Lady Macbeth de Mzensk

Lady Macbeth de Mzensk Dmitri Chostakovitch Opéra Bastille Duration: 3h25 with 1 interval Language: Russian Surtitles: French / English Like a Russian Madame Bovary, Katerina is bored in the company of her husband

Lady Macbeth de Mzensk

Dmitri Chostakovitch

Opéra Bastille

Duration: 3h25 with 1 interval

Language: Russian

Surtitles: French / English

Like a Russian Madame Bovary, Katerina is bored in the company of her husband. The arrival of a new employee, Sergueï, leads her into adultery and then into crime, making her more akin to Lady Macbeth. But unlike Shakespeare's character, Katerina acts not out of a desire for power but to satisfy urges stifled by a sordid environment. Created in 1934 in Leningrad when Dmitri Chostakovitch was only 28, Lady Macbeth de Mzensk achieved a triumph that sealed the composer's downfall. Stalin found this scandalous opera contrary to "socialist realism", and the composer was threatened with deportation and the work banned for over 25 years before reappearing in a watered-down version. Performed in its original version, Shostakovich's powerful and tense score is enhanced by Krzysztof Warlikowski's staging. By placing the characters in a slaughterhouse, he restores this 20th-century masterpiece to its implacable crudity.

Ingo Metzmacher Musical direction

Krzysztof Warlikowski, Staging

Aušrinė Stundytė Katerina Lvovna Ismaïlova

Pavel Černoch Sergueï

Dmitry Ulyanov Boris Timofeevitch Ismaïlov

Oleksiy Palchykov Zinovy Borisovitch Ismaïlov

Ekaterina Sannikova Aksinia

Marcel Beekman Le Balourd miteux

Victoria Karkacheva Sonietka

Michael Colvin Le Maître d'école

Margarita Polonskaya La Bagnarde

Dmitry Belosselskiy Le Chef de la police, le Vieux bagnard

Vartan Gabrielian Un officier

Orchestre et Chœurs de l’Opéra national de Paris