (Not to mention the vow of celibacy the young Catholic monk had recently taken, with absolutely no intention of watching any pornography, even in the form of an opera).
;"I hope he doesn't take this as a provocation on my part..." I worried, watching in horror as the queue of singing rapists moved along. Andrew sat with his eyes and mouth wide open.
;I felt a wave of relief when the rapists and their victim finally left the stage. But, alas, it didn't get any easier.
;Katerina Izmailova appeared. In a short white chemise and red stockings, she spent the entire act tumbling with her lover Sergey on a gigantic bed in the middle of the stage, both singing erotically. The bed was made with a sheet the color of blood...
;While this Sodom was unfolding on stage, my professional cynicism kicked in: "The Red Bed"—not a bad title for a review, I noted to myself, trying not to look at the blanched Father Andrew.
;Finally, the intermission arrived. The house lights came up. Andrew wiped the sweat from his forehead. He gave me a pitiful smile:
;"I never see such opera..."
;With great difficulty, we survived three more acts. I was no longer even thinking about writing a review, having decided to go to the show specifically one more time, safely free of Catholic priests. The fact that the opera was remarkable and the production was top-notch was obvious to me with the naked eye. But Father Andrew, the moment he got his coat back, bolted out of the opera house as if he were being pursued by all those rapists and women in red stockings.
;...The next day at the film studio, practically in tears, I told this story to Father Wojciech and Brother Damian, who was also a Jesuit.
;"You have to be truly depraved to take such a holy man as Andrew to that opera," Brother Damian scolded me sternly, though the devils were practically leaping in his eyes. Father Wojciech laughed openly. These two had previously worked for Polish Catholic Television, so they were hard to scare with the naked truth of life. Unlike the sterile Father Andrew.
;Damian didn't forget the story. When, many years later, visitors from Ireland came to see Father Andrew and he was pondering how to entertain them, Damian slyly suggested:
;"Andrew, why don't you take them to the opera?"
;To which Andrew, in sheer horror, waved his hands:
;"No, no, anything but the opera!.."

;Olga Skvirskaya
“Seven Days in Novosibirsk”, February 1998