patrikpen: Sex and Violence in Salzburg In M&V 25 August 2017

domenica 7 gennaio 2018

Sex and Violence in Salzburg In M&V 25 August 2017

Sex and Violence in Salzburg

GIUSEPPE PENNISI reports on Shostakovich's
'Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District'

A new star is born in the lyric opera firmament: Evgenia Muraveva, a young, sexy Russian dramatic soprano with excellent acting abilities and with a voice that can fill the Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg. She was asked to stand in for the world-known Nina Stemme, who was ill, in the last performance of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, one of Dmitri Shostakovich's main youthful accomplishments. Muraveva will sing the role in St Petersburg next year. She already had a minor part in the Salzburg production. I attended this 21 August 2017 performance. The opera house was filled to the hilt. Muraveva received open stage applause and a long standing ovation at the end of the performance. Some critics said that she was better than Stemme because of her age and sex appeal.

Evgenia Muraveva as Katerina Lvovna Izmailova in Shostakovich's 'Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District' at the Salzburg Summer Festival. Photo © 2017 Thomas Aurin. Click on the image for higher resolution

One of the main themes of the Salzburg Summer Festival 2017 is the panoply of power with the lust for sex. Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District fits this theme quite well. The plot is well known. The only real character is the protagonist, Katerina. Married to a wealthy local landowner and merchant, she goes about her boring life. Her father-in-law attempts to make love to her when he discovers that she has already a lover, a young worker called Sergei. She kills both her father-in-law and, together with Sergei, her husband, but they are caught by the police on their wedding day and condemned to forced labour in Siberia. Sergei is not really in love with Katerina but longs for sex and social status. On their way to Siberia, Sergei deprives Katerina of the only thing she has left — her warm stockings — in order to donate them to his new mistress, Sonetka. When Katerina realizes that, she commits suicide and, in the process, kills Sonetka.

Ksenia Dudnikova as Sonetka and Evgenia Muraveva as Katerina Lvovna Izmailova in Shostakovich's 'Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District' at the Salzburg Summer Festival. Photo © 2017 Thomas Aurin. Click on the image for higher resolution

According to Shostakovich, this plot, taken from Nikolai Leskov's 1884 novel, was meant to criticize the bourgeoisie and to show the power of the real Russian women. Stalin and his establishment took a different view. Thus, the opera was banned for several years. Eventually, Shostakovich wrote and composed a less violent, less gruelling version.

The establishment's anger was not with the plot but with the score, described as 'chaos not music' by the daily Pravda in an editorial apparently dictated by Stalin himself. It is a difficult score, requiring a huge orchestra, and incorporates all the lessons of the first decades of the last century. It accentuates sex and violence, especially with the brass and a very innovative solution for timbre. There are also recollections of popular songs and choruses.

In the Salzburg production, well-known German stage director Andreas Kriegenburg handles the action. The sets are by Harald B Thor and the costumes by Tanja Hofmann. They make good use of the technical advances in staging. The opera is in four acts (and nine scenes), but the action flows almost like in a film, changing from a provincial upper class apartment (and bedroom), to a business office, the main square of the small city and the snowy and cold way to Siberia. There is only one intermission in this three and a half hour performance, followed by the audience as a serial killer horror movie.

Ksenia Dudnikova as Sonetka and Brandon Jovanovich as Sergei in Shostakovich's 'Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District' at the Salzburg Summer Festival. Photo © 2017 Thomas Aurin. Click on the image for higher resolution

Mariss Jansons conducts the Wiener Philharmoniker and the ViennaStaatsoper Chorus very skilfully. The cast entails eighteen soloists in twenty different roles, all of high professional standard. In addition to Evgenia Muraveva, at least Brandon Jovanovich, a powerful tenor as Sergei, and Dmitry Ulyanov, an excellent baritone as the vicious Boris, Katerina's father-in-law, must be mentioned.