As the year commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich's death approaches, smart theatres are preparing new productions of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the composer's second, last and most famous opera, with the idea of renting it out to other theatres and thus recouping their investment. Beyond its many musical and dramatic merits, this opera, one of the finest of the 20th century, is - unfortunately - known for the fact that Stalin disliked it and...

Shostakovich’s final opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, has had a rocky history. It was a smash hit when first performed in 1934, but it was officially condemned by the Communist Party two years later for its sympathetic portrayal of a triple murderess. Nowadays, it hovers on the fringes of the standard repertoire (barely making it into Operabase’s 100 most-performed works globally last season). It’s exciting to see it newly staged at the Salzburg Festival this...

All too realistic, detailed, once again an enourmous sensitive direction of the Catalan enfant terrible Calixto Beito. He is ideally accompagnied and followed - for this Lady Macbeth of Mtensk - by the cast and his team, with stage designer Rebecca Ringst, costume designer Ingo Kruegler and light by Michael Bauer. The audience experiences the thriller of the inhuman circumstances of the land ruling family Izmailjow and their fatal extinction as well as the desperate life of...